The house was silent.
Shizuku lay awake, staring at the wooden ceiling.
Sleep refused to come.
Across the room, Obito shifted restlessly beneath his blanket.
“…Dad…” The quiet murmur caused her chest to tighten.
She slowly sat up.
Careful not to wake him, she slipped out of bed and quietly made her way through the dark hallway.
The house was completely still.
Or so she thought.
She paused outside her grandmother’s room.
No light shone beneath the door, but she could hear faint movement from within.
Grandma wasn’t asleep either.
After hesitating for a moment, Shizuku quietly continued toward the back door.
A cool breeze drifted through the backyard as she stepped outside.
She walked toward the large tree where her father had taught her how to throw a kunai.
Her footsteps stopped beneath its branches.
For a long time…
she simply looked up at the stars.
Then she closed her eyes.
Almost instinctively, her consciousness sank inward.
The presence within her soul greeted her immediately.
It had changed.
Ever since her Sharingan awakened…
the barrier separating them had virtually disappeared.
She could feel it.
It was right there.
Shizuku took a slow breath.
Then reached toward it.
For the first time…
she touched it.
Warmth spread throughout her consciousness.
She wrapped her awareness around it.
Then…
pulled.
She was met with brief resistance.
Dark mist poured from the center of her chest.
It gathered several feet in front of her, slowly becoming denser.
Larger.
And larger still.
The mist twisted into a recognizable shape.
Within moments, it completely solidified.
Standing before her was a bizarre creature with a vacuum-shaped body, large round eyes, and an impossibly wide mouth.
It stood nearly as tall as a fully grown adult.
Shizuku froze.
“…Blinky.” The name escaped her lips before she even realized she’d spoken it.
Blinky…
She stared at the strange object.
A vacuum.
An endless storage space.
That appearance…
Then, like a floodgate breaking open, another memory surfaced.
A girl.
Messy black hair.
A blank expression.
A giant vacuum resting against her shoulder.
Shizuku.
From…
Hunter × Hunter.
Her pupils contracted.
“…Shizuku.” She whispered her own name.
“So that’s why…” When she’d first awakened in this world, she’d assumed her parents had simply named her Shizuku by coincidence.
It hadn’t seemed impossible.
There were countless people with that name.
She had never questioned it.
But this…
this couldn’t be a coincidence.
The name.
Blinky.
The soul-bound vacuum.
Her appearance resembled what she assumed a young Shizuku would look like.
They all pointed toward the same conclusion.
“I wasn’t just reincarnated into the Naruto world…
I was reincarnated as Shizuku.” Not the Shizuku she remembered from Hunter × Hunter.
A version of her.
One born into the Uchiha Clan instead.
A strange feeling settled over her.
Terror.
Confusion.
Curiosity.
Was it deliberate that I reincarnated as her, or a coincidence?
If so, what or who did it?
She put that thought on hold and slowly stepped forward and placed a hand against Blinky’s smooth surface.
There was no heartbeat.
No chakra.
It wasn’t a creature.
It was an object.
Countless questions raced through her mind.
Why had it fused with her soul?
Was it connected to her death?
Or her reincarnation?
None of those questions had answers.
Not yet.
She focused on something simpler.
Disappear.
Almost instantly, Blinky dissolved into black mist before flowing back into her chest.
Her eyes widened slightly.
“I can dismiss it…” A moment later, she called it forth again.
The mist reformed exactly where it had been standing.
No hand seals.
No noticeable chakra consumption.
Only intent.
Interesting.
She bent down and picked up a small stone from the ground.
Holding it in front of Blinky’s enormous mouth, she willed it to activate.
The mouth slowly opened.
The stone disappeared into the darkness within.
Not swallowed.
Stored.
Shizuku reached inside.
Nothing.
The stone was gone.
Yet she could vaguely sense its existence somewhere beyond the opening.
“A storage space…” Useful.
Extremely useful.
She looked around the yard again before spotting an old wooden practice target leaning against the fence.
Her father had used it countless times while teaching them how to throw kunai.
For a moment…
she hesitated.
Then she decided to test another possibility.
“If you can store things…
can you pull them in?” She pointed toward the target and focused.
Nothing happened.
She frowned.
Maybe she needed to be more specific.
She imagined the target disappearing into Blinky’s storage.
Almost immediately, Blinky’s mouth slowly opened.
A low…
steady hum filled the air.
“Hmmmmmmmm…” The sound was quiet, but in the silence of the night, it carried farther than she expected.
A few loose leaves slid across the ground toward Blinky.
The practice target shuddered.
It scraped across the dirt before suddenly shooting forward, disappearing into the darkness inside Blinky’s mouth.
The humming stopped instantly.
Silence returned.
Shizuku blinked.
“…It works.” She reached into Blinky.
The practice target was there.
Completely intact.
“So it can absorb objects from a distance…” A useful ability.
Not overwhelmingly powerful.
But against scattered weapons…
explosive tags…
or hidden traps…
it could become incredibly valuable.
Then her expression changed.
Footsteps.
Someone had heard the humming.
The back door slid open.
“Shizuku?” Grandma’s tired voice drifted into the backyard.
Without hesitation, Shizuku dismissed Blinky.
The enormous vacuum dissolved into black mist and disappeared back into her chest.
By the time Grandma stepped outside…
the backyard appeared completely normal.
She looked around in confusion.
“I could’ve sworn I heard something…” Shizuku kept her expression calm.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Grandma looked at her for several long moments.
The older woman’s eyes were red and swollen.
“…Neither could I.” For a while, neither of them spoke.
They simply stood beneath the stars together.
Finally, Grandma rested a gentle hand on Shizuku’s head.
“You should try to get some rest.” Shizuku quietly nodded.
“I know.” Grandma gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze before returning inside.
Once the door closed again, Shizuku let out a slow breath.
That humming…
it would be a problem.
If people heard it during a mission…
or in the middle of a fight…
it would immediately reveal her position.
She would have to figure out whether it could be silenced.
Or whether it was simply part of Blinky’s nature.
She looked toward the moon one last time.
Blinky is far too unusual.
If I use it openly, people will immediately want to know where I got it.
Fugaku might investigate.
The Third Hokage would investigate.
Danzō would almost certainly investigate.
Even if they didn’t think it was dangerous, an unknown artifact appearing out of nowhere would attract far too much attention.
She frowned.
No…
I can’t let anyone see it until I have a believable explanation.
After a moment, an idea came to her.
Once I become a genin and start leaving the village on missions…
I’ll have opportunities to claim I found it somewhere outside Konoha.
A strange artifact discovered in an abandoned ruin or hidden cave would be far more believable than one suddenly appearing inside the village.
She slowly nodded to herself.
Until then…
Blinky stays hidden.