She is born with a mother for ten minutes.

Ten precious minutes she will never know about.

Her father doesn't look at her, she knows. Try as that man does, he cannot look at her for long before his brows knit together and she ends up speaking to his back. Instead, he watches Neji, and never looks away.

When she is barely three years old, a set of expectation is grafted to her. And with those expectations, she loses the sister she already had. Because her sister is weak, they whisper, but she hears anyway. But a sister that girl still should be, and yet she is expected to fold her like an origami with movements that are meant to hurt.

She doesn't understand, but does as she is told. And when she succeeds, there is nothing but cold.

Neji is a name she knows well. She hears it everywhere. But for her the name is synonymous with 'oni', for the boy possesses a pair of all-seeing eyes that tears into her. And she knows he would do more than stare if given the chance.

Sometimes she walks the streets and sees smiling children alongside their parents and thinks they are not Hyuuga, and in that they are blessed.

In her room, she practices her calligraphy. Brush strokes clean and controlled and utterly mundane.

She composes the kanji for 'family' and beneath she paints the names of Hiashi, the woman she doesn't remember, Neji, Hinata, and Hanabi.

She looks at her work, tears it apart, and tosses the crumbled remains into the trash.