At the Hyuga Clan Compound, carefully pruned pines and cypresses cast crisp, cool shadows in the afternoon sun. The air held the quiet scents of old wood, paper, and faint tea.
Neji Hyuga leaned against a corridor pillar with his arms folded, his pale eyes fixed on the images flowing across the Canopy Screen.
He watched young Boruto lose an exquisite badge bearing the Hyuga House crest while playing.
Neji recognized it. It was an heirloom passed down through generations of the Main Family, one that Hyuga Hiashi sometimes took out and studied with an unusually grave expression.
Yet the Hiashi of the future simply said it was lost and left it at that. He even ruffled Boruto's hair, his face showing no reproach, only an almost indulgent calm.
For once, unmistakable shock broke through Neji's usually impassive expression.
He straightened instinctively.
Stern, old-fashioned, devoted to the family's rules and honor as if they were his life, and so harsh about the smallest mistake that he seemed almost inhuman...
That was the image of Clan Head Hyuga Hiashi that Neji had always known.
Losing a crest of such significance was unthinkable. Even forming a hand sign a little too slowly during training or letting one's posture slip in an etiquette lesson would bring a chilling reprimand and still harsher demands.
Neji himself, Hinata, and every other Hyuga child had grown up under that pressure.
"This..." Neji murmured, disbelief in his voice.
He found himself looking at Hinata beside him. She was watching the Canopy Screen too. When Boruto called out "Grandpa" and Hiashi's rarely gentle profile appeared, an uncontrollable blush spread across her cheeks. Her fingers twisted the hem of her clothes without her noticing.
"Looks like," Neji said, turning back, his tone too complicated to tell whether it held