Naruto: Curse Eater

A memory from a dream clung to Akai Hyuga, refusing to fade. A question echoed in his mind, spoken by a faceless interviewer.

Kishimoto-sensei, what would happen if a Hyuga and an Uchiha had a child?

The man being questioned was distant, his features blurred, yet his answer had been clear and immediate.

They'd have a Sharingan in one eye and a Byakugan in the other.

Right... there's no way that's true. Maybe I'm just not a full Hyuga—just some half-blood with commoner lineage or something. Still... that was a strange dream.

Akai blinked, his gaze fixed on the mirror. The black-and-white eyes staring back at him were framed by dark circles. His already pale skin appeared almost ghostly under the dim light. Red stained his lips, vivid against his complexion. A droplet of water slid from his chin.

He gripped the sink tightly. His hands were cold. His whole body felt weak, like he might fall over if he let go.

Then—

"Akai Hyuga, are you deaf?"

A sharp voice cut through his thoughts.

Elder Takahiro stood in the doorway, his cold gaze locked onto him. "The clan head has summoned you."

Of course, he had. Hiashi Hyuga never called for him unless it was something unpleasant.

Akai wiped his bloodstained lips with his sleeve. The taste of blood lingered, but he ignored it.

Takahiro's eyes flicked to the stain on the fabric. His lip curled in disgust.

"Pathetic," he muttered. "You disgrace the Hyuga name."

Akai said nothing. There was no point—Takahiro's judgment had been decided long ago.

The elder turned away. "Hurry up, defect. Stop wasting time."

.

.

.

The walk to Hiashi's chambers felt heavier than usual. Every step sent a dull ache through Akai's limbs. His lungs burned. His head throbbed.

Terminally ill defect.

That was what they called him.

The doors slid open with a soft creak. Inside, Hiashi Hyuga sat as calm and composed as ever. Akai felt his gaze flick briefly to the bloodstained sleeve he had used to wipe his lips, but after a few seconds, Hiashi met his eyes instead.

"Akai," he said, his voice steady. "Your condition has been a concern for the clan. We have allowed you to avoid training, but that must end."

Akai straightened, ignoring the tightness in his chest. "I understand". His voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

Hiashi studied him for a moment. Then, Takahiro let out an impatient sigh.

"The clan head has given me this task," the elder said, stepping forward. "Give me your hand, defect."

Akai hesitated but obeyed.

For a brief moment, chakra surged into him like a miracle. It filled the hollowness inside, flooding his body with warmth, with life.

Then it faded.

The exhaustion remained.

Akai flexed his fingers. He could feel the strength, but it disappeared as quickly as it came. His body simply couldn't hold onto it.

So this is it? he thought bitterly. Even after this, I'm still—

"Thank you, Elder," he said, keeping his sore throat steady.

Takahiro scoffed. "Hmph. At least you have manners, defect."

Hiashi said nothing. He just watched.

And then—

It happened.

At first, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. A flicker. A shadow in the corner of his vision.

Then it moved.

A deformed face scurried across the floor, its mouth stretched too wide.

Akai's breath caught. His body went stiff, but he didn't move.

What the hell was that?

Above him, creatures clung to the ceiling—pigeons without wings, staring at him with single, unblinking eyes.

A shiver ran down his spine. He swallowed thickly, trying to steady his breathing.

And then, his gaze landed on Hiashi and Takahiro.

His stomach twisted violently.

There were things sitting on their shoulders.

Fly-like creatures, but instead of legs, they had human hands and an oversized heads for their body to handle. Their fingers twitched, clinging to the elders like parasites.

His mouth went dry.

His body locked up, like he had been shoved into ice water. His breathing turned shallow. The air felt heavier, thick, like it was pressing down on his chest.

Am I... Hallucinating.

He shut his eyes. Counted to three. Opened them.

The creatures were still there.

The deformed face on the floor turned toward him, its mouth twisting into something that might have been a smile.

Akai stumbled back. His knees buckled. His heart slammed against his ribs. The world tilted—

Then he hit the ground.

The impact rattled through his bones, but he barely felt it. All he could do was stare, frozen, as the creatures twitched and crawled and watched him.

His fingers dug into the floor, trying to ground himself. His vision blurred at the edges.

What... is this?

The long-limbed thing on Takahiro's shoulder shifted, its tiny fingers brushing against his neck.

Akai flinched.

Takahiro scowled. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Akai sucked in a sharp breath, forcing himself upright. His hands trembled. He clenched them into fists, nails digging into his palms.

"I..." His voice came out hoarse. He swallowed hard and forced the words out. "Nothing."

Hiashi's gaze lingered on him, unreadable. But Takahiro only scoffed.

"Then stop acting like a fool," he spat. "Pathetic, as always."

Akai barely heard him. His ears were ringing. His pulse pounded behind his eyes.

The creatures were still watching.

Tiny, twitching fingers. One-eyed pigeons circling above. A deformed face at his feet stretching its mouth wider.

He didn't dare look again.

Stay calm. Don't react. Don't embarrass yourself.

He forced his legs to move. Forced himself to bow. Forced himself to leave the room.

The door slid shut behind him.

But the things followed.

They clung to the walls, the ceiling, the air itself. Twisted faces leered at him from the shadows.

Then, a terrible thought sank into his gut like a stone—

What if... they were always there?

His breath hitched.

He had never seen them before. Not once.

But today—after his tenketsu had been opened—

His fingers pressed against his wrist. Chakra flowed through him, weak but steady. Takahiro had unsealed his pathways, letting it circulate properly for the first time in—how long?

And right after...

He saw them.

Akai's throat tightened. His stomach churned.

This is weird.

The Byakugan could see chakra. It analyzed, broke down, and made sense of energy. But since he barely knew how to use his own, he couldn't figure it out.

At most, he told himself it was just a hallucination.

When he stopped at his room's door, he exhaled shakily.

"At this point... haa... haa... I might not just have heart problems."

His body had always been a mess. The biggest issue? His heart.

Atrial Septal Defect—a hole in the wall separating oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood. Because of it, his heart worked twice as hard, struggling to pump enough oxygen through his body. The hole was supposed to shrink with age, but in his case, it hadn't.

That's problem one.

And the others?

"Fuck this... with my condition, I won't even be able to walk soon, let alone train."

Problem two. His eyesight.

Unlike the others in his clan, Akai actually needed glasses. A Hyuga who had to squint at words on a page. A disappointment among those born with revered eyes.

While kids like Neji and Hinata trained daily, Akai had buried himself in books. He read everything he could find about the Byakugan, about techniques he hadn't even been taught yet. He only wore glasses while reading, but still, for a Hyuga, it was humiliating.

And yet... his problems didn't stop there.

"...I feel like burning this whole mansion down."

The moment he stepped into his room, he saw them again.

The floating pigeons were even more crowded here. The battered medical scroll on his desk was swarmed with them.

With his failing body, he had finally turned to medical ninjutsu. Of course, even that knowledge had been hard to get. A few months ago, he had gone to the Shinobi Hospital, asking questions until a doctor finally handed him an old, secondhand scroll—torn, stained, barely holding together.

Aside from chakra pathways, it had touched on something more obscure. A study on psychological shifts in the mind.

Akai exhaled, rubbing his temples.

"At this point... I could probably just be diagnosed with schizophrenia."

.

.

.

"Fly Head."

Akai, now wearing round glasses, stared at the smallest of his hallucinations and started naming them one by one. With his journal open, he sketched a rough image of the flying insect-like creatures with human limbs. One of them tapped its tiny fingers against his medical scroll, perched on his desk. When it finally lost interest and flitted away, Akai turned toward the bathroom.

There, next to his spare sandals, was another pair he hadn't worn in months. He recognized them immediately—old, unwashed, and long since replaced. But something was wrong.

The dusty soles were now covered in blinking, shifting eyes, scanning the surroundings from the footbed.

"The heck... my sandals?"

His gaze drifted toward the sink, still stained red from earlier. Beside it sat his old toothbrush.

It wasn't normal anymore. Its bristles had sharpened into jagged teeth, folding in on themselves, biting down repeatedly like a creature gnawing at its own flesh.

"...That's last month's toothbrush," Akai muttered, flipping to a fresh page in his journal. He began sketching again.

Tsukumogami.

Both the toothbrush and sandals are now under the same categories. He wrote the name beneath the drawings, adding descriptions beside them. It came from an old legend—one that said objects abandoned for too long would gain a soul of their own.

Moving through his room, he cataloged every hallucination in sight. But no matter how strange they were, none compared to the most dominant presence—the birds.

They hovered above, circling his ceiling lamp like restless crows. Each had a single, unblinking eye, casting flickering shadows along the walls. They moved as if waiting for something—a storm, a disaster, an inevitability.

But they had no wings.

They didn't leave. They didn't even approach the entrance. Just like him.

Akai's fingers tightened around his pen.

His mind drifted back to this morning, to his reflection in the mirror. The cursed seal on his forehead, the one he never bothered to hide.

Green lines carved into his skin, forming an X at the center. A mark of the Hyuga branch family. A mark that meant control.

His eyes flicked back to the birds, watching them press closer together, trapped within his room.

"...Caged Birds."

That was the name he wrote beneath their sketch.

That's enough schizophrenic hallucination documentary for today. Akai closed his book with a sharp snap, rubbing his temples as he took off his glasses. His body felt heavier than usual, his limbs sluggish as if something unseen clung to him. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was something else.

As he reached to place the book and glasses on his desk, he noticed something—it noticed him.

A Fly head sat by the edge of a medical scroll, its grotesque little hands tapping against the parchment. The moment Akai moved, it stilled, its compound eyes locking onto him with an unnatural focus.

A sickening buzz filled the air.

The thing flapped its tiny wings, lifted its malformed body, and before Akai could react—landed on his shoulder.

His muscles locked up instantly.

A deep shudder ran down his spine.

"...Urk."

His face twisted in revulsion. It was too close. He could feel the weight—not in a physical sense, but something deeper, something wrong. It wasn't heavy, yet his shoulder ached beneath it.

The creature tilted its head, almost in curiosity, its grotesque mouthparts twitching.

It knows I can see it.

The thought struck him with cold realization.

Without hesitation, Akai snatched his journal and slammed it down onto the creature.

A wet crunch.

Something warm splattered against his cheek.

He froze.

Slowly, trembling, he touched his face with his fingertips. A thick, sticky liquid smeared across his skin.

Purple.

The blood was purple.

Akai's stomach twisted into knots.

This was real.

This was—real.

And then—

He felt eyes.

Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands.

He turned, slowly, cautiously—

And there they were.

The Caged Birds.

Their unblinking, milky-white eyes bore into him. They floated, their bodies aimless, yet every single gaze was trained on him.

"The... heck?"

He barely whispered the words before all of them moved.

The buzzing of wings. The shuffling of countless bodies. The grotesque chirping of the wingless birds.

And then—

They attacked.

Akai barely had time to react. His breath hitched as the creatures lunged at him from every direction.

Move!

His instincts kicked in, and he dove toward his desk, yanking the drawer open with shaking hands.

His fingers closed around cold steel.

A kunai.

A second later, the swarm was on him.

"Get the hell away from me!"

He swung wildly, slashing through their bodies, his blade tearing through flesh-like ink, purple blood splattering everywhere.

One of the wingless birds latched onto his arm, its grotesque beak sinking into his skin.

"GAH!"

With a snarl, he ripped it off, throwing it across the room. He didn't have time to catch his breath before more of them crawled over his back, his legs, his arms.

"Damn it—DAMN IT!"

He stabbed, crushed, slashed, kicked. Each movement was frenzied, desperate, unhinged. His breathing turned ragged, his vision blurring from the overwhelming horror of it all.

But no matter how many he killed, more just kept coming.

And then—

His legs buckled.

His knees slammed against the floor as the wingless birds piled onto him, their weight like iron chains keeping him down.

His kunai slipped from his grasp.

No. No, no, no—

He opened his mouth to scream for help—

Only for one of the creatures to shove itself into his mouth.

Akai's eyes widened in horror.

A one-eyed pigeon, its disgusting body forcing its way past his lips, cramming itself into his throat.

More swarmed him.

His breath hitched.

His body convulsed.

The pain, the nausea, the sheer terror of it—

He was going to die.

And then—

BANG!

A sudden, forceful knock slammed against the sliding door.

"Akai!"

The voice was sharp. Stern.

Elder Takahiro.

"What the hell are you doing in there?! Why are you screaming like a maniac!?"

Akai's eyes darted to the door. He wanted to call out—but he couldn't.

The creatures crammed his mouth shut.

The sandals in the corner twisted unnaturally. Their fabric split apart, revealing rows of jagged teeth. Before he could react, they clamped down on his feet, sinking deep into flesh.

Pain flared, sharp and searing. Blood pooled beneath him, dark and viscous, spreading across the floor like ink.

What the heck is happening... Why is this happening to me?

The weight of countless bodies pressed down on him—wingless creatures writhing, suffocating. Feathers smothered him. Flesh tore. Ink oozed into his lungs.

His gaze flickered upward.

And there—etched across the ceiling—were words.

No. Not just words.

Curses.

Defect.

Useless.

Trash.

Shame.

The letters bled, thick and inky, dripping onto the floor. They seeped into the creatures, feeding them, strengthening them.

Something inside him twisted. Tightened.

And then—

It snapped.

A memory surfaced. Cold gazes. Murmured scorn. The weight of expectations he could never meet. The nights spent staring at the ceiling, wondering—what would it be like?

To be praised. To be acknowledged.

Even just once.

By the parents he never knew.

Akai's eyes darkened. The pain dulled. The creatures still clung to him, their grotesque forms pressing against his skin—but now, they repulsed him in a different way.

They weren't terrifying.

They were disgusting.

A low, guttural growl rumbled from his throat.

Then—

CHOMP.

His teeth sank into flesh. The one-eyed pigeon's skull cracked between his jaws, ink-like blood bursting across his tongue, thick and acrid.

And then—

Something inside him broke loose.

"RAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!"

His fingers clenched around the kunai, tight enough to turn his knuckles white. His breath came in ragged gasps, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his temples. The blade slashed—shhk!—tearing through flesh that wasn't flesh, splitting open ink-stained horrors that shrieked in voices only he could hear.

But it wasn't enough.

It was never enough.

The creatures kept coming, their grotesque limbs writhing, their mouths stretching too wide, their eyes—so many eyes—watching him, hungering for him.

His grip loosened.

He dropped the kunai.

His hands reached out instead—grabbed, crushed, ripped.

He felt the sickening squelch of something giving way beneath his fingers. He felt the wet heat of something breaking apart, spilling over his skin. The scent of rot filled his lungs, thick and suffocating. His stomach twisted, but his hunger roared louder.

"CHOMP"

So he ate.

"TEAR"

Again.

Again.

Again.

Ink-drenched flesh slid down his throat, coating his tongue in bitterness and bile. His body screamed in protest, but the curses screamed louder. He had to silence them. He had to devour them.

He had to—

BANG!

The door slammed open.

A gust of air rushed in, but it couldn't wash away the stench of blood.

Elder Takahiro stood in the doorway, his face a mask of outrage. His mouth opened, his voice sharp—

"What the hell—"

Then he stopped.

His gaze swept over the room.

And all he saw—was nothing. No creatures. No horrors. No writhing masses of ink and suffering. Just Akai.

Perhaps, for the briefest moment, a flicker of red glimmered in Akai's right eye. But when Takahiro blinked, it was gone. Nothing remained but the weary gaze of a boy—tear-streaked, hollow, and exhausted. Just dull black and white, stripped of anything remarkable.

Drenched in purple. Though to Takahiro, the yukata he wore was as clean as it is drenches in sweat instead of purple stains.

His hair clung to his face, plastered down by sweat and something thicker. His chest rose and fell in uneven, shuddering breaths. His fingers trembled at his sides, stained in colors that no one else could see.

To Takahiro, he looked like nothing more than a boy who had pushed himself too far. A defect, gasping for air after training beyond his limits.

The curses, the horrors, the ink-drenched blood—

He couldn't see any of it.

And that only proved what Akai had already begun to realize. No one else could see them. No one else could ever see them. Only Akai could.

His breath hitched. His skin crawled with phantom touches, the memory of claws digging into him, of teeth scraping against his bones. The taste still clung to his tongue, thick, wrong, inescapable.

Takahiro frowned. "Is that blood on your feet?!"

Akai blinked.

His ears rang, the echoes of the curses' screams still dancing in his skull. But the elder's voice—it cut through the noise. It was rough, sharp, demanding.

But not cruel.

Takahiro's eyes flicked toward the tatami mat, where thin streaks of red stained the floorboards. His lips pressed into a firm line, his frown deepening as he gestured at the mess.

"Were you simply working out and couldn't even handle it?! If you can't train properly, then at least have a little self-awareness and stop before you hurt yourself!"

Akai's lips parted slightly.

The words—

They were harsh.

Criticizing.

But they weren't meant to tear him down.

They weren't meant to humiliate him, to remind him that he was a defect, a failure, a disgrace.

There was something else beneath them. Something Akai had never quite noticed before.

It was subtle.

Quiet.

Yet now that he'd heard it—he couldn't unhear it.

Concern.

Had it always been there?

A warmth, unfamiliar and foreign, curled in his chest. The curses—the whispering, mocking voices that had always twisted words into knives—were silent now. Gone.

And Akai...

He didn't know what to do with the silence.

His mind told him not to believe it.

But his ears had heard it.

Clearly.

And it unsettled him more than any curse ever had.

"Ahahahaha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

Laughter spilled from his lips before he even realized it. A choked, breathless sound, raw and uncontrolled. His shoulders shook. His entire body trembled, wracked with something he couldn't understand.

Takahiro scowled. "Did you hit your head while training?"

But that only made the laughter come harder.

Not a sinister laugh.

Not a mocking one.

Just...

A laugh.

The laugh of a four-year-old who had just caused some trouble.

Because for the first time—

He could see it.

He could finally see the worried face of the old man scolding him for pushing himself too hard.

.

.

.

To be continued.