Tick, tick.
Rain pooled at the rim of the umbrella, then slid off along a spoke to the ground in a thin silver thread.
The sky held almost no light.
East and west were indistinguishable.
The silver-haired girl stood within the shadow, her face half lost beneath a strip of black cloth.
Neji watched the figure in the rain, his gaze roiling with undercurrents.
"The main house treats the branch house lives as worthless," he said at last. "The heavier they brand Hyūga Amaoi's guilt, the cheaper our lives become. What infuriates me most is how many among the branch repeat the main house's slur and call her a sinner. They vent the humiliation they swallow from the main house because they have finally found someone they believe stands lower than themselves. They do not see that in doing so, they are already bowing to the main house's creed."
"Foolish, base, weak. People like that are not branch house, they are the main house's dogs. No one cares if a dog lives or dies. Not the main house, and not the branch either."
Using the story of Hyūga Amaoi, Neji laid the rift between main and branch bare for Konome Taketori. From the cut of his words alone, Konome knew this was not something a child could have sorted through on his own. The reasoning smelled of inheritance. Hizashi's teaching.
There had indeed been main-house members like Hyūga Amaoi who treated the branch with decency. But generations steeped in power had shifted the main house's heart. Many there now viewed the branch as convenient servants, as chattel.
The branch was split as well. Some had been broken so thoroughly that they embraced the main house's twisted hierarchy from the inside out.
Konome read the meaning between Neji's lines. Those two gate guards had belonged to that dog-faction of the branch, despised both above and below. Men who muttered complaints in private, then shoved their heads in the dirt as soon as a main-house robe passed by.
No one would trouble to mourn their deaths.
Konome straightened the umbrella and faced the boy with the green-ink sigil at his brow. Her gaze turned grave.
He had first stoked her anger at the main house with Amaoi's fate, then mapped the factions within the branch and staked his own place among the resistors. It was a steadying medicine, a promise of alignment.
Strip all the words away and the point was single and sharp.
The main house must go.
Neji and the branch's resistance would stand with Konome to the end. He would not begrudge her for killing two of the so-called dogs.
So this is what passes for children in the world of shinobi.
Konome looked at him. Only seven, all softness at the edges, yet his methods were clean and clear.
In a village that births prodigies, earning the name means something heavy.
Her manner toward him shifted. He had shown his ground, and she would not stint on respect.
She had never forgotten her true advantage. Not the memory of canon, but the knack for finding the softest point in a person's heart and pressing it.
With timid Hinata, she had used fear and the weight of authority.
With someone like Neji, proud and lucid and hungry for freedom, she would offer recognition and respect.
What he would never receive from the main house, he would find in her camp.
That was how you close the door on betrayal.
"Thank you," she said. "Your information matters."
The line of Neji's brow loosened. He took well to being spoken to as an equal.
A sudden dizziness washed through Konome. She hissed under her breath and lifted a hand to her temple.
"What is it?" Neji sprang to his feet, alarm flaring in his eyes.
"I am fine." She shook off the haze and sorted through the memories that had just rushed back. "One of my shadow clones dismissed itself to brief me."
Time had run faster than she liked. The clones had waited at home until their chakra frayed. To keep the backlog of fatigue from crashing her at once, she had not dispelled them together. The school clone went first to warn her what awaited. Konome opened her Byakugan, numbed the nerves that carried exhaustion, and braced for the flood when the water- and wind-training clones dispersed.
Seeing that she truly was steady, Neji let go a long breath. At this moment, trouble for him would be preferable to trouble for her.
No. Her power needed to rise, faster.
He decided that instant.
The main house was vast and backed by branch-house hounds. Their little resistance could do well enough simply to keep Caged Bird from tightening around their own throats. Asking them to help Konome fight was a fantasy.
If she meant to face the main house alone, she would need to be invincible first.
"Konome, which main-house secret do you want to learn first?"
"You can get them?" She kept sifting the incoming memories even as her voice curved with disbelief.
Even Hinata, pampered as she was, needed permission to view main-house scrolls, and she was not allowed to remove originals. That was why Hinata delivered the Eight Trigrams diagrams piece by painstaking piece. Her memory was poor and the rules were strict.
The school clone had just returned with more pages. Seventy-eight in total now. She could finish the set within days.
"I cannot take them out," Neji said, "but I can copy them. The main house is few and holds itself above menial work. The guards and cleaners of the archive are branch. If you mean the highest secrets, those are sealed and require permission. No one sees them. But most standard techniques are accessible. If I want to read, branch will look away."
Konome nodded. It fit. So long as the Caged Bird remained unbroken, what did it matter if the branch learned more techniques. In the end they were tools.
"I already have the Eight Trigrams forms from Hinata. I want the vital-point strikes, Rotation, and Eight Trigrams Vacuum Palm."
"Leave it to me."
Neji clenched his jaw and thumped his chest with a fist. If he could not stand beside her in a fight, then theft of secrets would be his offering. The faster she grew, the sooner his seal could break.
"If it turns dangerous, put your safety first," Konome warned. "If I must, I can pry more from Hinata."
She had worked too hard to win Neji to risk him carelessly.
"I will be careful." The care in her caution struck deep. He had been raised on the doctrine that a branch life was for the main house to spend, that one must complete orders at any cost.
Now he tasted the difference.
She was cut from the same cloth as Hyūga Amaoi, the shape the main house should have taken.
Only when a bird is free to choose its sky does it know freedom.
The sigil still stained his brow, yet Neji felt light touch him, a premonition of open air.
"I will do everything in my power to help you grow, and I will not betray you. That is my oath as Hyūga Neji."
He stood straight and solemn, his loyalty plain.
"And I will help you break the Caged Bird and erase the main house and branch divide," Konome answered. "That is my promise as Konome Taketori."
She lifted a fist to him.
"I do not need your fealty. I need a comrade I can turn my back to, an ally whose heart beats with mine."
Neji's mouth curved, and the last grit of doubt sifted away. He pressed his fist to hers.
Respect received, respect returned.
Night drew its curtain. Fine rain fell.
Boy and girl, fists meeting, eyes steady, sealed their pact.
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