Preventing The Inevitable

Chapter 13

The gray, rough paint of the walls was showing signs of neglect and starting to peel. Her father had put it up years ago, as was obvious by the clearly unprofessionally done work. The living room was bare, she concluded yet again. The empty vases in the corner had hypnotic engravings on them in a darker shade than the rest of the beige body of the vases. A wandering merchant had sold those to her mother once.

There were holes drilled into the walls all over the room with varying spacing between them, indicating what kind of hung-up decoration could have used to fill those places; Paintings opposite the table and next to the couch, a board to store jars on below the sink.

Just above the door that led to the kitchen, one still had a nail sticking out of it. A clock used to be there. Should be there.

The house was accessorized with monotonous colors and sparse decorations. From the walls to the vases to the missing paintings and clock.

But she knew that the sad, grayish color of the walls was a remnant of what used to be a soft rose and that the vases had always been decorated with bright and colorful flowers. She knew that there had been one huge painting of the beach of a beautiful, faraway land and one depicting a city full of bright rooftops and pillars shooting up to the sky.

She didn't just know it; she remembered it.

After all, it was the house she had lived in for more than a decade, once upon a time. Everything, this whole house, was filled with things she knew and was familiar with.

Yet, everything was different. Slightly different. Something was always missing.

Her wrist ached. It had become duller and more bearable, compared to the throbbing, sharp pain that had had her mind spinning earlier.

Perhaps she shouldn't have undergone the first step of the process so soon. The process of manifesting the Byakugō seal. Her body was that of a child, which meant less pain tolerance. And the first time, back when she had been thirteen and greedy for power, it had left her unable to move for three hours. Even afterwards, her limbs had been numb and her head dizzy.

"That's the price of creating a seal so close to your brain, Sakura." Tsunade had said that day.

At least she didn't lose coordination of her body this time, Sakura mused. Truth be told, that had been the worst part of it, though she hadn't admitted it in fear of being called naive— (because how to maintain calmness when captured and how to free oneself was taught in the second year of the Academy as one of the core lessons of the third chapter. And Sakura should at least be able to deal with not being in control of her body in a safe environment, right? If that upset her and made her panic, how was she supposed to protect the others and bring Sasuke-kun home? How was she supposed to make Shishō proud? So she clenched her teeth and remained quiet, because anything else would make her weak and childish.)

—

[Earlier]

The thing they didn't tell you about the Byakugō was the beginning.

It was a seal, after all. Concentrating chakra on one small, diamond-shaped point wasn't going to do the trick. Though it was exactly that for the latter part of the process, which also took the longest time. But just accumulating energy was not enough. There was a precise procedure one had to follow for the Byakugō seal to be allowed to form in the first place.

The seal had to be sketched. Or, rather, etched.

Simple paint was too easy to smear and ruin years of work. Worst case, if the user had already accumulated high amounts of chakra, the energy that is set free could permanently damage the brain. Hence the danger of a seal on the forehead, as Tsunade had lectured her once.