"Jie, could you please not take Hinata away?"
Sarutobi Kou wasn't the only one trying to stop him. As soon as Hyuga Yue received the news, she hurried over to Uchiha Jie, who was sealing all sorts of luggage into storage scrolls.
"I thought you hated your clan?" Uchiha Jie said strangely, looking at the Forehead Protector tightly fastened over Hyuga Yue's cool, composed face. Beneath it lay the hideous Caged Bird Seal.
"Family is one thing. The Young Miss is just a little girl who doesn't understand anything." Hyuga Yue sighed and answered softly.
"Heh. She may be a little girl who doesn't understand anything, but she's destined to rule the Hyuga Clan one day—and hold the power to kill you with ease." Uchiha Jie tilted his head and grinned as he stated the brutal truth. But Hyuga Yue's wound had been reopened countless times already, and had long since healed over completely.
"No. Probably not anymore." Hyuga Yue shook her head. "The Young Miss has performed so poorly in front of Hyuga Hiashi, while the Second Miss is still very young and already showing exceptional promise."
"Huh? You mean Hyuga Hiashi will one day mark his own daughter with the Caged Bird Seal?" Sarutobi Kou's tone turned strange as well. "Could he really bring himself to do that?"
"He couldn't, of course. But I'll make him do it." Hyuga Yue laughed softly. The sound was colder than moonlight to Sarutobi Kou's ears.
"Heh. Now you understand why I'm taking Hyuga Hinata away, right?" Uchiha Jie looked at Sarutobi Kou and grinned too.
"How could an innocent Young Miss possibly outsmart a wicked maid with a black heart? If I don't take Hyuga Hinata away, her fate will be far worse than having Hyuga Hiashi mark her with the Caged Bird Seal."
"So that's all the more reason you shouldn't take her away," Hyuga Yue said.
"Ayue, if you really want to get rid of that thing on your forehead, you have to hand Hyuga Hinata over to me." Uchiha Jie shook his head. He still intended to take the Hyuga Clan's Young Miss away.
"She hasn't been marked with the Caged Bird Seal yet, so she's the perfect experimental subject. Hyuga Hiashi can't remotely activate the seal to kill her, and unlike the other members of the Hyuga Clan's Main Family, she doesn't keep to herself."
"Breaking into the Hyuga estate is much harder than sneaking into the Uchiha Clan's home. Even ten Uchiha Itachis couldn't do it."
The Hyuga Clan's Main Family had few members, and the ones sent out on various missions were almost all Branch Family ninja. Kidnapping one of them would be easy enough, but making sure the captive was still alive would be difficult.
After thinking it over, Hinata was still the only option. She'd once had many guards, but now, as Hyuga Hanabi gradually displayed Gentle Fist talent far beyond her own, Hyuga Hiashi paid less and less attention to his eldest daughter.
It would be far easier to snatch her without anyone noticing while she was on her way to or from the Ninja Academy than to break into the Hyuga estate, which had recently tightened its security, and kidnap her there.
The hard part was escaping Konoha after kidnapping Hyuga Hinata.
"But if you take her away, I'll have a lot less fun." Hyuga Yue furrowed her lovely brows. "It's like if I stopped you from laughing. You wouldn't die, but would you be happy?"
"Haha, if you stopped me from laughing, I really would die." Uchiha Jie couldn't help laughing. Hyuga Yue looked just like a child whose beloved toy was about to be taken away and thrown out by an adult. She was truly pitiable.
But if you looked past her appearance and saw into her heart, you'd find that her once moon-white heart had turned completely black after she was branded with the Caged Bird Seal.
"How about this? While I'm away with Hyuga Hinata, you can focus on teaching Hyuga Hanabi." Uchiha Jie offered with a grin.
"That's a good idea." Hyuga Yue fell silent for a moment, then her eyes lit up as she understood what Uchiha Jie meant. Still, she felt some regret. "If I could, I'd actually rather teach the Young Miss myself."
"No, no, no. You'd turn little Hinata into a villain, and she'd take cruel revenge on her father and sister—like Uchiha Itachi slaughtering all my clan. But you're not the Third Hokage, are you?"
"Hey! You two!" The more Sarutobi Kou listened, the more wrong it sounded. Those two always managed to make an ordinary discussion stranger and stranger.
"Come on, let's not discuss such shady topics in front of the Sarutobi Young Miss. I'll bring the plump, rosy-cheeked Young Miss Hinata back safe and sound."
As Uchiha Jie spoke, he stopped sorting the scrolls and turned toward the small temporary hideout. It actually belonged to Sarutobi Kou and had been assigned as a place for Anbu to rest.
A short while later, he came out holding a small glass vial and handed it to Hyuga Yue.
The tiny vial contained something exceptionally precious: a pair of awakened Sharingan, each of the two crimson eyes bearing three Tomoe.
"Haha, what do you think? Don't they look like two beautiful rubies? If only there were a way to turn them into rings." Uchiha Jie said with a grin.
"So why are you giving them to me?" Hyuga Yue stared at the crimson Sharingan with her silvery-white eyes, holding the vial and gently shaking it.
The Sharingan inside the vial still had some vitality. Even without chakra to sustain them, the three Tomoe in each eye continued to turn slowly, giving off an ominous aura.
"What are you soaking them in?" Sarutobi Kou came closer, interrupting the two. After the Night of the Uchiha Clan Extermination had just ended, she'd also seen Sharingan soaking in vials. Even at a glance, she could tell these eyes were different.
"Life," Uchiha Jie said flatly.
"Life?" Sarutobi Kou asked quietly.
Without realizing it, Hyuga Yue had activated her Byakugan. The veins around her eyes bulged, adding an unusual quality to her beauty. After examining the vial in her hand for a short while, she gave her assessment.
"These liquids contain a huge amount of chakra, and it belongs to the Uchiha Clan. It's sustaining the Sharingan very well."
"How long do you think they can last?" Uchiha Jie asked with a grin.
"I don't know." Hyuga Yue shook her head. She couldn't understand it. The Sharingan consumed far more chakra than her Byakugan, yet after all this time, the chakra in the vial hadn't diminished at all.
"That's because the chakra isn't coming from the liquid. It's coming from the Sharingan themselves." Uchiha Jie grinned and gestured for Hyuga Yue to examine them again with her Byakugan. "Heh. I did wear these eyes for quite a while, after all."
Hyuga Yue looked at the vial again, then raised her head and stared at Uchiha Jie with her Byakugan. After his reminder, she immediately saw through the trick. The endless chakra wasn't coming from the nutrient solution, but from the Sharingan themselves.
"Weren't the Sharingan on your clone burned away by Uchiha Itachi?" Sarutobi Kou recalled the ash urn she'd once obtained and asked in a low voice.
"You should know I have more than one pair of Sharingan." Uchiha Jie blinked. The clones created by his dojutsu weren't crude copies of his real body. Every pair of his Sharingan was the genuine article.