A Bloody Incident Caused by a Daifuku

As Uchiha Gin emerged from Hyuga Tenyo's residence, the sun was already setting in the west.

"The cooks in wealthy households really know all kinds of tricks~"

Uchiha Gin picked his teeth with one hand while rubbing his full, satisfied belly with the other.

"Gin-san, I'll leave this matter to you."

Hyuga Tenyo, who had come to see him off at the entrance, wore a faint smile. It was obvious the two had enjoyed their conversation.

As his gaze fell upon Uchiha Gin's face, unchanged in the slightest for decades, a flicker of realization passed through his pale gray eyes, as though their first meeting had only been yesterday.

"I'll do my best."

Scratching his head with some difficulty, Uchiha Gin sighed softly to himself.

It was not because Hyuga Tenyo's request was difficult, but because the relationships involved were simply too complicated.

Setting the matter aside for now, he turned to meet Hyuga Tenyo's Byakugan, which were filled with the air of old age, and spoke thoughtfully.

"Tenyo, are you really not planning to try and save yourself?"

"You know it. What I have isn't an illness—it's a curse."

The smile on Hyuga Tenyo's face slowly faded, replaced by deep bitterness.

That was right. Hyuga Tenyo was sick.

It was a bloodline disease.

Similar to Uchiha Itachi in the original timeline, Hyuga Tenyo had contracted a bloodline disease that rapidly consumed his life force.

Within a year of falling ill, the man barely past fifty had aged at an alarming rate. He now looked no different from an elderly man on the verge of death.

Because records of this illness had appeared in the clan's archives from time to time, and no one had cured it over the centuries, Hyuga Tenyo had resigned himself to his fate and abandoned