The Shinobi World, in the present...
The Land of Lightning...
The blood-red sunset stained Hell Valley's jagged cliffs dark crimson, as though blood from a century ago were still seeping from the cracks.
Chino stood at the edge of a cliff, her hair whipping wildly in the wind, her blood-red eyes fixed on the enormous "Heavenly Screen" in the sky—the mysterious presence that had suddenly appeared throughout the Shinobi World, its origins unknown to all.
The images that had just finished playing on the Heavenly Screen made Chino dig her fingers deep into her palms. They were the Uchiha brothers, the only two left of a once-prosperous clan that had nearly been wiped out.
Seeing the lonely figure of Sasuke Uchiha, the last Uchiha, she thought of how that once-invincible clan had now been reduced to a single person.
"You've got to be kidding..." Chino's voice trembled as bloody tears slipped uncontrollably from the corners of her eyes. "How could they... how could they just die like that? I haven't even..."
"Chino."
Her father's deep voice came from behind her. Oyashiro En walked slowly to his daughter's side and looked up at the Heavenly Screen as well. He was much taller than Chino, but his figure looked unusually weary at that moment.
"Did you see it, Father?" Chino spun around, bloody tears leaving shocking trails down her pale cheeks. "The Uchiha Clan has already... They didn't even need me to do anything before they..."
"I saw it." Oyashiro En sighed softly and reached out to wipe the bloody tears from his daughter's face. "This is what I've always wanted to tell you. Revenge only brings more revenge
. The hatred between the Chinoike and the Uchiha should have ended with our generation long ago."
Chino shook off her father's hand, anger flashing in her eyes. "End? How can it end? They imprisoned our entire clan in Hell Valley, where they died like livestock! Mother, Grandfather, Uncle, and the others... all of them..." Her voice choked up.
The horrific scenes her father had told her about appeared before her eyes once more.
Oyashiro En's gaze dimmed. Even now, he remembered the stench of decay that had filled Hell Valley, and how his clansmen had gone mad in despair, one after another.
As one of the few Ketsuryūgan users who had not been consumed by madness, he had witnessed the Chinoike Clan's end firsthand.
"Come with me," he said softly, turning toward the camp they had thrown together.
Chino hesitated for a moment before following him. Beside the campfire, Oyashiro En took an old scroll from the depths of his pack. The bloodstains on it had turned dark brown.
"What is that?" Chino asked with a frown.
"The truth." Oyashiro En slowly unrolled the scroll. "The truth about why the Chinoike Clan was exiled to Hell Valley."
Chino leaned closer, and her pupils contracted sharply at what was written on the scroll. It was the private diary of a Daimyo of the Land of Lightning, detailing how the Chinoike Clan had been framed back then.
"...The daimyo's wife poisoned him out of jealousy, then pinned the blame on his concubine from the Chinoike Clan..." Chino murmured the key passage aloud, her fingers trembling involuntarily. "The Uchiha Clan was only... ordered to guard us?"
"Yes." Oyashiro En's voice was heavy as lead. "The Uchiha were never our enemies. Like us, they were pawns in a political conspiracy."
Chino felt dizzy. The pillar of hatred that had sustained her for so many years suddenly crumbled. She fell to her knees, bloody tears welling up again. "Then why... why did you train me to take revenge? Why did you tell me all those things..."
Oyashiro En knelt before his daughter, showing deep remorse for the first time. "Because I was blinded by hatred. After escaping Hell Valley, all I could think about was revenge. I even... even raised you to be a weapon that existed only to destroy the Uchiha."
He closed his eyes in anguish. "Only when I saw the Uchiha's end on the Heavenly Screen did I realize how great a mistake I'd made."
The campfire crackled, illuminating the father and daughter's similar faces. Chino felt an emptiness unlike any she had ever known, as though her whole being had been hollowed out. Without hatred, who was she? What was she living for?
As though seeing through his daughter's thoughts, Oyashiro En said softly, "Chino, you weren't born for revenge. Your Ketsuryūgan... it was meant to be a power to protect, not a tool of destruction."
Chino looked down at her hands, the hands that could manipulate blood and cast genjutsu. She recalled her father's stern gaze during training, and the almost masochistic pleasure she felt every time she used her Ketsuryūgan. Had all of it been built on a lie?
"What should I do...?" she asked softly, no longer the coldhearted avenger, but merely a lost young girl.
Oyashiro En gently embraced his daughter. "Live on. Not for the past, but for the future. The Chinoike bloodline lives on. That is our victory."
The Heavenly Screen had already moved on to other things, and the Uchiha tragedy had come to a close. Chino looked up at the darkening sky, noticing for the first time how beautiful the stars twinkling in the night were.
"Father," she suddenly asked, "if... if we'd learned the truth sooner, would everything have been different?"
Oyashiro En was silent for a long time. "Perhaps. But what matters isn't how the past might have changed, but what we choose to do now."
Chino took a deep breath and made her decision. She wiped away her bloody tears, and when she stood, there was something different in her eyes. "I want to see the world... not as an avenger, but simply as Chino."
Oyashiro En gave his first genuine smile in years. "I'll go with you."
Father and daughter packed their belongings, took one last look at the Heavenly Screen, then turned and headed away from Hell Valley. The night wind blew through Chino's long hair, carrying away the last shadow of hatred in her heart.
For a moment, she seemed to hear her mother's voice whispering in the wind. "Live on, my child."
Chino did not look back, but the corners of her lips lifted slightly.
In Konoha...
The dusk in Konoha cast an amber glow over the Hyuga Clan's residence. Hyuga Hiashi knelt in a Japanese-style room, the bamboo tube in the courtyard giving a crisp clack every few moments, unable to interrupt his thoughts about what had played on the Heavenly Screen that day.
Beneath his wide sleeves, his fingers curled slightly, the calluses on his palm rubbing against the edge of the tatami mat.
"The Uchiha we once had to look up to..." His whispered voice drifted like a fallen leaf against the screen bearing the clan emblem. The pale blue-and-white crest shimmered in the candlelight, like countless open Byakugan.
A maid quietly brought in a tea set, but he raised a hand to stop her. Once the paper door had slid shut again, Hyuga Hiashi thought of the Caged Bird Seal on the foreheads of the Branch Family.
This mark, once mocked as a "degraded Sharingan" during the Uchiha's heyday, had now become the guarantee of the Hyuga Clan's survival.
He recalled a remark the Third Hokage had once made while drunk: "You Hyuga are like pebbles in a stream—not dazzling enough, but impossible to wear away."
The sounds of children playing came from the courtyard, where an elder was instructing the Main Family's younger members in the Gentle Fist. The sound of those young palms slicing through the air suddenly brought back the sight of him sparring with his younger brother many years ago.
Hizashi had always deliberately moved a beat slower, letting the wind from Hiashi's palm brush the hem of his clothes—just as the elder treated his students now.
The tea had grown cold. Hyuga Hiashi gazed at his reflection in the cup, at the face that bore a strong resemblance to his brother's.
When the Kumogakure delegation had visited back then, the incident had occurred. Had the elders not forcibly stopped him because he was the heir to the Main Family, he should have been the one to provide that "accounting." His brother's last, knowing smile before he left now became perfectly clear in his mind.
He remembered the day Neji passed the Chunin Ninja Exams, when he had hidden in the farthest corner of the viewing stands. When the boy used an improved version of the Eight Trigrams Sixty-Four Palms, the other ninja in the stands had exclaimed, "As expected of the Hyuga's genius."
The sky had gone completely dark, and the first star appeared above Hokage Rock. Hyuga Hiashi rose and pushed open the window facing the training grounds, just in time to see Neji correcting a Branch Family child's stance.
The boy's slender fingers brushed over the Cursed Seal on the child's forehead. In the moonlight, his expression was so calm it was almost gentle.
"Compromise... is that what it is?" The clan head's fingers tightened on the window frame. Perhaps truly walking on thin ice was not living in the Uchiha's shadow, but knowing one could break the cage and choosing to keep dancing in shackles.
In the distance, the lights in the Hokage's building came on one by one, like a string of answers no one dared speak aloud.