Qianyu stopped.
He turned to look at Neji.
"What do you think you are?"
Neji froze for a moment.
"I am Neji Hyuga," he said. "A ninja of Konoha."
Qianyu said nothing.
Neji frowned.
"Is that all?"
Neji opened his mouth.
He was a member of the Hyuga branch family. A prisoner of the Caged Bird. Lady Hinata's cousin. The eldest son whose father had been sent by the main family to die in someone else's place.
He could have rattled off twenty labels in one breath.
But he found that he could not answer Qianyu's question.
Qianyu did not wait.
"Using you this time might also solve your Caged Bird problem."
Neji looked up.
"You have a way?"
"Someone does," Qianyu said. "But what if the condition is that we need a member of the Hyuga Main Family?"
Neji did not answer immediately.
The wind swept through the forest. The early autumn night had already turned cold, pouring through his collar and seeping down against his skin.
"...I'll do it," he said.
Qianyu looked at him for three seconds.
Then Qianyu raised a hand and gestured toward the ground.
Abin emerged from the earth.
"Abin, turn into the appearance you had the night before last," Qianyu said. "Obito's."
Abin blinked.
"Okay."
"What are we doing?"
Qianyu turned to Neji.
"Pick someone from the main family."
Neji was silent for three seconds.
"Tokuma Hyuga." His voice was calm. "The youngest elder in the main family's council, thirty-five years old. He was appointed in a by-election three years ago and has the harshest attitude toward the branch family. His father was one of the decision-makers who had strongly advocated sending my father to Hidden Cloud to die in someone else's place."
He paused.
"Every night at a quarter past the Hour