Hinata stared at the building across from her, looking down at the street below every so often. The air was cold and her hoodie wasn’t enough to keep her skin from prickling at the wind’s touch. She was crouched before the rooftop ledge, peering over it at the apartment complex across the empty street. A slow yawn tore her mouth open and she blinked away tears to clear her vision, resuming her watch.

“You said he leaves his place every morning to train?”

“Yeah. Naruto usually goes out to do his own training after breakfast.” Choji sat cross-legged with his back against the ledge. “I reckon he’s going to come out any minute now.”

This was the furthest either of them had gone to find Naruto but unless he wanted to be found, it was impossible to find him. Hinata didn’t understand why he was avoiding them. With Shikamaru, he most likely felt they were avoiding him in favour of Naruto, which was why he avoided them, but Naruto didn’t have any reason to be upset with them, did he? What had they done to him?

Choji once wondered if he’d decided to stop being friends with them. At the time, Hinata didn’t believe it. She was sure he was taking some time off to clear his mind but a little over a week since and he’d made no effort to contact either Choji or her. She knew the two of them hadn’t hung out as much as they used to—but there was a reason for that.

The older Hinata became, the more the clan and her father expected of her. She’d grown more skilled over the last few years, which meant her father and the elders were beginning to spend more time preparing her for her destiny as the eventual Hyuuga clan head. Her training wasn’t just shinobi-focused. There were so many responsibilities she had to the people of the clan that Hinata had to be aware of at all times.

But she couldn’t complain, or express dissatisfaction, because it was unbecoming of her—both as a lady and as the clan’s heir. If the choice were down to her, Hinata would spend every day with her friends, but the choice was not hers to make. The sole purpose of her existence was for the sake of the clan. As her father said: clan first, village second. To her shame, Naruto got… lost, somewhere within the sea of duties and lessons.

“There he is,” said Choji.

Hinata blinked and her eyes latched onto Naruto’s long, blond hair vanishing around the corner of the apartment’s central staircase. Choji scrambled into a crouch, half-hiding behind the ledge. They waited in nervous silence as he exited onto the street and turned into the nearest alleyway to the apartment building.

“Hinata!”

Choji reacted first, vaulting off the roof and falling onto another about a storey below them. Hinata followed suit, using the ledge as leverage to jump further across the street and grabbing onto a lamppost to pull herself up. By the time they’d crossed the street and had taken to the rooftops, they could already see Naruto ducking under washing lines and bouncing from building to building, his hair swaying behind him.

“Where is he going?” Choji asked, forced to raise his voice if he wanted to be heard over the wind ripping through them.

Hinata sprung across a gap and continued sprinting. “I don’t know, but he seems excited.”

Despite the distance between them, Hinata could see him quite clearly. The Byakugan came with passive benefits that meant her vision was far better than normal even when she wasn’t using it. Of course, anyone who learned to manipulate chakra could enhance their senses, but those with dojutsu were special in the sense that their baseline was already much higher than average. So when Hinata saw him make an abrupt drop, she immediately stopped Choji from going any further.

“Do you think he saw us?” he asked.

Hinata frowned. “Unless he’s got eyes in the back of his head? I don’t believe so, no. Give me a moment.” She took hold of her focus and her vision cleared. “Nothing about his body language suggests it. I think… I think it’s just him being paranoid.”

“Of what, being followed?” Choji took a moment to snort at the irony. “No reason to try and avoid that, right?”

“...I suppose it’s more than just paranoia,” she acknowledged with a small smile.

They gave it a moment, trailing at a slower pace than before. Naruto’s sprint through the village's back alleys ended close to the busy high streets and he surged across the rooftops once more. The two of them continued to stay close and eventually touched down at a public park on the western side of the village.

Since there were no buildings to hide behind, and the path Naruto was taking was wide and open, the two of them had to give him time to create enough distance between them. Once she felt he was a decent distance away, Hinata emerged from behind the cover of a tree and waited for Choji to join her. He was slightly lanky and his usually brown hair was a few shades darker.

She looked him up and down before humming appraisingly. He’d managed to get rid of the clan markings on his cheeks as well. “A little taller than normal. How long can you keep it active?”

“Long enough. It’s not like we’ll have to hold the transformations all day.” He nodded at her. “And you?”

“I haven’t changed much.” Hinata tied her long—and now brown—hair into a ponytail.

“Your eyes?”

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“That, and my hair. Those are my only standout features. Now I look like any other Leaf Village girl.”

Choji frowned. “Don’t put yourself down like that. People are more than just their features.”

“...That’s not what I meant.” Hinata smiled. “But thank you, Choji.”

He nodded firmly and they set off, forced to run for a little while to catch up to Naruto. With Hinata’s Byakugan, they found him easily. At the end of the paved path, he took a left into the brush and they followed him to the river, hiding until he’d crossed it and vanished into the thicket before following.

“What was the point in our disguises?” Choji asked. “There’s no one around.”

Hinata didn’t respond for a moment and walked up a tree to perch on one of its long branches; Naruto was moving faster than ever before. “In case we get caught, I don’t want Naruto to know it’s us. It might push him away.”

“But it’s not like we’re letting him catch us in the first place. These transformations are just a waste of chakra.”

“We’ll stop using them when he stops moving,” said Hinata. “Then we’ll corner him and try and figure out why he’s been avoiding us all week.”

“But wouldn’t that also push him away? Not that I don’t want to ask Naruto a few questions of my own, but using disguises to just talk to him might send the wrong message.”

“I’m not sure what the right message is at this point. He’s the one who decided not to contact us.”

Choji hummed noncommittally.

Naruto stopped at a clearing a little bit ahead of where they were. It was surrounded by trees on all sides and the grass was overgrown. “Stop,” she hissed. “There’s someone else with Naruto and he’s got a lot of chakra.”

“Do you recognise them?”

Hinata took a closer look. “He looks familiar, but I don’t remember where I know him from.”

“Describe him.”

“Tall, black hair, standard chunin gear, a beard, tanned skin.” She waited a moment. “And he’s… smoking.”

“There’s hundreds of shinobi who fit that description.”

“Not many with jonin-level chakra reserves.”

Choji almost fell off the branch. “How does Naruto know a jonin?”

“I’m not sure.” Hinata frowned. “I don’t like it. Naruto doesn’t have any parents or family, so there’s no one stopping the jonin from taking advantage of him.”

“Can you get us closer? I can’t see anything and I doubt you can lip-read. Oh, also cut the disguises. I don’t know if he’s a sensor, but jonin are scary. We don’t want to use chakra around him.”

“Right. There’s a cluster of trees back there we can hide behind; come on.”

Given that there was a jonin present, the two of them had to carefully circle back to reach their hiding spot, all without alerting him. It was a slow and painful process where any noise sent a spike through Hinata’s heart. The rustle of leaves had never sounded so scary to her before. Still, they reached the spot and allowed themselves a moment to relax. Unfortunately, because of how long it took for them to get there, they arrived when Naruto and the jonin were in mid-conversation.

“...today’s not going to be fun,” said the jonin. He had his back towards them, but because he was so tall, he was blocking Naruto from view. “It’s going to be pretty painful so don’t be afraid of telling me if it becomes too much.”

“I can do it. No, I have to. There’s no half-assing this, Asuma.”

Hinata was surprised at the steel in his voice. The last time she heard it was when she first spoke to him and he gave her a much-needed piece of advice.

She liked to think that their friend group had been good for Naruto. When he first joined the Academy, he was cold and closed off. He never spoke to anyone and responded to the animosity from the teachers with equal fervour. When it came to the rest of them, all they got was indifference. The idea that Naruto could become like that again wasn’t something she liked.

“Asuma?” Choji gasped. “I know him! He’s the son of Lord Third and the Sarutobi head’s little brother.”

“Wait…” Recognition bloomed in her mind and Hinata widened her eyes. “I remember him. We saw him at the play.” She looked back at Asuma Sarutobi, jonin of the Leaf and son of the Hokage. “What could he want with Naruto?”

“I don’t know, Hinata,” said Choji, sounding a great deal less concerned than before. “But by the looks of it, he’s probably training Naruto. It’s fine. My clan’s got a really good relationship with the Sarutobi. This is going to be great for him, I promise.”

Would it? Hinata doubted that Asuma Sarutobi was plotting something nefarious, but Naruto was the sort to get carried away. She knew because she used to spend almost all her time around him. Naruto and her would often spend entire days training, talking about training, or analysing their performance during training. Not that she thought it was a bad thing to do, but for Naruto, it was all he did.

More and more she started to think that training served as his break from the mundane world, rather than the mundane world acting as a break from his training.

“...Choji?”

“What is it?”

“I don’t think he’s avoiding us.”

“What do you mean?” He frowned. “We haven’t seen him for a week and he hasn’t tried to contact us. What else could he be doing?”

Hinata clutched her chin. “Think about it. Remember during the summer break when Naruto completely forgot about us for a little bit because of his training?”

“...Yeah?”

“What if this is another one of those times? Maybe his fight with Shikamaru was too uncomfortable for him to confront so he threw himself into training and just… forgot about it all. Forgot about Shikamaru, forgot about me, and forgot about you.”

“I think…” Choji trailed off, looking around at the forest, and then at Asuma’s back. “I think that it doesn’t change a thing.”

“Why?”

There was real anger in his voice now. “No matter which one it is, he’s still a bad friend. Whether he really did forget about us or is avoiding us on purpose, it doesn’t change anything I intend on doing.”

“And what do you intend on doing?” Hinata asked.

“I’m going to find Naruto and tell him—”

“Again!”

They flinched and looked into the clearing. Naruto and Asuma Sarutobi stood further ahead in front of the stump of a tree. It was about as tall as Asuma and its other half lay horizontally on the ground to the right of them.

Naruto stood at the ready, his fists wrapped in layers of… she took a closer look and realised it was linen—and that he was beginning to sport bruises on his knuckles.