Kanae had already considered herself a pretty selfish and ruthless person; nowadays, she needed to be one.
That was why she accepted this kind of mission in the first place, why she was so determined to join ANBU.
Power was all that mattered now; she would do anything to obtain it.
But she hadn't always been that way.
Once, she had been just an ordinary girl, until the day stern-faced men of the Main House forced her to kneel.
Her forehead was uncovered, her parents watching with worried eyes, when they branded her with the cursed seal.
She had cried until her throat broke, but the seal still burned its way into her skin. That was the day her childhood ended.
Her parents were no weaklings. Both were among the strongest of the Side Branch, legit jōnin-level in combat, which was rare, since most of their kin were relegated to supporting roles while the Main House enjoyed prestige.
They carried out mission after mission for Konoha, always serving loyally. And yet loyalty wasn't enough.
Kanae could never understand: why did people who looked just like her, who shared her blood, get to play masters while the Side Branch bore a mark that could fry the brain with a single command?
If the point was to protect the Byakugan, why chain them with such a cruel symbol of ownership?
Even so, she still had her parents. She still had love. Until the day she learned what true grievance meant.
She was five years old when the report came. Her parents had been sent on an A-rank mission during the chaos of the Second Shinobi World War.
The mission itself was absurd: escorting the spoiled son of one Main House elder who was "bored" with the compound and demanded "practical experience."
To humor him, or perhaps show their good intentions to Konoha, they allowed him to go, but they staffed his team with elite Side Branch shinobi, including Kanae's parents.
Their purpose wasn't to succeed in the mission, but to die for him if necessary, to shield the heir's Byakugan from being stolen.
And that was exactly what happened. Whether the boy flaunted his techniques too openly or whether someone leaked their route, they were ambushed in the Land of Rivers.
Surrounded, outnumbered, Kanae's parents and the other guards sacrificed themselves to hold the line, allowing the main-branch fool to flee. Almost all of them died.
Kanae understood the truth even then. She wasn't naïve.
If her parents had refused to throw their lives away, if they had let the boy fall, then she too would have been punished by the clan, executed, branded as traitors' blood. They had no choice but to die.
Her whole world collapsed. It was the day her Byakugan awakened.
She trained day and night afterward, vowing to avenge them and someday shatter the cursed seal that chained her.
But the older she grew, the deeper her despair became. The more she searched the clan archives, the more she snuck into Konoha's library, the more devastated she was.
Not a single recorded case of the curse being broken, not hinted at in clan records, not even in the neutral tomes outside Hyūga control.
She refused to give up. She would not live as a slave. She would not let her parents' fate become hers.
Meanwhile, as she grew older, the pressure worsened.
Two years ago, some aunties in her Side Branch neighborhood praised her looks, told her she was "maturing beautifully."
They spoke with reverence, as if it were a blessing, about how she should soon catch the eye of some Main Branch youth and secure her future as his concubine, or perhaps even as a 'secondary wife' if she showed more talent.
Their words carried good intentions, but to Kanae, they sounded like a sentence.
She also researched a bit and finally found out the grim reality.
Every Hyūga knew the unspoken custom.
To prevent their already narrow bloodlines from collapsing under genetic stagnation, the elders occasionally allowed Main Branch members to marry or take in a talented Side Branch shinobi once in a while.
The cursed seal was never removed, but the children born from such unions were considered Main Branch, and the bloodline flowed forward.
It was not unique to the Hyūga, either.
Just like the Elders also sometimes arranged for some civilians to enter the Side Branch, through unions of convenience, without a cursed seal for them placed, once in a while, but couldn't be said for their children, other clans followed similar practices, though in their case, it meant arranging marriages with skilled civilians.
The cycle was the same: a calculated mix of breeding for talent, bloodline strength, and keeping the clan from becoming too "closed."
The numbers made the practice inevitable.
Even the largest clans, like the Hyūga and Uchiha, had perhaps a thousand members at their peak.
A few others had only a few hundred, sometimes barely a few dozen.
To Kanae, however, the logic didn't lessen the disgust.
Was she supposed to simply resign herself to becoming a breeding tool, a plaything, or a mix of both?
A body stripped of choice, valued only for what it carried on the surface: beauty, bloodline, eyes.
She already imagined the quiet, unseen calculations among the Main Branch, men of all ages, across different lineages, now perhaps already watching her, weighing her like a prize animal, deciding who might "claim" her in the future.
She knew the Main Branch too well, those silent, hungry glances, the way they measured and planned.
Her recent successes with her team had likely only pushed her further onto the Main Branch's radar, sharpening their appetite as they took greater notice of her talent in the past months.
And since she had yet to officially join ANBU or secure a place within the Hokage's faction, her "trial mission" was unknown even within the clan; she had no shield, no protection.
That meant she needed to move quickly.
To them, she was not Kanae, the kunoichi who bled and fought beside comrades.
She was a rare Side Branch jewel, polished just enough to catch their eye.
Capable, attractive, and perfectly suited to be parceled out, not for her sake, but as a prize to feed someone else's ambition and strengthen their lineage.
Everything was said with smiles by those aunties, as if it were encouragement and genuine advice from seniors.
But to Kanae, it was deep filth.
Yet, she was thankful that it reminded her to be even more urgent since then.
It was also the third moment of her life she swore never to forget, the day she realized what her beauty and talent would mean in this cage.
Kanae had always felt different from the other Side Branch members, even before her parents' deaths.
They accepted their chains, bowed their heads, and shuffled through life as if nothing more could be expected of them.
To her, it was as though they were walking with blindfolds on, existing in a dim, muted world they had convinced themselves was all there was.
After her parents were sacrificed, that feeling only sharpened.
Where they clung to routine and submission, she saw rot.
Where they called it duty, she called it slavery.
Watching them move about the compound was like watching actors play roles on a stage they didn't even know they were trapped on.
They smiled, they laughed, they carried on, all while the seal on their foreheads glowed like a brand of ownership. To Kanae, it was unbearable.
She couldn't live like that. She refused to close her eyes and pretend it was normal.
Unlike them, she would claw at her cage until it broke, no matter the cost.
So when she heard those words, spoken so casually, so kindly, by the neighborhood aunties who had looked after her a little after her parents' deaths, her impression of them froze solid. From that moment on, her view of the entire Side Branch also collapsed.
All she could feel toward them was helplessness, indifference, and pity.
She no longer dared to try to seek some 'allies' among them in the future.
In her eyes, most were already broken, resigned to their chains, or worse, clinging to them as though they were lifelines.
Some were too blind to see they were slaves; others had convinced themselves it was safety.
Either way, they were lost.
She was thirteen now, approaching the clan's marriageable age. The thought filled her with dread. If she did nothing, her future was already chosen for her.
That was why she pushed herself harder. Trained harder.
She discovered something rare, in the past, a unique Byakugan talent, born of countless nights staring at the cursed seal through a mirror, trying to peel back its layers.
She realized it didn't just bind the eyes, but touched the brain and soul itself. In the process, she awakened a new sight: not telescopic distance vision, but microscopic internal vision.
She could see her own body in detail, at a cellular level. It was proof she was gifted. But still, not gifted enough to break the mark.
It happened only a few years ago. This is where her progress accelerated even further, after all, better internal vision meant better chakra control for the typical clan techniques.
She also knew the politics clearly. Side Branch members who joined Konoha's regular forces often earned more respect than those trapped in service inside the compound.
They lived separately inside the compound, though still marked, and if they achieved rank, they could demand recognition, if only to give Konoha face.
The Main Branch tolerated it because they feared Hiruzen's influence, though the Hokage never openly intervened; his shadow restrained them.
Not all Side Branch members were chained to guard duty. Some joined the shinobi corps, and if they became chūnin, jōnin, or even ANBU, their standing improved.
Female members in particular whispered about this path, since otherwise their beauty doomed them to being concubines. Kanae had heard many such stories.
That was why she agreed to this mission. Why she aimed for ANBU. ANBU operatives carried more respect than any other Side Branch member—because they were closest to Hiruzen himself.
Rumor said the Main Branch dared not treat them like mere servants entirely.
If she passed this test, she could step onto that path.
The offer came right after she graduated from the Academy.
Masked figures approached her. They explained the mission: monitor a former classmate, Ryusei Nishida.
Watch him, test him, report on him. Alongside her, Renjiro Hatake had been recruited too, another candidate hoping to earn his way into ANBU.
This was their "trial by fire." If they succeeded, they would be called to serve for real.
That was why Kanae accepted. That was why she told herself she was ruthless.
She was racing against time. She needed to grow stronger, to climb higher, to carve out a place where her existence carried enough weight.
If she could rise within ANBU, become skilled, respected, and indispensable, then maybe the Main Branch wouldn't dare to force her into a future she didn't want.
From there, perhaps she could climb even higher: serving the Hokage directly, gaining access to hidden knowledge and forbidden techniques.
Somewhere in that climb, she hoped, she might find a clue, some secret way to shatter the cursed seal, break her cage, avenge her parents, and finally soar free of the village that bound her.
She had no fondness for Konoha itself. No Hokage had ever condemned the practices of the Hyūga Main Branch.
None had spoken out against the curse marks, though they must have seen how cruel it was.
At best, Hiruzen's shadow was only a restraint; the Main Branch elders and patriarchs, and the lineages under their orders, that constituted the main branch, feared him enough to treat Side Branch members who served in the regular forces with slightly more respect.
But the core system never changed. Hiruzen never freed them from the branded compound, never allowed them to integrate as equals into the village, to marry freely, to live without the constant threat of their brains being fried on command.
So for Kanae, the path was not about loyalty. It was simply the best means to an end. ANBU was the only route where a Side Branch could gather strength, prestige, and maybe secrets.
She didn't like the thought of becoming the Hokage's dog.
But if wearing that mask and kneeling in that shadow brought her closer to her goals, then she would endure it.
At first, during the first three months of her ANBU "trial," everything went smoothly.
Kanae kept her distance from her assigned target, observed him carefully, and filed her reports without issue. It was clean, efficient, and detached, exactly the way she wanted it.
But everything changed about five months ago.
That was also when Ryusei himself changed, suddenly and completely, during their team's first B-rank mission.
She even wondered if his mind had been damaged somehow, altered by trauma or stress, of that fierce genjutsu attack at that time, because he no longer behaved like the boy she remembered, both during the mission and the Academy.
He shifted from being quietly resentful and secretly moody into someone entirely different, someone who met her coldness not with silence, but with teasing remarks, almost like… courtship. And in the field, he grew sharper by the day, as if always three steps ahead.
In response, Kanae only became colder. Colder to him than she was to anyone else, she didn't have to please. Why?
Because she had begun to notice her own strange reactions whenever he was near.
Curiosity that had nothing to do with the mission.
Embarrassing slips when he teased her.
A quickened heartbeat when his narrowed eyes turned her way. She hated herself for it.
He was handsome. Too handsome, in fact, his calm, narrow-eyed smile lingered in her thoughts more than it should.
She knew it was dangerous. If she allowed herself to be distracted, to grow attached, she might compromise the mission, and with it her path into ANBU.
Ryusei was supposed to be nothing more than her ticket to rise above her cage. Nothing more than a stepping stone to change her fate.
So she doubled down, burying whatever stirred inside her.
She ignored him, rejected him, acted sharper and colder the closer he drew.
Better to shut it all down now than regret it later.
Or at least, that's what she told herself.
Yet here, just now, as his hand pressed warm chakra into her eyes and his voice spoke with a strange mix of teasing and sincerity, that wall she built so carefully crumbled in an instant.