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[— Manga Scene —]
Neji slowly raised his head, the green mark still exposed on his forehead beneath the midday sun, then spoke in a voice that no longer held any of the coldness of a duel.
"My father… was killed by the Main Family."
"Huh?!"
Naruto's eyes widened, his unsteady feet freezing in place.
Then the memory began unfolding across the pages: a man dressed in black slipping through Konoha at night, carrying the unconscious body of a little girl in his arms, followed by another panel showing that same man lying lifeless on the ground.
"One night, Hinata-sama was kidnapped by someone. He was a ninja from the Hidden Cloud Village who had come to Konoha to sign an alliance treaty… but he tried to obtain the secret of the Byakugan. The Main Family discovered him… and killed him."
Naruto stood frozen before the torrent of words, while Neji continued in that same tone—the tone of someone who had memorized this story so thoroughly that it had become part of his heartbeat.
"And who do you think that man was?"
The page revealed a stern-faced man with long black hair, someone everyone in the stands recognized.
"It was Hyūga Hiashi, Hinata's father."
"!!"
"But it didn't end there," Neji said, as the pages shifted to the hard faces of representatives from the Hidden Cloud and written demands being passed across an official table. "The Hidden Cloud denied the kidnapping attempt and demanded that Konoha hand over Hiashi-sama's corpse as compensation for the death of their envoy."
"What?!"
Naruto exploded, but Neji continued without raising his voice.
"It was an unjust demand. But if Konoha refused… war would break out."
Silence fell over the drawn arena for a moment before the next sentence dropped like a stone into still water.
"So Konoha decided to accept the demand."
Naruto stared at him in disbelief, while Neji's eyes faltered for a single instant—the only instant in which the stone mask he had made of his face betrayed him—before he continued.
"However, the Hidden Cloud never received Hiashi-sama's body. Because… my father was killed in his place."
Another man appeared on the page.
Almost the same face. The same eyes. The same hair.
"My father and Hiashi-sama were twins, completely equal when they were born. But my father was born second… and because of that, his fate was to be branded."
The green seal once again filled the panel, and Neji continued his explanation in the voice of someone reciting an ancient sentence handed down by a court.
"The Hidden Cloud wanted the Byakugan. But when a member of the Branch Family dies, this seal seals away the Byakugan with him, so the secret dies with its owner. That was why there was no better way to protect the secret of the Main Family… My father was killed exactly as the Main Family had planned."
The very air in the arena seemed to stop as the boy's features hardened further.
"There is no other way to escape this seal… except through death."
In the stands, Hiashi remained silent in his seat like a statue, and the Third Hokage remained equally silent in his box, while Neji finished speaking as he stared directly at his opponent.
"The twins were equal. But he was born second, and because of that, his fate was sealed. And in this match… it was destined that I would be your opponent."
Naruto's eyes trembled as the final words fell upon him.
"You cannot escape your destiny."
[— End Scene —]
…
Konohagakure:
The next page was not turned.
Throughout the Art Store, hundreds of hands remained motionless atop the paper, as though their owners had forgotten there were still pages left to read. This time, the shock was not in the seal itself, nor in the division of a great clan into a Main Family and a Branch Family. It was in four names that had come together within a single story: Konoha, Kumo, Hiashi, and Hizashi… and a war that had nearly begun, only for one man to pay the price of preventing it—a living counterpart of that very man now sitting in the eastern section of this exact store.
Then voices began to rise from different corners, faint at first, as though testing how much courage their owners possessed, then gradually louder.
"He kidnapped a child under the cover of a peace treaty… and then they demanded the body of the father who stopped him?" whispered a merchant in the middle rows, tightening his fist over his knee, while the man beside him replied without lifting his eyes from the page, his voice even lower than a whisper, "Keep your voice down, and don't look toward the eastern section. Their eyes will see you turning toward them before you even finish turning."
In the front row, Hiruzen Sarutobi had not moved for several minutes. His pipe hung between his fingers halfway to his mouth, frozen there ever since the sentence that split the chapter in two had appeared:
So Konoha decided to accept the demand.
Koharu was the first to break the silence, turning in her seat toward the companions of her generation with the expression of a woman desperately waiting for someone to tell her she had read it wrong.
"Konoha accepted the demand? After one of their ninja entered our village under the cover of a peace treaty and tried to kidnap a child from one of our clans straight out of her bed?"
"And then he was killed while committing his crime, so his village demanded the corpse of the man who stopped him…" Homura continued hoarsely, his fingers gripping the edge of the volume until the paper crumpled beneath them. "…and we accept? We hand over one of our own men to the very people who attacked us?"
The final question was directed, without anyone needing to say so aloud, at one man in that row. Hiruzen slowly raised his eyes from the page and opened his mouth to answer…
But another voice reached them first from a nearby seat.
"The correct decision."
Every head turned at once toward the source of the voice, finding Shimura Danzo seated in perfect calm, his arms folded across his chest, his eyes reading the same page that had shaken the entire store without showing a single trace of that earthquake.
"Correct?" Hiruzen repeated slowly, in the tone of a man offering the speaker one final chance to take the word back.
"If the alternative was an all-out war with Kumo, then yes," Danzo answered without lifting his eye from the page, with the simplicity of someone stating the result of an arithmetic equation. "One man's corpse against the thousands of corpses a war would harvest. That calculation does not require a genius, Hiruzen."
Homura's jaw tightened until the muscles stood out beneath his skin, while Koharu turned her face toward the drawn arena as though she did not wish to witness what was coming. Hiruzen, meanwhile, placed his pipe on the table before him in a slow, deliberate motion—the motion of a man freeing his hands before a long argument.
"The man they wanted us to surrender committed no crime, Danzo. He killed an enemy who was kidnapping his daughter from her bed."
"I never said he committed a crime, and I know perfectly well what he did and did not do," Danzo replied, finally lifting his eye from the page and meeting his childhood companion's gaze without blinking. "I also know that his village did not go to war. That is the Hokage's duty, Hiruzen: not to be fair to one man, but to keep the village standing."
Hiruzen leaned forward in his seat, his eyes narrowing into two sharp lines that bore little resemblance to those of the smiling Hokage the village knew.
"And if the village remains standing because it surrendered an innocent man to the people who attacked it… then tell me exactly: what did we keep standing?"
"Konoha."
The answer came immediately, sharp and without a second of hesitation.
"The walls, Danzo? We kept the walls standing?"
"The people behind those walls."
"Hizashi is one of those people."
For the first time since the conversation began, Danzo's fingers stiffened against his folded arm. Hiruzen raised a hand and pointed toward the open page between them, toward the image of the identical twins.
"Hiashi is one of those people. Hizashi is one of those people."
Then his finger moved toward the small panel showing an unconscious little girl in the arms of her kidnapper.
"And Hinata is one of those people. Don't reduce the village to the number who survived, Danzo. A village is not an accounting ledger."
"And don't reduce leadership to the one man who died," Danzo replied, his voice rising by a single degree—only one, but enough to make those around them turn. "If I were forced to choose between one death and ten thousand survivors, I would choose the one death. Every single time, without so much as blinking."
"Even if that one person were innocent?" Hiruzen asked, his calm more dangerous than any shout.
"Especially if there were no other choice."
"And that is exactly where the difference between us lies, my old friend," Hiruzen said, slowly leaning back into his seat as though placing distance between himself and what he was about to say. "You see the moment when we must choose whom to sacrifice… while I see every small decision that brought us to a point where sacrificing an innocent citizen became an acceptable option on the Hokage's table in the first place."
For the first time since the argument began, Danzo did not answer immediately.
But Hiruzen was not finished. He looked at the image of the twins on the page and spoke in a voice that dropped until it almost became a man talking to himself.
"A village that can protect itself only by handing over one father in place of another… did not defeat the war, Danzo. It merely moved the war from its borders… into one of its own homes."
No one in that row moved. Koharu continued staring at the page with unfocused eyes, Homura lowered his gaze to the floor, and even Danzo remained silent for two full seconds—the longest silence anyone had ever seen him give during an argument—before he finally spoke, his tone having regained its coldness.
"Beautiful words, I'll give you that. But when a Kumo envoy stands before you and places two choices on your table with no third option—one corpse or war—you will not protect the village with beautiful words."
"Then it is my duty to make sure, twenty years before that day ever arrives…" Hiruzen answered without hesitation, his eyes fixed on his companion's. "…that Kumo knows that merely demanding the corpse of one of Konoha's men means they have chosen war themselves and signed the declaration with their own hand."
Something small changed in Danzo's eye at those words, something closer to interest than objection.
"You're very confident in yourself today."
"No, Danzo. I'm very afraid," Hiruzen said, turning his eyes back to the page, toward his future counterpart sitting silently in the spectator box. "Because I have just seen, drawn out before me in every detail, what happens when the Hokage becomes more afraid of war… than of the decision he makes to avoid it."
Danzo gave no answer at all this time.
Then, from behind them, before either man could even draw another breath, a calm voice cut through the space between them like a blade.
"Both of you have forgotten something."
All four turned at once and found Mito Uzumaki sitting in her seat, her restored youthful figure straight and composed, her hands folded over her lap, her eyes fixed on the open page as though she were reading something in it that none of them had noticed.
"Kumo demanded Hiashi. And Konoha agreed," Mito said, tapping one finger lightly against the armrest of her chair, the tiny sound somehow echoing through the surrounding silence louder than any shout. "But the one who died… was Hizashi. Which means the village did not pay the price it agreed to, gentlemen. The clan paid it for the village—with its own blood, by its own hand."
Her words descended upon the place heavier than everything that had come before. Then the woman slowly turned her head toward Hiruzen first.
"Never forget that when you become the man sitting on that page."
Then she turned toward Danzo, her eyes narrowing.
"And you must not forget it either. Because the day the village begins solving its problems with the bodies of its clansmen… is the day those clans begin asking: why do we need the village at all?"
This time, neither Danzo nor Hiruzen had a quick answer.
And on the table between them, the page remained open on a single sentence:
My father was killed in his place.
…
Hyūga Clan:
In the eastern section of the store, however, no one was discussing politics.
Because the politics the others had been arguing over carried, for them, two faces they had known since childhood: Hiashi and Hizashi, the twins who were sitting side by side now, alive, unmarked, with no Main Family or Branch Family between them, separated by less than an inch of empty air…
While on the page, that very inch had become an entire cage.
Not a single member of the clan dared look directly at them. Every pair of white eyes remained fixed either on the pages or on the floor until Hizashi's voice finally came, quiet and slow, reading the printed sentence before him as though sounding it out for the first time.
"The twins were completely equal when they were born… but he was born second."
Then he raised his head from the page and looked at his brother for a long moment before asking:
"How long?"
Hiashi blinked in confusion, the question pulling him from the whirlpool of his thoughts.
"What do you mean?"
"How long before me did you enter this world?"
Hiashi did not understand for a moment… then comprehension struck him all at once. He did not need long to think about it. The story had been told to them dozens of times since childhood, around dinner tables and during gatherings with their uncles.
"Seven minutes."
Hizashi smiled a small, strange smile, containing neither joy nor pure bitterness, then returned his gaze to the page and spoke like a man testing an idea on his tongue for the first time.
"Seven minutes, then. That is the entire difference. Seven minutes gave you the Main Family… seven minutes gave me the seal… and seven minutes made my son be born inside a cage while yours was born outside it."
"Hizashi—"
Hiashi began, but his voice died on its own, because what made speaking impossible was not his brother's cruelty…
It was that there was no accusation in his brother's voice at all.
Hizashi lowered his eyes to his open palms resting on his knees and continued with the same calmness.
"We train together every morning, eat at the same table, sit in the same council, and whenever one of us argues with the other, Father shouts at both of us without distinction."
He gave a short laugh that no one joined.
"And then, in that future… seven minutes become this."
He raised a finger toward the green mark drawn on Neji's forehead.
Hiashi was no longer looking at the page at all. He was staring at the forehead of his real brother sitting less than an inch away: a clean forehead, smooth skin without a mark… and suddenly it became impossible not to imagine it there. The green lines. The twisted symbols. The cage. Carved into his brother's skin.
"No."
The word escaped him before he could think, loud enough to make those around them turn toward him. Hizashi looked at him questioningly.
"What did you say?"
"I said no," Hiashi repeated, clenching his fist over his knee until his knuckles turned white. "I will not put it on you. No matter what any paper says, no matter what any council decides… I will never put that mark on you."
A new silence swept across the entire eastern section, and Hizashi's eyes widened slightly as he stared at his brother…
But then a third voice came from beside them, calm and heavy as a millstone.
"And you think it will be your decision?"
The twins turned together toward their father. The Hyūga clan head remained seated with his back perfectly straight, but he was no longer looking at Neji on the pages… he was looking at the two of them, with the eyes of a man who had sat through this clan's councils for decades.
"That is the most dangerous lie in any system, my son," Masanori said calmly, raising the volume in his hand. "That a good man believes he will stop the injustice of the law when his turn comes. Look with me."
He pointed toward the image of the future Hiashi sitting silently in the stands.
"That man there is you."
Then his finger shifted toward the image of the dead twin.
"And the dead man is you. I have been looking through these pages since this chapter began, and I see no monster between you. I see no brother who hates his brother, and I see no father who wishes to kill his son…"
The man partially closed the volume around one finger and finished in the same measured tone.
"…and yet all of it happened."
Hiashi had no answer, so his father continued, his gaze moving toward the green seal on the page.
"Because a system that needs monsters to create tragedy is a weak system, my sons. But a system truly skilled at creating tragedies… is one that makes honorable men carry them out with their own hands, fully convinced that they are merely doing their duty."
The faces of the elders sitting nearby froze one after another, because they knew exactly what their clan head was talking about. They knew the paper—the one that had been sitting on the council table for months, with its polite language about organizing the houses, protecting the Byakugan, and ensuring the continuation of the bloodline. A paper that never mentioned the word curse, never mentioned the word slave, never mentioned the word cage…
But the open page before them was now showing them, in ink and detail, exactly where polite words could lead after a single generation.
Hiashi turned back toward his brother with heavy eyes and spoke as though testing the sentence on his tongue to make sure it was real.
"He died in my place. In that future… you die in my place, Hizashi."
Hizashi looked at him for a long time, then slowly shook his head and said something no one had expected.
"And that is not the part that frightens me."
"…What?"
Hizashi raised a finger toward the image of the thirteen-year-old boy standing in the arena, and everyone's eyes followed it.
"Look at him carefully, Brother. My son does not say that I died… he says that I was killed."
His voice dropped until it was barely audible.
"To him, it was not a sacrifice. It was not protection. It was not even a treaty that saved a village. The Main Family planned to kill his father, and they carried it out."
The man closed his eyes for a moment before finishing.
"Whatever the truth of what happened that day may have been… this is what we left my son with. This is all that reached him."
Hiashi could not answer, because that was the shock that did not require them to know every detail of the future. Neji's version might be incomplete, and there might have been reasons and voluntary sacrifices that the pages had not yet revealed… but one thing was unquestionably true:
A Hyūga child had grown up convinced that his clan had killed his father because his father's life was worth less than that of his twin brother.
And for Masanori… that alone was enough.
The clan head rose from his seat for the first time since the reading began, causing dozens of backs around him to straighten instinctively, with the reflex drilled into everyone who carried those eyes.
"Father?" Hiashi asked, but his father did not answer him.
Masanori closed the volume with one hand and then spoke in a voice that reached the final row of the eastern section.
"After today's chapter ends, the council will convene."
The Hyūga exchanged silent looks until one of the elders dared to ask cautiously:
"Regarding what, Masanori-sama?"
The clan head gave him a single look, enough for the elder to know the answer before hearing it.
"The paper."
"But we have not yet finished discussing its provisions, Masanori-sama, and there is still disagreement regarding—"
"Yes, we have. We are finished."
Masanori interrupted him with a calmness that left no room for another word.
Then he looked at his sons, at Hiashi's forehead first, then Hizashi's: identical, clean, unmarked… exactly as they should be.
"I believed that paper proposed a way to protect the Byakugan," the clan head said, holding the volume in one hand at his side. "Today, this volume showed me the final result, drawn on the forehead of a child of my own blood. I will not build a cage with my own hands… and then ask my grandchildren to thank me because I protected their eyes inside it."
Not a single person in the entire eastern section dared breathe loudly.
Then came the final sentence, quiet and decisive as a blade sliding back into its sheath.
"The paper will not be signed."
Hiashi's eyes widened at his father…
As for Hizashi, he continued staring at him for a long moment before doing something he himself did not notice until after he had done it. For the first time since the green mark had appeared on the pages, he slowly raised a hand to his forehead and touched it with his fingertips.
He found nothing there.
Only his skin.
Free…
For now.
…
Behind the counter, on the opposite side of the Art Store, Rob had been standing motionless for several minutes, watching not the open pages… but the eastern section of his store, where a clan head had risen before his people and announced the death of a proposal that had not even been born yet.
With the store's perception, from which nothing escaped, he had heard everything: the seven minutes, the refusal, Masanori rising to his feet, and the final sentence whose echo still seemed suspended in the air.
'I am bound by canon,' the man thought, his eyes never leaving the Hyūga clan head. 'I cannot change a single stroke on those pages. I tried it with my own hand, and the brush draws what happened whether I want it to or not… but it seems the readers are bound by nothing.'
[ Alert: Exceptional Reaction Recorded ]
[+742 AC from Hyūga Masanori]
[+318 AC from Hyūga Hizashi]
[+299 AC from Hyūga Hiashi]
[+…]
Rob stared at the numbers flowing across the system interface, then smiled faintly, without any trace of his usual merchant's grin.
'Kishimoto drew a cage in Volume Twelve… and today I sold it to a man who decided never to build it in the first place.'
'This evening, Masanori-san… the drinks are on the house.'
____________
Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
____________
Chapter 228: Jinchūriki of the Nine-Tails!
Chapter 229: The Winner… Uzumaki Naruto!
Chapter 230: The Truth
Chapter 231: Shikamaru vs. Temari!
____________
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