After three days, Tenka finally fluttered her eyes open. The first thing her blurry vision processed was the stark white ceiling of a hospital room.
She immediately tried to sit up, but a pair of gentle hands firmly pressed her shoulders back down against the mattress.
"You shouldn't try to sit up. You are far too weak right now. Just rest," Akane said softly.
Tenka groaned, her fuzzy mind slowly recalling Kushina mentioning that Akane had started volunteering at the hospital's medical ward.
"Where is everyone else? W-what happened to Haru? Kushina and the others… a-are they safe?" Tenka rasped, panic instantly flooding her veins.
"Shh… calm down. You need to focus on yourself right now; you have been unconscious for the past three days," Akane soothed, continuing to thoroughly check her vitals. "As for the others... they are safe. Mostly."
"I'll go get them," Akane added softly after finishing her examination, slipping quietly out the door.
A few minutes later, the hospital room door slid open.
Tenka looked toward it, and her heart instantly sank. Kushina walked through the doorway, her eyes completely covered by a white medical blindfold.
As if sensing Tenka's immediate distress, Kushina smirked.
"It's all your fault, Tenka. Y-you did this to me," she declared with a dramatic, trembling flair.
Tenka's blue eyes immediately glistened with tears, but before she could start sobbing—
"Mah… just kidding!" Kushina laughed, casually shrugging her shoulders. She lifted one side of the blindfold, revealing a mesmerizing, glowing amethyst eye with a slightly darkened sclera. A second later, the sclera shifted back to a hazy white, as if the newly awakened dōjutsu wasn't completely stable yet.
"Hiss…" Kushina winced, quickly pulling the blindfold back down to cover her eye. "Hmm… you are just exhausted right now. It's nothing to worry about."
"Y-you are a horrible person, Kushina… I hate you," Tenka sniffled, forcefully wiping away her tears. "What about the others? They're really safe, right?"
Kushina carefully sat on the stool beside the bed, her tone turning soft and serious.
"Yes, almost everyone is safe. They're just going through different examinations and tests. We all kinda… leveled up, suddenly. So the medical team is checking for any dangerous side effects. As for me… well, my dad and Uncle Shōto already finished my check-up. Hence the blindfold. Apparently, my new eyes see way more than a mortal brain can safely handle. Dad prepared this temporary measure, and now he's getting ready to seal the dōjutsu away completely until I'm actually strong enough to bear the burden."
Tenka blinked, slowly processing the heavy words before giving a small, relieved nod.
"That's good…. But… what about Haru?"
Kushina froze. Her cheerful facade shattered slightly; she had tried her best to distract Tenka, but she couldn't hide the truth forever. She let out a heavy, shaking sigh.
"H-he's in a coma. The doctors don't know when he'll wake up."
Tenka violently clenched her fists, her breathing hitching. But before she could completely spiral into her dark, guilt-ridden thoughts, Kushina quickly interjected.
"But, hey… now we know his Moon Goddess is actually real," she offered with a weak, humorless smile.
Haruto had occasionally mentioned having a "Moon Goddess" for a big sister. Everyone had just ignored it, writing it off as a child's overactive imagination.
But now, a glowing crescent moon symbol was branded onto his palm. It constantly radiated chakra so divine and suffocatingly potent that normal medical staff couldn't even stand to stay in his ward for more than a few minutes. Except for Medori, who hadn't budged an inch from her chair beside Haruto's bed since they brought him in.
Tenka said nothing. She just stared blankly up at the ceiling. After a long, suffocating silence…
"Can you leave me alone for a minute?"
Kushina bit her lower lip and gently squeezed Tenka's hand.
"Hey. It's not your fault, okay?"
Tenka didn't say anything and Kushina reluctantly stood and walked toward the door. With one last, worried glance over her shoulder, Kushina stepped out and disappeared into the hallway.
A few seconds later, the dam finally broke. Hot tears began to pour freely from Tenka's blue eyes, sliding down to the white mattress.
"You promised me you would always be by my side, Haruto…" she choked out, her voice breaking in the empty room. "If you break it… I-I will never forgive you… Never."
Haruto woke up seven days later.
After that, they all had to kneel and beg for forgiveness from Medori. She strictly forbade Haru from both taking and sharing chakra.
It took months of relentless pleading—bordering on harassment—before Medori finally relented. But she set a strict condition: Haruto could not give chakra to anyone outside of the girls who were already taking it.
Present
Tenka finally opened her eyes and sighed. To this day, she still felt her heart tighten and her emotions flare at the memory.
That moment was the closest they had ever come to losing him. And she would not let that happen again.
She took a few deep breaths, and the heavy pressure surrounding her slowly lessened.
She could now control most of her power, indicated by the almost fully faded mark on her back. Only the outermost layer of the seal was left, and even that had mostly faded.
But controlling didn't mean mastering. She still had to give her all to truly learn and master this volatile power, and she was slowly but surely making progress.
Even Kushina, whose eyes had been sealed, now had the first layer of her restrictions opened.
That incident had also given them incredible potential. If they were a bunch of geniuses before, after that incident, they became absolute monsters.
Hiyuki even already had an alias: 'White Death'.
And yet, here she was, not allowed to go outside the village until Aunt Medori permitted it. Now even Mikasa could take missions outside.
They were stuck here and could only take jobs inside the village walls. Tenka even had an extra condition: she could not use her bloodline limit in front of others unless it was absolutely necessary.
Apparently, she was the only one whose bloodline allowed her to manipulate space-time this freely. If the other major villages found out, it could lead to another full-scale invasion.
All in all, it was a big mess. Haru, she, and Hiyuki were anomalies. Anomalies that broke the world's understanding of power, and that kind of power bred fear.
It was the exact reason that the village's barriers were not down and Uzushio was still sealed off to this day. The only exceptions were merchants, and from what she had heard from Sakuko, they were heavily monitored.
Suddenly, a knock sounded at her door.
A smile crept onto her lips. She outstretched her hands, and a purple portal appeared right in front of her. Reaching through the spatial tear, she grabbed the person standing outside the door and pulled.
She heard a surprised yelp from the other side before she warmly embraced him against her bosom. She fell backwards, and another portal opened beneath her. In the next instant, they fell out directly onto her soft bed in the corner of the room.
"Whoa—Tenka-nee, you startled me," Haruto mumbled, his voice muffled against her chest.
"Well, it seems my Haru is finally feeling a bit better," Tenka teased playfully, a soft smile on her lips.
He had been feeling down since this afternoon, ever since Aunty took him to the cemetery. The whole afternoon, a strange gloom had blanketed the house.
Everyone was worried about him. Haruto was very sensitive to emotions. They had wanted to comfort him, but Aunty stopped them, saying he just needed some alone time. So, they all gave it to him.
"Mmn," Haruto hummed, burying his face further into her chest.
Tenka chuckled, using one hand to gently caress his soft crimson hair.
After a few minutes, she shifted. With her other hand, she tugged her loose, oversized shirt to the side, pulling it from her neck to her shoulder to expose her skin.
"Here," she whispered softly into his ear. "You can take it. As much as you need."
A flash of red passed through Haru's eyes. He lifted his head and gently bit into her exposed neck.
He didn't know why, but only Tenka offered him her chakra this way. And honestly, he didn't care much; it tasted fresh and much, much better, so he didn't question it.
Tenka bit her lip as she felt those familiar waves of euphoria course through her. Her grip tightened around him, and her blue eyes looked at him like he was her whole world.
Haruto felt her chakra suddenly become sweeter, tastier, and more addictive. His eyes turned completely red, but soon his eyelids grew heavy, and after a few minutes he slowly succumbed to sleep.
Tenka kept caressing his soft hair even after she felt the connection break. Honestly, after a certain point, it was never about Haruto's chakra anymore. It was more about him—the closeness, the protection, and the absolute calmness she felt around him.
He had become her hope. Her reason to live for the future. And she would always be there for him, no matter what he became.
Half an hour later, Haruto was deep in slumber. Tenka sighed, and a portal opened directly behind her. She fell backward through it, landing smoothly on another bed—but this one was much bigger.
Medori, who was in the middle of changing her clothes, sighed but continued removing her clothes, not minding the sudden intrusion.
"Are you trying to groom my son right under my roof?" Medori asked, her tone deadpan.
"W-what? No! Of course not!" Tenka stammered, her face turning nuclear in an instant. She paused, blinking as she actually considered the question for a second. "...Am I?"
Medori chuckled.
"Kids these days," Medori sighed, shaking her head in mild amusement. "I still can't believe you marched right up to me and demanded my son's hand in marriage."
She still remembered after that incident, a much younger Tenka looking at her with those fiercely determined eyes, formally making her proposal. She wouldn't lie; she had been completely flabbergasted for a few solid seconds before sighing and shooting down the offer.
Tenka's mood slightly dampened. She laid Haru comfortably onto the mattress.
"Yes, Mother, and you rejected me without a second thought," Tenka pouted, crossing her arms. "I had to nag you for weeks just to get a straight answer out of you... only to find out he's already engaged to Kushina."
Tenka wouldn't lie; she had been intensely jealous of Kushina at the time. That was why she liked to poke her now and then, though never out of genuine malice.
Now, she honestly just liked seeing Kushina's annoyed expressions.
"I am pretty sure I gave you multiple reasons—like the fact that you were a literal child with zero common sense, and you didn't even know what marriage actually meant," Medori listed off on her fingers as she slipped into her nightgown. With each painfully accurate point, Tenka averted her eyes. "And yet, you only chose to remember the last one."
Tenka scratched her cheek sheepishly. Yeah... back then, she legitimately thought marriage just meant getting to stay together forever.
"Besides, Haruto and Kushina's engagement was a done deal from the moment he was born. They both possess the purest Uzumaki blood. Their relationship is progressing smoothly, and hopefully, they will both accept it when the time comes."
That was a separate matter, however. Both Medori and Kenji had firmly decided that if either of their child ever rejected the arrangement, it would be immediately canceled.
"Well, that has nothing to do with me. My position as the second wife is practically confirmed, and in exchange, your clan gets to keep my powerful bloodline limit," Tenka said with a nonchalant shrug.
Medori sighed but didn't say anything to correct her. Honestly, dealing with Tenka's stubbornness wasn't her headache—it was Kushina's.
"Just make sure you actually talk to Kushina and Haruto about this eventually. I don't want to force any of you into anything."
Medori walked over to the bed and sat down on the opposite side of the sleeping Haruto. She gently caressed his crimson hair for a moment before finally laying down.
"Oh, don't worry, Mother. I am sure she will understand," Tenka said with a sickeningly sweet smile, though the heavy, invisible pressure she was suddenly releasing told an entirely different story. "If not... then she will have a war on her hands. And I am pretty sure the others would love to join the battlefield."
Tenka knew for a fact there were at least three other girls who would fight for Haru.
Since the rest of them didn't know about the engagement yet, the inevitable fallout was going to be spectacular.
Medori just shook her head against the pillow.
"Please don't drag me into your teenage drama."
"What are you talking about, Mother? You should be on my side! I am fighting for our rights! For our freedom!" Tenka declared with righteous fury, thrusting one clenched fist high into the air.
"Yeah, no thanks," Medori replied in a flat, deadpan tone, firmly closing her eyes.
As Medori settled in, Tenka's gaze happened to land on the older woman's exposed shoulder.
There was a dark tattoo etched into her skin in the shape of an intricate, ancient lance. It looked exactly like a highly complex storage seal.
Tenka didn't ask about it. After all, an Uzumaki having fūinjutsu inked onto their body was hardly out of the ordinary.
Dropping her fist, Tenka snuggled down under the covers beside Haru, closed her eyes, and finally let herself drift off to sleep.