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[— Manga Scene —]
The door to the medical room slowly opened.
Neji was lying on the bed, his body covered in bandages after the end of his match, when Hiashi entered the room and stopped in front of the two medics standing beside him.
"Sorry, but… please leave us alone."
The two medics exchanged a glance for a moment, then left the room and closed the door behind them.
Neji opened his eyes, and after a few moments, he forced his exhausted body upright and sat on the bed.
"Fine… why did you come here?"
Hiashi stood before him.
"I came to tell you the truth about that day."
"That day?"
Silence lingered between them for a moment before Hiashi spoke.
"Back then… your father intended to die."
"!"
Neji's eyes widened.
"What are you saying?! Back then, my father sacrificed himself so that you wouldn't be killed!"
"That isn't true."
Neji's expression hardened.
Hiashi lowered his eyes for a moment, then said:
"He hated the Main Family. That much is true."
"…"
"But he didn't choose death as a member of the Branch Family in order to protect the Main Family."
He raised his eyes to Neji.
"He did it as my brother."
"!"
Neji's breath caught for a moment.
"Why should I believe a story like that?! After all these years… it sounds like nothing more than an excuse to cover up what the Main Family did!"
Hiashi's expression did not change.
"I thought you would say that, so I'll tell you this first."
He paused for a moment before continuing:
"I wanted to be like my brother Hizashi… not a member of the Main Family."
Neji fixed his eyes on him.
"I want to tell you the last words my brother said."
Silence fell.
Then, before Neji's widening eyes, Hiashi dropped to his knees. He placed both palms on the floor and bowed until his head was completely lowered before his nephew.
"!!"
Neji froze.
Hyūga Hiashi, the head of the Main Family, was bowing before him.
"Please… believe me."
[— End Scene —]
…
Konohagakure:
Not a single sound came from the eastern section of the Art Store after the scene ended. Since the beginning of the volume, the Hyūga had witnessed the seal that would divide children of the same blood into a Main Family and a Branch Family, watched Neji carry that mark upon his forehead, and then learned that Hizashi would die in his brother's place. But now, the pages had revealed the part Neji himself had never known throughout all those years: Hizashi had not been dragged to his death by force, nor had he died because the Main Family ordered him to, as his son believed.
He had chosen.
Hizashi sat with his eyes fixed on his future brother's words, while Hiashi beside him continued staring at the final scene, at his older self kneeling on the floor before Neji. Neither of them needed to imagine the outcome awaiting them in that future anymore. The pages had laid it before them clearly: one would die, and the other would live long enough to sit before his son and tell him why.
"So I did it."
Hizashi's voice finally came, quiet enough that the words were meant for his brother alone, but Hiashi understood what he meant without asking.
"I chose to die."
Hiashi's eyes stopped on his brother.
Hizashi raised the volume slightly and returned to the previous line.
"Neji lived believing that I never had a choice from the moment I was born. I was born after you, so I became part of the Branch Family. The seal was placed on me, and when the Main Family needed a body that carried the Byakugan and would take its secret to the grave, I was sent instead."
He fell silent for a moment, then raised his eyes to his brother.
"But that isn't what happened."
"Hizashi…"
"I chose."
There was neither pride nor sorrow in his voice. He sounded like a man trying to comprehend a truth about someone he had not yet become.
"After everything that happened between us in that future, and after all the hatred I carried toward the Main Family… when the time came, I was the one who decided how I would die."
Hiashi lowered his eyes to the page. He could feel a strange sense of relief at the truth; his brother had not been killed against his will as Neji had told Naruto. But that relief did not last long, because the final scene remained before him.
"And yet, your son never knew."
Hizashi looked at him.
"No."
"He lived believing I killed you."
"Yes."
Hiashi's fist tightened over his knee before he looked once more at his future self bowing before Neji.
"That's why I bowed."
A small, faint smile appeared on Hizashi's face.
"And I'm glad you did."
Before Hiashi could respond, Masanori's voice came from beside them.
"But don't let this new truth comfort you more than it should."
The two brothers turned toward their father. The Hyūga clan head remained seated as he had been since the beginning of the scene, his eyes fixed on the volume.
"Hizashi choosing death restores one thing Neji's version of the story took away from him: he was not a body the Main Family dragged to the slaughter. But that does not make the system that placed the seal on his forehead right, nor does it erase the years his son spent believing the opposite."
Silence spread around him. Masanori raised the volume slightly and gestured toward Neji lying on the bed.
"That child wasn't there when his father made his decision. He didn't hear his final words, and he didn't see what happened between the two brothers. All that remained for him afterward was a dead father, a seal on his forehead, and a Main Family that remained alive."
Hizashi lowered his eyes.
"And from those three things, he built the only truth he could understand."
Masanori returned his gaze to the final scene, to Hiashi bowing before his nephew.
"And that is why, years later, the head of the Main Family had to place his forehead against the floor before a child of the Branch Family and ask him to believe him."
None of the elders objected this time. The fate of the document their council had been debating for months had already been decided earlier, and this new truth gave them no reason to reopen the discussion. If anything, it gave them another reason to understand how much damage a system could leave behind even when the men within it made their own choices.
Masanori looked at his sons once more.
"Hizashi chose his brother. That is to Hizashi's credit."
Then his eyes moved to the seal drawn on Neji's forehead.
"But the system that made his son unable to believe that… deserves no credit at all."
…
On the other side of the Art Store, the silence was different. The Uchiha did not see their own clan's history in the scene, but Hiashi's words did not pass before them easily, especially one sentence that remained before their clan head's eyes:
I wanted to be like my brother Hizashi… not a member of the Main Family.
Uchiha Hōgaku stared at it for several seconds before speaking calmly.
"He needed to set the name of the Main Family aside for a moment… before he could speak to his nephew."
Fugaku raised his eyes from the volume.
"Set it aside?"
"Not literally." Hōgaku gestured toward the scene of Hiashi bowing. "But look at him. If he had entered that room only as the head of the Main Family, Neji wouldn't have heard a word from him. To that child, the Main Family is the seal on his forehead, his father's death, and the reason he spent his entire life believing that Hiashi's life was worth more than Hizashi's."
Fugaku looked back at the page.
"So he entered as a brother."
"Exactly."
Hōgaku leaned back in his seat, his eyes still on the scene.
"A clan's name gives a man many things, Fugaku. His status, his history, his duty, and the people standing behind him. And the greater the name, the heavier it becomes to carry. But a man who doesn't know when to set that name aside… may eventually find that it has come to stand between him and his own family."
Fugaku did not answer immediately. The son of the Uchiha clan head had known since childhood that the name he carried was more than a surname, and that his father's position would not belong to his father forever. So he looked once more at the final scene before saying:
"But he is still the head of the Main Family."
"Yes."
"And yet he bowed before Neji."
A small smile appeared on Hōgaku's face.
"That is precisely why his bow had meaning."
Father and son remained silent for a moment before Fugaku returned to the earlier scenes: Neji standing before Naruto and telling him that destiny could not be changed, Neji revealing that his father died because he had been born second, and now that same Neji hearing that the man upon whose death he had built that entire belief had not died the way he imagined.
"There's something ironic about it."
Hōgaku raised an eyebrow.
"What?"
"Neji built everything he believes on his father's death. To him, Hizashi was born into the Branch Family, sealed, and then died for the Main Family. Even his death was part of the destiny others had chosen for him."
Fugaku's eyes stopped on Hiashi's words:
Back then… your father intended to die.
Then he said:
"And now he's discovered that the most important decision his father ever made… was a choice."
Hōgaku did not answer immediately. He looked at his son for a moment, and a faint trace of approval appeared in his eyes.
"Well said."
He returned his gaze to the volume.
"It seems Naruto wasn't the only one who defeated Neji today."
Fugaku looked at him and understood his meaning before his father finished:
"The truth did too."
…
In the front rows, Hiruzen had reread the same sentence several times:
Back then… your father intended to die.
"So Neji never knew the whole truth."
Danzō answered from beside him.
"And that changes things."
Hiruzen raised his eyes toward him.
"To what extent?"
"To a great extent," Danzō answered without hesitation. "Kumo demanded Hiashi's body. Hizashi chose to take his brother's place, the secret of the Byakugan remained protected, and war did not break out. We are no longer talking about a man taken by force by the Main Family as his son believed, but a shinobi who made his own decision."
Hiruzen watched him for a moment.
"I knew this truth would put you at ease."
"Because it matters."
"I didn't say it didn't."
Hiruzen gestured toward the final scene.
"It restores Hizashi's agency, but it doesn't restore Neji's childhood."
Danzō did not answer.
Hiruzen continued:
"Think about it. The crisis ends, war doesn't break out, and everyone continues with their lives believing the decision served its purpose. But one child grows up for years carrying an entirely different version of that day."
"And now he knows the truth."
"Now."
Hiruzen emphasized the word, then pointed toward Neji's face.
"After growing up hating the Main Family. After looking at that seal every morning as proof that his father's life was worth less than his brother's. After building his entire view of himself and the world around that belief."
Danzō stared silently at the scene.
"A truth that arrives late can correct history, Danzō… but it cannot return the years a person spent living inside the lie."
Before a response came, Mito's voice cut in.
"And don't use Hizashi's choice as an excuse to absolve the system."
The two men turned toward her. Mito was looking at Hiashi bowing before Neji, her expression calm.
"Hizashi chose to die for his brother. Good. That was his choice, and no one should take it away from him, not even his son. But Neji wasn't there when he made that decision."
She gestured toward the boy's forehead on the page.
"All he inherited was the seal, a dead father, and a Main Family that remained standing afterward. If you give a child those things, then leave him to grow up without ever knowing why his father chose what he chose… don't be surprised when he reaches the worst possible explanation on his own."
Danzō remained silent while Hiruzen returned his gaze to the page.
Mito continued:
"That is why it isn't enough for a sacrifice to be voluntary, nor is it enough for a decision to be necessary in the moment. What the village and the clan do today will be lived by their children tomorrow, often without those children knowing the reasons their elders knew."
Then she fixed her eyes on the bowing Hiashi.
"And if, thirteen years later, the truth requires the head of the Main Family to bow to the floor and say, 'Please believe me'… then it remained buried for far too long."
Hiruzen found nothing to add.
And this time, Danzō did not try.
…
Mountains' Graveyard:
Far from Konoha, deep within the Mountains' Graveyard, Madara sat in his usual place with the copy of the volume Zetsu had brought him open between his hands.
His eyes stopped on the final scene, on Hiashi bowing before Neji and asking him to believe him. Then he flipped back several pages, to Neji telling Naruto that no one could escape their destiny, before returning to the truth Hiashi had revealed.
A faint, mocking smile appeared on Madara's face.
"He lost to Naruto… and then discovered that the man upon whom he built his belief in destiny chose his own death."
He partially closed the volume between his fingers.
"A bad day to believe in destiny."
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Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 231: Shikamaru vs. Temari!
Chapter 232: A Shadow Within a Shadow!
Chapter 233: An Innovative Fighting Style!
Chapter 234: I Give Up! (End of the Volume)
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