"H—Hanabi...?"
Hikari's eyes went wide.
There in the room, Zhuixia had transformed into a brutal instrument of torment—spread like a spider's web, it had Hanabi suspended at its center.
"Hikari...?"
Neji and Hinata were both asleep. After a day of activity and training before that, their energy had been pushed well past its limit.
The room's soundproofing was solid. The door was locked. There should have been no problem.
But Hanabi had never imagined that Hikari, trying not to disturb her, would come in from the window ledge the moment she heard something stir.
—Note to self: lock the windows too.
"Shh."
Hanabi quickly pressed a finger to her lips. That stopped Hikari from doing anything further.
But then Zhuixia yanked Hanabi's arm right back, pinning her completely.
"Hanabi, what's happening to you?!"
Hikari was panicking—her voice came out cracked, on the verge of tears.
"It's nothing. I'm safe—this is just... a necessary price to pay..."
Hanabi's arms were wrenched further behind her back. Her legs dangled in the air.
Hikari wanted to come inside, but couldn't bring herself to move.
She stood at the window, frozen.
"A necessary... price?"
Those red ropes. Right.
Hikari's mind snapped back to what had happened before.
"Is this... because of me?"
Yes.
The ropes "torturing" Hanabi right now were the same ones that had healed her earlier.
Their restorative power had been extraordinary—so strong that even her Sharingan had recovered.
That kind of recovery, unnaturally strong—how could it possibly come without a cost?
"Hanabi—your hands!"
Watching Hanabi's hands bend at wrong angles, Hikari's voice broke.
"It's... it's fine. It'll heal..."
Hanabi barely got the words out before Zhuixia silenced her.
Hikari wanted to stop this—but she was terrified that stopping it might trigger something even worse.
"Even so... even so..."
She didn't dare raise her voice.
Young as she was, Hikari instinctively understood that no one else should see Hanabi like this.
Even if she would heal. Even so—this was too cruel.
The strikes. The snapping of hands and feet. The breath choked off.
She wanted to run. But she knew she couldn't.
"Can't run... can't run... can't run..."
Hanabi was being hurt like this because of her. If she ran, wouldn't that be the same as denying everything Hanabi had done?
But wasn't all of this her fault to begin with?
"Hanabi... huh?"
The ropes arranged Hanabi into one pose after another.
It should have been horrific. But threading through every motion of those ropes was something strange—a dark, unsettling beauty.
Hikari's mind drifted back to when she herself had been wrapped in those ropes during her own healing. That sensation she couldn't quite put into words.
Hanabi was being tormented right in front of her.
And yet some inexplicable emotion was rising inside her.
I'm so strange. I'm so dirty.
"I... I think Hanabi like this looks... beautiful..."
There it was. She was the one with something wrong with her.
The torment continued.
But just as Hanabi had said—every wound healed.
Hands shattered one moment, whole again the next.
When Hanabi was choked to death, Hikari's own heart nearly stopped—but Hanabi came back, again and again.
At last, when it was over, the ropes wound back into Hanabi's body. They coiled around her, and the gorgeous kimono she'd been wearing before reappeared over them like nothing had happened.
"Those ropes—those torture implements—they've been on you this whole time, haven't they?"
The moment it ended, Hikari rushed into the room. She examined Hanabi carefully, and only when she confirmed there wasn't a single mark on her did the tension leave her body.
"I told you—I'm fine." Hanabi patted Hikari on the head.
When Hikari had first appeared, Hanabi hadn't quite known what to do.
Fortunately, Hikari was a good girl who didn't overthink things—and because she'd come in from the window at an awkward angle, she hadn't seen the critical parts.
But it was a useful reminder all the same.
—Always lock the door and windows.
Delaying the price payment was possible. Stopping it mid-process was technically doable too—but the feeling was something like trying to stop yourself in the middle of using the bathroom. Difficult to describe, and deeply unpleasant.
"I really am fine right now." And Hanabi was. Truly.
"But... but I..."
Hikari couldn't bring herself to say what she'd felt just moments ago.
She clenched her fist.
—It was all her fault.
If not for her, Hanabi wouldn't have been put through that.
She leaned her head against Hanabi's chest.
"Why... would you go this far for me?"
She didn't understand.
"Because we're friends," Hanabi said. "Unless you've decided you really do want to be my knight after all~"
Since Hikari disliked shinobi, Hanabi rarely brought up anything shinobi-related around her.
Hikari understood this now.
Hanabi didn't look the part herself, but no matter how she looked at it, her brother and sister were clearly shinobi.
In the end, Hikari returned to her own room to rest.
And Hanabi finally breathed easy.
"Right—this scene doesn't need to be shown to the audience."
Cut it. It had to be cut.
Not because she didn't want to give the audience something to enjoy—it just didn't fit the story's pacing. That was all. Exactly.
Hanabi kept a perfectly straight face.
"And then—what comes next."
Now that the price had been paid, there was the matter of what followed.
Her sister Hinata had probably sunk into her own heartache. There was a joint-battle script ready, but she'd need to find a way to comfort her first.
Hinata was her favorite sister, after all.
"And then there's what to do about Hikari going forward." She still had no idea what Hikari actually wanted for her future. Hanabi did trust Hikari to make her own choices. If she only wanted to live as an ordinary person, Hanabi would respect that.
"I'm the one who doesn't belong here. I'm the one who ruined everything..."
In her own room, Hikari was still lost in the chaos of her thoughts.
"Friend... friend..."
A friend. That was supposed to go both ways, wasn't it?
Yes.
Hanabi had given so much for her. And yet she had nothing to give in return.
"No."
There was something tormenting Hanabi.
Some kind of evil god, maybe.
Right—when she'd looked at Hanabi's back, there had definitely been some kind of mark there.
Words she'd overheard flickered through her memory.
"So... as long as I'm gone, or that Jashin... it would all be resolved, wouldn't it..."