What Were Those Eyes?

Time rewound a moment.

When Hizashi Hyuga used his Byakugan to search for the owner of that voice, he had actually already seen Neji lying peacefully in the room.

But because all his attention was focused on Hyuga Yunchuan, who had made the sound, he overlooked the abnormality right before his eyes.

Normally, whenever Neji vented the resentment in his heart, he would lie in bed tossing and turning for a long time, unable to sleep.

But tonight, after bandaging the wound on his hand and lying down, Hyuga Neji stared blankly at the ceiling. Before long, a powerful wave of drowsiness washed over him like a tide and submerged him.

The world after he closed his eyes was as silent as death, pitch-black before him like a boundless black sea.

Until an ethereal voice seemed to drift over from some distant place.

"..."

Hyuga Neji opened his eyes in confusion. Before him stood a ruined vermilion Torii gate, with rotten rafters slanting into the earth.

In front of him were slick stone steps covered in green moss, and that ethereal voice was coming from afar.

Hyuga Neji instinctively raised his foot and climbed the steps, passing beneath the Torii gate and between the broken stone guardian lion statues on either side.

After climbing the steps and passing through a blue-stone approach lined with swaying tree shadows, the space before him opened up.

A dilapidated shrine came into view. Rotten shimenawa ropes dangled and swayed, faded wooden plaques knocked against one another in the wind, and the vermilion characters painted on them had become indistinct.

In the broad, empty clearing before the ruined main hall, four children stood hand in hand in a circle.

Two children whose faces could not be seen released their hands and each extended one toward him. Hyuga Neji walked over against his will.

The moment he took those two hands, a sense of joy rose within him uncontrollably. A smile appeared on Neji's face, and laughter that did not sound like his own spilled from his throat.

He looked at the black-haired, blindfolded girl kneeling in the middle with her head lowered, surrounded by him and the other four children.

"Kagome, Kagome."

The four children began circling merrily, singing the nursery rhyme in their childish voices. Neji also began to sing along dazedly.

"The bird in the cage."

The blood-red afterglow of the setting sun cast their shadows upon the ground, like a bamboo cage imprisoning them and the girl within it.

"When, when will it come out?"

The song suddenly quickened, and the children hastened their steps. The long shadows of the bamboo cage twisted around the blindfolded girl in the center.

"On the night of dawn."

"The crane and the turtle slipped."

"Who is behind you?"

The four children stopped and all looked at the girl in the middle.

"..."

Hyuga Neji also looked at the blindfolded girl surrounded at the center. As he gazed at her unfamiliar yet familiar back, his muddled thoughts gradually began to clear.

The nursery rhyme sung in childish voices still echoed on. Against the backdrop of this ruined scene, its once cheerful, innocent lyrics now seemed especially eerie.

Especially the bone-chilling coldness flowing from the two hands he held, which filled Hyuga Neji's heart with fear.

He suddenly understood the rules and meaning of this song and game.

—If the girl guessed who was behind her, then the person she guessed would take the caged bird's place as a sacrifice.

"..."

The blindfolded girl raised her head, her soft pink lips parting slightly.

"Hyuga... Neji..." she said softly.

The moment he heard her speak his name, Hyuga Neji's entire body began trembling uncontrollably. The two children beside him gently released his hands.

"No! I don't want to!"

He raised his foot against his will and walked before the girl, then dropped to his knees. The four children gathered around them, their gazes devout and fervent, as though witnessing a ritual.

At last, the girl raised her clasped hands and gently caressed Hyuga Neji's face, but her thumbs pressed down on his eyes.

Squelch!

Thick, scarlet blood erupted and poured over the ground with a splashing sound.

"Ah!!"

Hyuga Neji let out an incomparably miserable scream, as though red-hot steel rods had been driven into his brain.

But after he put on that "blindfold," the four children joined hands and began circling again. Their swaying shadows stitched him into the cage, and the cheerfully eerie nursery rhyme began anew.

"Kagome, Kagome."

"The bird in the cage."

"When, when will it come out?"

The childish voices gradually turned into indistinct, bizarre language. Static filled Hyuga Neji's vision, and one distorted image after another flickered before his eyes.

Gradually, the scene before him began to change.

He saw ugly Curse Marks carved onto countless people's heads. He saw them standing in front of those without Curse Marks. He saw them die one after another upon a battlefield of blood and flesh.

He saw a faceless person bearing the Caged Bird slaughtering others. He saw that person digging out the eyes of others again and again. He saw that person clutching their eyes atop an altar, rolling about in soundless agony.

He saw that person descend from the altar. After carving something onto a Stone Tablet, the person walked out. Whether they bore Curse Marks or not, anyone who tried to stand in that person's way was slaughtered with a mere wave of the hand.

Even when someone raised a hand and activated their Curse Mark, they still could not stop that person's advance.

Hyuga Neji saw that figure enter an ancestral hall. Those who had survived gathered outside, not daring to enter. In the silent air, only the overlapping sound of ragged breathing seemed to remain.

Soon, the grand ancestral hall was consumed by flames. That figure emerged from the fire, flames licking at the person's cheeks.

In that person's hand was an aged head frozen in terror. Its pale, blood-red spine dragged along the ground, leaving glaring dark-red streaks of blood in its wake.

That person stopped. The blood pooled on the ground into a dark-red mirror, reflecting the terrified pale eyes of the others, and within those pale eyes were reflected that person's bloodstained eyes.

They were eyes unlike the Byakugan.

They were a pair of deep-blue eyes.

Hyuga Neji stood at the very back of the crowd, unable to move or make a sound, watching everything as an observer.

Having just experienced the agony of becoming a "sacrifice," and now witnessing this slaughter with his own eyes, he felt a sick thrill rise from the depths of his heart.

But the next moment, that figure lifted their lowered eyelids and actually met Hyuga Neji's gaze.

Hyuga Neji suddenly had a feeling.

That person had seen him.

He saw two streams of thick, bloody fluid flow from those eyes, slowly sliding down that indistinct face.

"Such an ugly clan has no need to exist."

That person slowly raised one hand, the palm seeming to grip a sword. Golden light extended upward, piercing through the dark clouds blanketing the night sky.

"Cleanse the filth and raise the pure," that person murmured. "Golden Wheel... Reincarnation Explosion."

That golden light descended, illuminating the pitch-black night. The fear of death became tangible.

Bang!

Faced with such utterly real death, Hyuga Neji instinctively dodged with all his strength. Yet he merely snapped his eyes open and tumbled out of bed before he could react.

"..."

He stared blankly at the ceiling. The faint pain from his body finally pulled him back to reality.

"What was that?" he murmured. "Who was that person?"

"And those eyes..."