Time rewound by a moment.
When Hyūga Hizashi activated his Byakugan to locate the source of the voice, he had in fact seen Neji lying peacefully in his room.
But with his full attention fixed on Hyūga Kumokawa, he overlooked the abnormality right in front of him.
Normally, after venting the resentment in his heart, Neji would toss and turn in bed for a long time, unable to fall asleep.
But tonight, after bandaging the wounds on his hands, Hyūga Neji lay on his back staring blankly at the ceiling. A powerful wave of drowsiness soon washed over him like a tide, pulling him under.
The world behind his closed eyelids was deathly silent, an endless black ocean stretching out before him.
Until an ethereal voice seemed to drift in from far away.
"…"
Hyūga Neji opened his eyes in confusion. Before him stood a crumbling vermilion torii gate, its rotting beams slanted and half-buried in the dirt.
In front of him were moss-covered, slippery stone steps. The ethereal voice had come from somewhere deeper ahead.
Neji instinctively began climbing the steps, passing through the torii gate and between the damaged komainu stone statues on either side.
He continued along the path, walking past the swaying shadows of trees lining the blue stone walkway, until the view opened up before him.
A dilapidated shrine came into sight. Rotting shimenawa ropes hung loosely, swaying in the wind. Faded wooden plaques clacked against one another, the vermilion characters blurred and illegible.
In the wide, empty clearing in front of the main hall, four children stood in a circle holding hands.
Two of the faceless children released their grip and reached out to him. Neji walked forward uncontrollably and took their hands.
The moment he grasped them, a surge of joy rose within him. A smile spread across his face, and laughter that didn't sound like his own escaped his throat.
He looked at the blindfolded black-haired girl kneeling in the center with her head lowered, surrounded by him and the other four children.
"Kagome, kagome…"
The four children began spinning happily in a circle, singing the nursery rhyme in their young voices. Neji joined in, singing along in a daze.
"The bird in the cage…"
The bloody glow of the setting sun cast their shadows across the ground like bars of a bamboo cage, trapping them and the girl inside.
"When, oh when will you come out…"
The song grew faster. The children picked up speed as the long shadows of the cage twisted tighter around the blindfolded girl.
"On the night of dawn…"
"The crane and the turtle slipped…"
"Who is standing right behind you?"
The four children stopped and turned their gazes to the girl in the center.
"…"
Hyūga Neji also stared at the blindfolded girl. Her back felt both strange and eerily familiar. His previously foggy mind began to clear.
The nursery rhyme continued to echo in their childish voices. Against the ruined surroundings, the once cheerful lyrics now sounded deeply unsettling and eerie.
The bone-chilling cold coming from the two hands holding his filled Neji with growing fear.
He suddenly understood the true meaning of the song and the rules of this game.
—If the girl guessed who was standing behind her, the person she named would have to take the place of the bird in the cage as the sacrifice.
"…"
The blindfolded girl slowly lifted her head. Her pink lips parted slightly.
"Hyūga… Neji…" she whispered softly.
Hearing his name, Neji's entire body began trembling uncontrollably. The two children beside him quietly released his hands.
"No! I don't want this!"
Against his will, he stepped forward and knelt in front of the girl. The four children closed in around them, their eyes filled with pious, fervent excitement, as if witnessing a sacred ritual.
Finally, the girl raised her joined hands and gently touched Neji's face. Her thumbs pressed firmly against his eyes.
Squish!
Thick crimson blood gushed out, splattering loudly onto the ground.
"Ahhh!!"
Neji let out a blood-curdling scream. The pain felt like a red-hot iron rod being driven straight into his brain.
Even after the "blindfold" was placed over his eyes, the four children joined hands again and resumed spinning. Their swaying shadows wove him into the cage as the eerie, cheerful nursery rhyme began once more.
"Kagome, kagome…"
"The bird in the cage…"
"When, oh when will you come out…"
The childish voices gradually distorted into strange, unintelligible sounds. Heavy static filled his vision as distorted images began flashing before his eyes.
The scene slowly shifted.
He saw countless people branded with the ugly Caged Bird seal. He saw them standing in front of those without the mark, dying one after another on bloody battlefields.
He saw a figure bearing the Caged Bird seal slaughtering others, gouging out their eyes. He saw that person rolling on an altar in silent agony, clutching their face.
He saw the figure descend from the altar, carve something onto a stone monument, then walk away. Anyone who tried to block their path—whether they bore the seal or not—was slaughtered with a casual wave of the hand.
Even when others attempted to activate the Caged Bird seal, it failed to stop the figure.
Neji watched the silhouette enter a shrine. The survivors gathered outside, too terrified to follow. Only the sound of heavy breathing filled the tense silence.
Soon, the grand shrine was engulfed in flames. The figure emerged from the blaze, fire licking at their cheeks.
In their hand, they carried a pale old head with a face frozen in terror. A white, bloodied spine dragged along the ground behind them, leaving a trail of dark red blood.
The figure stopped. The blood on the ground formed a dark red mirror, reflecting the terrified Byakugan of the onlookers, while those white eyes in turn reflected the blood-stained eyes of the figure.
They were not Byakugan.
They were a pair of deep blue eyes.
Neji stood at the back of the crowd, unable to move or speak, forced to watch everything as a powerless observer.
Having just experienced the agony of becoming the sacrifice, and now witnessing the massacre, he felt a sick, twisted sense of satisfaction deep in his heart.
But in the next moment, the figure slowly raised their lowered gaze and made direct eye contact with Hyūga Neji.
Neji suddenly had the feeling that the person could see him.
He saw two streams of thick blood flow from those eyes, sliding down the blurred face.
"A clan this ugly has no reason to exist."
The figure slowly raised one hand. The palm seemed to grasp a sword as golden light extended upward, piercing through the dark clouds of the night sky.
"Let us cleanse the filth and bring forth purity," the person said softly. "Golden Wheel… Reincarnation Explosion."
The golden light descended, illuminating the black night. The fear of death became all too real.
Bang!
Faced with such vivid death, Neji instinctively tried with all his strength to dodge—only to snap his eyes open. Before he could react, he tumbled off the bed.
"…"
He stared blankly at the ceiling. The slight pain from the fall finally pulled him back to reality.
"What was that?" he muttered. "Who was that person?"
"And those eyes…"
***
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