Chapter 31 (C31)
The quiet, solitary mountain forests feel the chill faster than crowded villages, and the comforting warmth gradually slips away from the skin as the sun sets.
The grass dragonfly that had flown away from Kana's hand was somehow carried back by the wind and landed in his outstretched palm.
In fact, Kana couldn't remember what expression Itachi Uchiha had on his face back then. She only remembered that the wind blew through the gaps in the forest, swirling up the dry leaves on the ground, like turning the pages of an old contract, making a rustling sound. There was still a hint of the afterglow of the evening in his eyes, the last mark he left on the world.
He said, "Kanai, we will always be friends."
She took the grass dragonfly, which wasn't particularly pretty—it was something Shisui had wanted to teach her before, but she had never seriously learned it. Kana tiptoed and placed it back on Itachi's head.
Kana thought that was enough.
What she wanted wasn't anything else in the first place.
"Do you really believe in that so-called promise?"
In the system's character profile of Kana, there is a very important piece of information: because she was deceived and abandoned by her birth mother, she has an extreme distrust of promises.
When the system asked the question out of curiosity, Kana was leaning back in a tatami chair, basking in the sunlight like a soft, limp lump of fluid, lazily looking at the words sent by Uchiha Itachi on the scroll.
Their fortunes were reversed; she had only been released from surveillance for less than two months when it was his turn to receive a high-level inspection package from the Dark Division. To avoid unnecessary suspicion, they agreed to temporarily cease their private meetings.
The system kept beeping, and Kana replied half-heartedly, "Promises are meant to be broken the moment they're uttered."
Humans are indeed too complex, but it's a very ambitious system. It retrieved its stored information and humbly sought guidance: "Then why did the mission taker still make a promise with Uchiha Itachi?"
"Because things are valued for their scarcity."
A promise is a precious thing until the very last second before it is broken.
There was a knock on the door. Kana responded, put the scroll into her bosom, and saw Neji peeking out with half his head.
She raised her hand, and the child trotted over to her, untied the indigo cloth he was carrying, and crumpled oranges fell out of his arms, covering half the table with oranges of various sizes.
This was the last batch of fruit from the orange tree in the yard this year. Neji carefully picked out the prettiest one and patiently peeled away the bitter fibers from it.
The white pith is hard to peel, your fingers will be stained yellow by the pulp, and it's even harder to clean under your nails, which is why Kana doesn't like eating oranges.
The little one somehow discovered that she didn't actually dislike the taste of oranges, she just found them troublesome. She took a clean segment of orange pulp, put it in her mouth—and it was sweet.
Kana took the child's hand and put the peeled orange back to his lips.
She saw her right cheek, which had bulged from chewing, with faint scratches and a little dirt on it. The real problem was her chin, which was faintly red, a precursor to a bruise that would turn into a full bruise in less than 24 hours.
However, the fact that he can still chew normally indicates that he clenched his teeth in time when he was injured, preventing damage to his tongue and soft tissues and effectively avoiding secondary injury—it seems he has finished reading all the books for the sixth grade of the Ninja Academy.
She gently pinched his chin, lifted his head slightly, and moved it from side to side. "What happened?"
Neji did not answer the question.
The child's cheeks were like freshly steamed soft candy buns, easily sinking into a small indentation when poked with a finger, brimming with a smug smile. But he quickly puffed out his cheeks and pressed his lips down, "I picked these from the tree!"
Tree running, as the name suggests, involves running on tree trunks as if they were flat ground; it's a basic introductory skill for ninjas.
Kana rolled up the child's long sleeves a few times and, unsurprisingly, saw bruises of varying degrees on his elbows. Presumably, there should be other marks on his body as well. So she put her index and middle fingers together and touched Neji's forehead.
"Hmm? Please continue," Kana said, indicating that she was listening.
“…Oh…oh.” Neji wasn’t quite sure what Kana was doing with her sudden action, but since his sister had said “continue,” he would continue.
"Sister, you taught me that observation is extremely, extremely, extremely important." To prove he had remembered it well, the child overused adjectives, "I noticed that when people are in trees, there's a layer of chakra under their feet, so I tried to absorb the chakra..."
The Palm Healing Technique, which primarily targets external injuries, is based on the principle of allowing the healer's chakra to enter the injured person's body, travel through the body's meridians, locate the bleeding points, and then specifically stimulate cell regeneration to achieve the goal of healing the wound.
However, for the Byakugan bloodline limit, because chakra experiences obstruction and blockage when flowing through the wound, things that are not visible on CT scans become three-dimensionally visible. In other words, the Byakugan is practically a cheat code for medical ninjutsu.
Unfortunately, the main family has always been focused on using Gentle Fist to promote the name of Hyuga, and few people would learn medicine, which is considered a "heretical" practice.
Of course, this is not without reason. Looking at the entire Five Great Nations, there are so many ruthless people who are famous for fighting and killing that they cannot be listed in a bounty book. There are also so many famous medical ninjas that they cannot be counted on one hand. This shows how much the environment values martial prowess.
It was just a minor cut, and Kana withdrew her hand without even needing to expend any effort or time.
No matter how much she pretends to be mature, she's still just a seven-year-old kid. When she got excited, she couldn't help but start gesturing. The low table was bumped, and an orange on the edge of the table wobbled and rolled down, which she caught in her hand.
Kana recalled the juice of that orange segment bursting between her lips and tongue. Despite her sporadic "care"—watering it only when she felt like it and mostly leaving it to natural selection—the fruit was still sweet.
Kana was gently tugged at her sleeve, and when she looked down, she saw Neji looking up at her. This reminded her of the little dog that always followed her around the orphanage. The little dog was fluffy at that age, with big, bright, blinking eyes, as if she alone filled his entire world. He gave her a sweet smile.
The Palm Healing Technique can only heal wounds; it's not all-powerful enough to remove dirt as well. Kana roughly stroked the puppy's face, wiping away the small patch of dusty skin that its owner hadn't noticed.
"If I let it grow a little longer, maybe the orange will become beautiful." Kana blurted out this idea out of the blue.
"How about skipping class tomorrow?" The reliable and mature guardian stuffed an orange into the seven-year-old's hand, gesturing for him to keep peeling.
After being released from surveillance, the person who had been assigned to numerous missions felt a rare sense of guilt for not having provided any follow-up instruction. "Let me teach you something new."
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