After parting with Hizashi, Reiji did not linger at the training ground. His mind churned the entire walk home, replaying the conversation again and again. Every attempt he had made to transform his chakra. Every moment where the flow had simply… stopped. The strange resistance inside his tenketsu still felt unreal, like trying to force water through a sealed pipe.
By the time he reached the house, the sky had already begun to dim toward dusk.
Reiji stopped in front of the entrance and stood there for a moment. The familiar wooden frame of the doorway felt oddly heavy tonight. His chest rose slowly as he drew in a deep breath, steadying himself. He had already made the decision. Avoiding the truth any longer would only make things worse.
He slid the door open and stepped inside.
The house was quiet. The faint scent of ink and old paper drifted from the direction of the study, exactly where he expected his father to be. Reiji walked down the corridor and soon found him seated behind his desk, leaning comfortably back in his chair with a book open in one hand. The lamplight illuminated the room in warm yellow tones, reflecting off shelves lined with scrolls and archives.
"Good evening, Father."
Soichiro gave a small nod without looking up from the page.
"How was your day?"
Reiji hesitated. The words he had prepared suddenly felt much heavier now that he was standing here.
"It was good, Father, but…"
That was enough to make Soichiro lift his head. His eyes settled on Reiji immediately, sharp and attentive now that the hesitation in his son's voice had broken the calm of the room. After a brief moment, he closed the book and set it aside.
"Yes?"
Reiji felt the weight of that gaze press down on him. For a second he considered trying to soften the explanation, but that thought disappeared almost immediately.
He took a deep breath.
Then he dropped to the floor in a formal dogeza.
"I'm sorry, Father. I lied to you…"
From the corner of his eye, Reiji saw one of Soichiro's eyebrows rise in quiet surprise.
He began explaining everything.
The words came steadily now that he had started. He described the strange difficulty he had been encountering while attempting nature transformation, how his chakra refused to properly convert into wind nature no matter how precisely he followed the instructions. He explained the conversation with Fugaku, the attempts they had made to analyze the problem, and the growing suspicion that something unusual was happening inside his chakra network.
Then he spoke about meeting the Hyūga twins.
About what they had seen.
About the way his tenketsu seemed to resist the transformation itself.
Finally, he explained the conclusion he had reached—the hypothesis that the problem might not be lack of skill at all, but something deeper tied to his kekkei genkai.
Throughout the entire explanation, Soichiro remained completely silent.
When Reiji finished, the room fell quiet.
"I knew something was wrong," Soichiro said at last.
Reiji slowly raised his head from the floor.
"But I chose not to press you," his father continued calmly. "I understood how much pressure you had already placed on yourself."
His gaze studied Reiji carefully, measuring something.
"You did well with the tools you had. Exploring different possibilities before reaching a conclusion was correct. And seeking out the Hyūga was a clever decision from that boy Fugaku."
For a brief moment, Reiji felt a small flicker of relief.
Then Soichiro paused.
"But…"
Reiji felt his shoulders stiffen instinctively.
"You still should have told me," Soichiro said. His voice was not raised, but the disappointment in it was unmistakable. "I am your father. I am also your teacher. A son seeking help from his father, or a student seeking help from his teacher, is natural."
Soichiro sighed quietly.
"Do you think I would abandon you because something is difficult?"
"No!" Reiji replied immediately, the word leaving him before he could stop it.
He lifted his head fully now, meeting his father's gaze.
"Father, I just… I was afraid of disappointing you, that's all. It's not that I lacked confidence in you."
For a moment Soichiro simply looked at him.
Then he sighed quietly.
"Enough."
He leaned forward slightly, resting his arms against the desk.
"You said that when you attempt nature transformation, your tenketsu block the process. Is that correct?"
"Yes."
"So you came to the conclusion that normal elemental transformation will not work for you. Neither wind nor water separately. Only your kekkei genkai."
Reiji nodded.
Soichiro leaned back again, his expression turning thoughtful as he considered the explanation.
"It is an unusual conclusion," he said slowly. "But it may have merit. Normally, possessing a kekkei genkai does not prevent someone from using the base elements that compose it. In fact, the opposite is usually true."
His brow furrowed faintly.
"Which makes your situation rather absurd. The very elements tied to your Hyōton—wind and water—appear to be the ones your body rejects."
Reiji frowned.
"So… you don't believe me?"
"No," Soichiro said calmly. "I did not say that. Like you did, we must consider every possibility. If your body truly rejects ordinary elemental jutsu, then we will have to test everything."
He looked directly at his son.
"But if you are right, then you already know what that means, don't you?"
Reiji lowered his gaze slightly.
"You won't be able to help me."
For the first time, genuine frustration flickered across Soichiro's face.
He rubbed his forehead slowly.
"Yes," he admitted quietly. "I'm sorry."
He leaned back in his chair again, eyes briefly drifting toward the shelves of scrolls lining the study.
"After your nature affinity was discovered, I searched through Konoha's archives. I even consulted a few clans like the Uchiha and the Yamanaka. But there are no useful records. The Yuki clan is small, secretive, and encounters with them are extremely rare."
His voice lowered slightly.
"The last confirmed battlefield record involving them dates back to the First Shinobi War."
Reiji hesitated before speaking again.
"Maybe Mother showed you once. Maybe she explained something."
The moment the words left his mouth, Soichiro went completely still.
For several seconds he said nothing.
When he finally answered, his voice sounded quieter.
"No."
He looked away briefly.
"There was never a time when she demonstrated it to me. And she certainly never explained how it worked."
His gaze returned to the desk.
"There was no reason for her to."
Silence settled heavily in the room.
Reiji swallowed slightly.
"Then… I'll have to develop it myself."
"Yes," Soichiro said.
"If your theory is correct."
He paused.
"Though I am inclined to believe you."
Reiji looked up again.
"Really?"
Soichiro nodded slowly.
"Hearing your situation reminded me of someone."
Reiji straightened slightly.
"Who?"
"The First Hokage."
Reiji blinked.
"Because he had a kekkei genkai too?"
"Yes."
Soichiro's eyes drifted slightly as if recalling something distant.
"His Mokuton was monstrous. Even today, no one alive could replicate the feats attributed to him in the records. His wood release was an anomaly. There was never any record of it before him, and none of his descendants inherited it either."
Reiji frowned.
"Sorry, Father, but I don't see what that has to do with me."
"Patience."
Soichiro leaned back in his chair.
"The First Hokage was a fascinating man. A great portion of his life was carefully documented, and reading about him is enlightening. But one detail always bothered me."
He paused briefly.
"There is no record of him using anything other than Mokuton."
Reiji froze slightly.
"Are you sure? Maybe it just wasn't recorded. I mean… Mokuton is far more interesting to write about."
"True," Soichiro admitted. "But even when I asked people who had known him personally, they said the same thing. Apart using summoning jutsu or fuinjutsu some time, they never saw him use any jutsu other than Mokuton."
Reiji's brow furrowed deeper.
"That could still be coincidence," he muttered.
"That is possible, maybe I'm just clinging to that idea to reassure myself." Soichiro said.
"We will not know until you prove you can use Hyōton."
His gaze sharpened slightly.
"And even then… the road ahead will not be easy."
After a moment of silence, he opened one of the drawers of his desk and pulled out a scroll. Without much ceremony, he tossed it toward Reiji.
Reiji caught it instinctively.
"A scroll on water manipulation," Soichiro said.
"Start there. Good luck, son."
Reiji looked down at the scroll in his hands for a moment before lifting his gaze again. Determination had settled into his expression now, quiet but firm.
"I won't disappoint you again, Father."
Soichiro simply waved one hand tiredly, already drifting back into thought.
Reiji bowed once more before rising and quietly leaving the study.
As the door slid closed behind him, the scroll felt unexpectedly heavy in his hands.
If no one could teach him Hyōton…
Then he would have to learn it himself.
----
The house had long since fallen silent by the time Reiji returned to his room.
Only a small lantern burned on the desk near the window, its faint flame flickering gently and casting soft, wavering shadows across the wooden walls. Outside, the village rested beneath the quiet weight of night. The distant chirping of insects blended with the occasional whisper of wind moving through the trees beyond the compound.
Reiji sat down slowly and unrolled the scroll his father had given him.
Water manipulation.
The parchment crackled faintly as he flattened it against the desk. Carefully drawn diagrams filled the page—precise sketches of chakra circulation through the tenketsu, annotated arrows tracing the direction of flow through the coils. Detailed instructions explained how to soften the chakra's structure, allowing it to expand and move with the smooth, cohesive pressure of a current rather than the sharpened force used in wind transformation.
Reiji read the first section slowly, absorbing each explanation.
Then he read it again.
Wind transformation had always required sharpness. The chakra had to be compressed, refined, and divided into thin currents until the flow carried a cutting edge. The sensation was always tight and precise, like forcing a blade through narrow channels.
Water, according to the scroll, demanded the opposite approach.
Instead of compression, the chakra needed to spread and deepen. The instructions described widening the flow through the network, allowing it to circulate with the steady pressure of a slow river. Control came not from sharpness, but from cohesion.
Reiji closed his eyes and began circulating his chakra.
Immediately, something strange caught his attention.
The movement of chakra inside his network already resembled the patterns illustrated in the scroll. The current flowed smoothly through his tenketsu, expanding and folding back into itself like water moving through a riverbed. The transitions between coils felt stable, almost effortless.
The diagrams on the scroll matched what his body was already doing.
Too closely.
His brow furrowed slightly before returning at his task.
Hyōton was a fusion of water and wind.
If his body rejected the elements individually, then perhaps the problem was not incompatibility.
Perhaps his chakra expected both transformations simultaneously.
Reiji exhaled slowly and adjusted his posture.
Alright.
He began forming wind transformation inside his chakra network.
At the same time, he attempted to maintain the slower, heavier circulation pattern described for water manipulation.
The reaction was immediate.
The moment the wind transformation sharpened the chakra current, the wider water flow destabilized. The two patterns collided violently within the network, disrupting the circulation and dispersing the chakra before either transformation could stabilize.
The flow collapsed completely.
Reiji opened his eyes.
Annoyance flickered across his expression.
He tried again.
This time he attempted to divide the transformation across different sections of his chakra network.
Wind transformation formed along one route of circulation.
Water manipulation along another.
For a brief moment both patterns held.
Then the currents met.
The instant they touched, the incompatible flows crashed together chaotically and scattered through his network.
Reiji clenched his teeth slightly.
This wasn't like writing with two hands at the same time.
It was closer to attempting to play two completely different instruments while using the same hands.
The moment his focus shifted toward maintaining one transformation, the other destabilized instantly.
He leaned back slightly in his chair, eyes drifting toward the scroll spread across the desk.
Then another idea formed.
If separating the flows inside his network was impossible…
Then perhaps he could separate them physically.
Reiji placed one hand flat on the desk and closed his eyes again.
He focused carefully.
Wind transformation began forming slowly in his right palm. The chakra condensed instinctively, sharpening into a tighter, more refined flow.
Then he tried shaping water manipulation in his left hand.
The strain hit immediately.
His mind had to maintain two entirely different transformation patterns simultaneously. One demanded compression and division. The other required expansion and cohesion.
The moment his concentration drifted even slightly, the patterns clashed and the chakra dispersed uselessly into the air.
Minutes passed.
Then nearly an hour.
The lantern burned lower, its flame shrinking until the room darkened around him.
Reiji's breathing grew heavier as fatigue slowly crept into his muscles. Maintaining two transformations at once felt like balancing opposing forces inside his own body.
Again.
Wind chakra sharpened in the right hand.
Water chakra circulated through the left.
Again.
The chakra collapsed.
Again.
The current destabilized and scattered.
His fingers trembled faintly from the strain.
Reiji lowered his head for a moment, breathing slowly as exhaustion pressed against the edges of his focus.
Impossible?
The thought surfaced briefly.
Then he shook his head.
No.
His jaw tightened slightly.
'I'm better than this.'
The words rose quietly but firmly in the back of his mind.
'I'm a genius.'
'Something this simple shouldn't stop me.'
His eyes hardened as determination pushed aside the creeping fatigue.
'Nothing will stop me.'
Reiji lifted his hands again.
Wind gathered in the right palm.
Water flowed through the left.
Then, slowly…
He brought his hands together again.
---
Morning light had only just begun to spread across the village when Soichiro stepped outside.
A thin veil of mist hovered over the ground, clinging to the grass and the wooden edges of the compound. The air carried the cool scent of damp earth and early dew, the kind of quiet stillness that existed only in the moments before the village fully woke. Soichiro held a cup of coffee loosely in one hand, letting the warmth seep into his fingers as he stepped onto the porch.
Normally he enjoyed this hour. The calm of the morning gave him space to think.
Today his thoughts refused to settle.
Reiji's explanation from the previous night replayed again and again in his mind. The possibility that his son's chakra network rejected elemental transformation entirely was deeply troubling. Such a condition would not simply complicate training—it could cripple a shinobi's development before it even truly began.
If that were true…
"Father."
Soichiro blinked and turned toward the voice.
Reiji stood a few steps away.
For a brief moment Soichiro didn't even recognize him.
The boy's posture remained upright, but the stiffness in his shoulders was unmistakable. Heavy shadows hung beneath his eyes, and the slight sway in his stance suggested the quiet instability of someone running purely on stubborn determination rather than rest.
"Reiji?"
His eyes narrowed slightly as he studied him.
"Why do you look like that?"
A short pause passed.
"Did you train all night?"
Reiji gave a slow, tired nod.
"I want to show you something."
Before Soichiro could respond, Reiji turned and began walking toward the small pond behind the house.
Soichiro watched him for a moment, confusion briefly crossing his expression, before following.
The grass beneath their feet was damp with morning dew, bending quietly with each step. The pond lay just beyond the edge of the garden, its surface calm and mirrorlike beneath the pale glow of the rising sun. A thin layer of mist drifted over the water, curling lazily across the surface.
Reiji stopped at the edge of the pond.
"Watch."
He brought his palms together slowly, fingers aligned as though forming a quiet prayer. His shoulders straightened slightly as he steadied his breathing, forcing his exhausted body to obey through sheer concentration.
Then he closed his eyes.
At first nothing happened.
Several seconds passed in complete silence. The faint rustle of wind through nearby trees was the only sound.
Soichiro watched, uncertain what his son intended to demonstrate.
Then he noticed it.
A faint thread of pale vapor escaping between Reiji's fingers.
Soichiro's brow furrowed.
The air around the boy's hands began to cool. It wasn't sudden—it spread gradually, like a subtle shift in temperature that brushed lightly against the skin. The faint mist thickened as the chill intensified, thin curls of cold vapor rising from the seam between Reiji's palms.
"What…?"
Reiji opened his eyes.
Without speaking, he slowly separated his hands and stepped forward toward the pond. The cold mist followed the movement of his palms like drifting smoke carried on an invisible current.
Then he plunged both hands into the water.
The pond surface rippled outward from the point of contact.
For a brief moment, nothing else happened.
Then frost began spreading.
Thin white lines raced across the water like branching veins of crystal, expanding rapidly from where Reiji's hands touched the surface. The frost thickened as it spread, hardening into pale ice that pushed outward in widening circles. Within seconds nearly two meters of the pond had frozen solid, the once smooth water transformed into a cloudy sheet of ice.
The surrounding air grew noticeably colder.
Soichiro stared.
"How…?"
His voice carried genuine disbelief.
"In one night?"
Reiji slowly straightened.
The moment the intense focus broke, his shoulders sagged slightly. The exhaustion he had been suppressing began creeping visibly back into his posture.
At the same time, the mist around his hands started thinning.
Soichiro noticed immediately.
The pale vapor drifting from his son's palms weakened gradually, fading into the morning air. The biting chill that had settled around them receded as well. The thin layer of frost coating Reiji's fingers began melting, droplets of water sliding down his skin as warmth slowly returned.
Within seconds the unnatural cold was gone.
Reiji flexed his fingers slowly, working the stiffness from the joints as sensation returned.
"The process is slow," he said quietly. "And I have to keep the wind and water chakra together."
He glanced down briefly at his palms.
"If the two flows separate, the effect disappears."
His voice remained calm, but the fatigue behind it was unmistakable.
"The moment I stop maintaining both transformations, the cold fades."
He exhaled softly.
"I can barely call it a jutsu."
Reiji turned to face his father.
"But it's a start."
A faint hint of pride flickered through his exhausted expression.
He lifted one palm slightly.
"I call it…"
"Hyōton: Hyōshō."
Ice Release: Ice Palm.
For several seconds Soichiro said nothing.
He simply stood there, completely still, staring at the frozen section of pond and then back at his son.
Slowly, he stepped forward.
Then he raised his arms and pulled Reiji into a quiet embrace.
"You really are my son."
Reiji didn't hear the words.
His body had finally reached its limit.
The moment the tension holding him upright disappeared, his eyes closed and the last of his strength faded.
Already asleep, he slumped quietly against his father's chest.