Almost imperceptibly, I fidgetted in my seat and fiddled with my hands on that first day of the Academy. I had never thought of myself as a particularly restless person. As a generally quiet and still person in my last life, those qualities were amplified by my environment, being raised by Konoha's prim and proper.
But I couldn't help it.
My assigned seat, unfortunately, meant that I was sitting next to a corpse.
Uchiha Mari, a girl of course of the soon to be extinct Uchiha Clan, sat to my immediate left in my seat near the back. I knew the grim future of this girl, I had seen it already played out in shades of white, black, and red. Layered, violent death.
It was customary practice to cremate the bodies of our fallen, and I could already smell the ash.
"What?" Mari all but snarled at me, "What're you looking at, Hyuuga?"
It appeared as though she had inherited the rather abrasive attitude that most Uchiha appeared to have. Not that the Hyuuga were much better about it. They just slapped a polite veneer over it.
I reached, somewhat sluggishly, for something to say.
"I like your hair," I said, trying my best for a smile. I gestured to my own hair.
Her hair was a spiky mane atop her head, not unlike my own choppy purple mess that hadn't at all recovered from the treatment that I had given it just a month or two before. It was almost humorous in a way, how similar our haircuts were. Hers was just longer.
"Hn," she grunted at me and turned away.
And I was reminded at that very moment of the stereotype of the Uchiha Clan. The twitching expression on my face, my best attempt at a smile, froze and turned suddenly very brittle. She was one of them, that was for certain. Stereotypes existed for a reason. Even highly and offensively exaggerated, there was usually at least the tiniest grain of truth to be found in them.
And there was a distinctive Uchina-ness to Mari that was uncanny, eliciting unwanted feelings within me. Dark high-collared shirt. Black hair against pale skin against black against ash.
She was a corpse. A pre-corpse, if you will.
I couldn't think of her like that, though. It was not at all an easy thing to do, casting aside another human like that. No amount of foreknowledge could dehumanise this girl, who, while somewhat rude, most certainly did not deserve to die.
"Stop trying to smile, Hyuuga," Mari muttered to me, irritation lacing her words, "You're freaking me out."
My fragile smile became a veritable rictus as I forced myself not to face her. Facial muscles tightened, and it was all that I could do to simply sit and make a valiant attempt to relax my face.
You're freaking me out too, Uchiha.
I was so very uncomfortable with it all.
It was one thing for a massacre to be shown on television, and then to be told that it was unfortunate but ultimately necessary. It was another thing entirely to come face to face with someone doomed to die.
Namely, because I was good at it.
For the longest time, I had been used to losing, losing, losing. Hanada, the instructor provided for me by Father, was probably at least a tokubetsu jounin. Maybe even a fully-fledged jounin. Father wouldn't accept anything less for his son, after all.
And so I had grown accustomed to losing every single spar, every single argument against an opponent who bested me both in terms of ability and philosophy, both in argument and presentation.
Not so here at the Academy.
I could actually win, for once.
As I eyed my opponent, a scrawny boy not from any clan, I could already see the holes and the flaws in him. His stance was crude and showed a distinct lack of much training, while his posture showed that he was uncertain and nervous.
He had already lost the fight, the argument. He lacked physical prowess, and he did not possess conviction in his own argument.
We faced each other. We both held up a hand, index and middle fingers extended in the Seal of Confrontation. While my own face was blank, his was a pure indicator of his anxiety.
"Hajime!"
With the instructor's signal, he charged at me. His nerves making his muscles jumpy and thrusting him forwards. If he could act quickly, perhaps I, demonstrably the top of the class, could be defeated. Or, at the very least, it would end quickly.
He made the opening argument, then. A straightforward, direct execution.
I reacted, stepping barely to the side to avoid his first strike.
A defensive. Your argument is invalid. Charging headfirst into an enemy of mostly unknown but probably high fighting ability was unwise.
I struck my arm against him, swift as a serpent. I put no chakra into my hand for the attack. Besides chakra being strictly forbidden for this fight, I didn't want to seriously injure him anyway.
Rationalisation. Counterargument.
He took the force of my strike straight to the stomach, and his eyes widened both in surprise and pain as my hand collided heavily with his body. His body instinctively reacted to the pain, caving in on itself and then trying to lash out.
Rebuttal. But a weak one, not backed up substantially and thus easily countered.
I tilted to the side to avoid the jab that was more instinct than anything else, and then used a sandaled foot to kick the boy, forcing him to skid outside of the ring drawn on the ground.
Case closed.
"Winner: Hyuuga Haruka!"
But I was already moving. I stood over the defeated boy, watching as he brushed dark hair aside and pulled himself off of the ground, dusty and dirty from his tumble.
I stuck out my hand, index and middle fingers extended.
The boy looked at my outstretched hand, staring at it uncomprehendingly. I kept my hands and fingers stretched on regardless, remaining wordless as a stood and watched him.
After a moment, realisation dawned on the boy. His cheeks reddened in an embarrassed blush as he extended hands and fingers of his own, mirroring my own hand in the second half of the Seal of Reconciliation.
"Hey," I said to him, "Nice job."
I tried for a smile.
And this time, I must have been more successful in my attempts to make a facial expression other than the default Hyuuga face, as the boy performed the natural human behaviour of mirroring and gave me a tentative smile of his own.
"Ah, you too?" His smile held.
Dimly, I heard the chunin instructor say that it was time for the midday lunch break, and then the pounding of feet as the other children in my class raced to the schoolyard for their meals.
"Sit with me for lunch?" I asked him, tilting my head.
He nodded.
"I'm Kenta."
"And I am Haruka."
No words were further exchanged as we made our way to the schoolyard. It was an almost tense silence, one of a new relationship untested and unfamiliar, but that was fine.
And thus my belief was affirmed. Punching people and beating them up was a perfectly acceptable and viable way to start a friendship. A new and strange approach, of sorts
But something in the back of my mind was there, whispering the directive given to me by my father: Graduate in a single year.
I sighed and ran a hand through my mane of choppy hair.
There was much work to be done.
So much work waiting for us indeed... Well, for you.
I guess people tend to appreciate and enjoy in silence...