Neji pondered for a few seconds before he understood the situation.
The Clan Head really did take a more comprehensive view of things.
Since he needed to apologize, there was no reason to wait until the next day. "I understand."
"Remember, after you get Takasaki's forgiveness, make sure to tell him that I don't mind Hinata spending more time with him, but he must never do anything to hurt her. Also, try to maintain a good relationship with Takasaki yourself. After all, if he can motivate Hinata to grow, he can motivate you to grow, too. You're a member of the Hyuga Clan, after all."
With that, Hyuga Hiashi turned and left.
Neji was alone in the Training Room. Without a word, he slowly rose to his feet and channeled his chakra, trying to heal the damage to the nerves in his brain.
He had been born into the Hyuga Clan. His status gave him an advantage over Konoha's commoners; even the teachers at the Ninja Academy treated him with special consideration. But there was a downside: he had been born into the branch family and branded with the Caged Bird.
The Caged Bird was like a shackle fastened around a soaring eagle, one it could never break free from for the rest of its life.
Neji had already accepted his fate.
Strangely, after interacting with Takasaki this time, his view of fate had begun to waver.
"Can the Caged Bird really be broken?" Neji murmured.
As for what the Clan Head had said to him at the end, Neji actually felt the same way.
Because of his father's death, he did resent Hinata.
But Hinata was still his cousin, and deep down, he wanted her to be happy.
So...
Now that he had realized Takasaki could motivate Hinata to become stronger, he certainly wouldn't object to her getting closer to him.
In truth, he wanted to get closer to Takasaki himself.
Because he wanted to break the Caged Bird.
For some reason, he had a feeling that Takasaki knew how to break it.
That classmate, whom he had once thought of as a dead last, seemed to have many secrets he knew nothing about.
Hyuga Clan Mansion.
Hinata's bedroom.
The door was still locked, and the curtains were drawn. Alone, Hinata huddled at the head of her bed, wrapped in her blanket as she furtively read Takasaki's Diary, like a thief.
She read it slowly, one word at a time.
The diary was only five hundred words long, but it took her ten minutes to finish reading it.
It wasn't that she was a slow reader. The truth was that almost the entire entry was about her.
The word choices, phrasing, and meaning behind it all made her feel terribly embarrassed.
The first sentence was, [I'm starting to like Hinata more and more...]
The last sentence was, [Hinata's body is still developing. Once those big boobs mature, I'll have to ravish her just as many times as I can.]
After reading the whole thing, Hinata's cheeks were as red as if she were drunk. She bit her nails, her mind buzzing.
It wasn't just her cheeks that had turned red.
Her entire body was flushed with embarrassment.
That was why she was curled up in bed, secretly reading the diary under the covers, as if afraid someone might see how flustered she was.
"Why does Takasaki keep calling me his wife in his diary? He never even asked me, and I've never said I like him."
At the word "like," Hinata remembered what Hyuga Hiashi had said to her in the Training Room just a little while ago.
Her father actually suspected that she and Takasaki were in a relationship.
How could that be!
Hinata understood why Hyuga Hiashi had gotten the wrong idea. After all, she had been the one to bring Takasaki to the Guest Reception Room at the Hyuga Estate, arrange for people to buy the barbecue he liked, and even teach him the Three Body Technique herself.
So the two of them had looked almost like they were on a date.
Hinata had done all that because of the Diary.
To get a reward from it, she needed to seek out chances to interact with Takasaki.
But why had Takasaki let her teach him the Three Body Technique when he already knew it?
Hinata had wondered about that before. Thinking it over again, she came to the same conclusion.
Could Takasaki really like her?
After all, he had written that he liked her many times in his diary.
At the same time, Hinata instinctively felt that the affection Takasaki described in his diary seemed exaggerated.
It felt as if he liked her body more than he liked her as a person.
"What does it actually feel like to like someone?" Hinata, still a young girl who hadn't yet come of age, couldn't help pondering a question that troubled countless teenage girls.
One thing was certain: she definitely didn't like Takasaki.
Because Takasaki was a pervert!
How could she possibly like a pervert?
Especially after reading that last sentence, where he said he would ravish her once she had grown up and those big boobs had developed.
Hinata lowered her head, hooked a finger into her collar, and glanced at her chest, which was already almost a B cup. "Will they really get that big?"
Hinata shook her head, clearing the distracting thoughts from her mind.
She couldn't keep thinking about this. Just reading the diary of a pervert like Takasaki felt as if it was starting to corrupt her thoughts.
Takasaki hadn't even seen her naked. How could he know whether she would grow any bigger?
It was nothing but a pervert's baseless fantasy.
Hinata took several deep breaths, doing her best to steady herself. The flush faded from her skin.
She continued to gaze at the diary, full of anticipation.
Sure enough.
A minute later, new words appeared in the diary:
[You were mentioned at least five times in this entry. Reward: chakra increased by 10%.]
[You were mentioned more than anyone else in this entry. Bonus reward: stamina increased by 10%.]
The next second, Hinata felt a warm current wash over her body.
The exhaustion from sparring with Neji disappeared in an instant.
She could clearly feel that the amount of chakra within her had increased again.
She put the diary back into her mental space, climbed out of bed, and casually threw a few palm strikes.
The sound of fierce winds filled her bedroom.
Her stamina was better than before, and her palm strikes were stronger, too.
The result thrilled Hinata. "The next time I spar with Neji, I might be able to last more than three minutes. Maybe I can even make it to four."
When the diary had been filled with mentions of her, Hinata had already expected to receive a reward.
What delighted her even more was that she seemed to have figured out how to earn them.
The results proved that deliberately approaching Takasaki and getting him to mention her name more often in his diary really did work!
In that case, she needed to create more chances to spend time with him.
It was definitely too late tonight.
Then she could do it next Monday, when she went to the Academy.
Whenever she went to the Academy before, she had walked to school alone with her backpack, as the young heiress of the Hyuga Clan.
This time, she had something else in mind. "Should I go find Takasaki next Monday and walk to school with him?"
But would that seem too deliberate and end up making Takasaki dislike her, causing him to write something unkind about her in his diary?
Before you continue