Kaika Saisei

Chapter 8: A new dawn

On the other side of the village, once the rays of a new day break at dawn, she opens her eyes. Body aching, sweat drops along the hairline and head dizzy. Another one of those terrible nights had passed.

Ever since the war ended, she had been getting these twisted and dark dreams. Voices of horror screaming along the shadows of her dreamscape, people appearing and disappearing. Chaos. Individuals running all around her.

Looking in front of her, there is her father and Neji. Looking behind her, a tired Naruto, panting.

One moment she watches behind to make sure that Naruto is okay and safe. He is down panting, but safe. They're protecting him.

The next, as she turns back to check on the front lines, the image of Neji getting impaled colors her dreamscape with the dark horrors of the moment and the blood of his sacrifice.

The screams intensify. Their loudness is deafening. And in all those moments a high pitch starts sounding inside her brain, while the entirety of the dreamscape goes entirely dark again. It gets bright for a brief moment when Neji reappears in front of her, on Naruto's shoulders. Then the eyes lose their gleam.

The Hyūga genius' light gets extinguished. And with them, the one all around. All there remains is that high pitched sound. It's frequency increases until she no longer can take it. Feels as if her head is about to explode. In the next moment she wakes up.

This time, she is lucky. It's the morning of a new day.

But there were few instances when she woke-up at night. It was yet too soon for her to put this to rest. This torment. This ache.

What's a week and a half in front of a trauma for a lifetime? Not too much anyway.

She breathes in and gets herself out of the bed.

The image of the dead Neji still haunts Hinata's mindscape. Even if her eyes are open in the light of this world, the darkness of the other still haunts her. That packed with the sleepless nights ever since the war had finished and they buried Neji, took a tool on her. More than she realized.

Because as soon as she left her room to go out on the porch to get herself some fresh new air and begin a new day, Kō couldn't help but notice her worn-out expression.

"Morning, Hinata-sama!" he greeted, bending towards her in sign of respect. "Is everything okay with you this morning?" he asked.

She didn't even reply for a minute because for a moment there it took time for her to realize another presence was next to her, talking. She just looked up, out in the open, at the sky. And it looked like she wasn't even present there.

But somehow, at the end of Kō's question, she realized that someone was speaking to her.

She turned to her left and saw him.

"Oh, Kō! Good morning," she said, bowing in return.

It was a habit of hers. Even though she was supposed to be the heiress and didn't have to do it, Hinata did it. She was never the type to act like she was above anyone.

Probably one of the reasons she was initially deemed as not fit as the next leader of the clan. They needed a hand of iron and hers was made of silk.

Seeing that she didn't quite register the question, Kō posed it once again.

Hinata excused herself and said that yes, all is well, there was nothing to worry about.

But the fact that she was still wearing her black attire ever since Neji's funeral dictated otherwise. She wasn't well, though she tried acting like she was.