Time rewinds slightly.
When Hyūga Hizashi used his Byakugan to search for the source of the voice, he had indeed seen Neji lying peacefully in his room.
But with his focus entirely on Hyūga Kumokawa, the source of the voice, he had overlooked the abnormality right before his eyes.
Normally, after venting his resentment, Hyūga Neji would toss and turn in bed for a long time, unable to sleep.
But tonight, after bandaging his hands and lying down, Hyūga Neji stared blankly at the ceiling. A powerful wave of drowsiness soon washed over him, pulling him under.
The world behind his closed eyelids was deathly silent, a boundless expanse of black ocean.
Until… an ethereal voice seemed to reach him, as if from a great distance.
"..."
Hyūga Neji opened his eyes in confusion. Before him stood a dilapidated red torii gate, its rotten beams slanting into the earth.
Ahead were slippery, moss-covered stone steps. The ethereal voice was coming from beyond.
Instinctively, Hyūga Neji lifted his foot and began climbing the steps, passing under the torii gate and between the broken guardian lion-dog statues.
He climbed the steps, then walked along a stone path flanked by swaying tree shadows. The view opened up.
A rundown shrine came into view. Rotted sacred ropes hung down, swaying. Faded wooden plaques knocked against each other in the wind, their vermilion-painted characters blurred.
In the wide, empty space before the dilapidated main hall, four children held hands, forming a circle.
Two children with indistinct faces released their hands, each extending a hand towards him. Hyūga Neji found himself walking towards them uncontrollably.
The moment he grasped their hands, a sense of joy rose unbidden within him. A smile spread across Neji's face, and a laugh unlike his own escaped his throat.
He looked at the black-haired girl kneeling in the center of the circle, head bowed, eyes covered.
Kagome, Kagome…
The four children began to circle joyfully, singing the nursery rhyme with their young voices. Neji, too, sang along in a daze.
The bird in the cage…
The bloody hues of the setting sun cast their shadows on the ground, enclosing them and the girl like a bamboo cage.
When, oh when will it come out?
The song grew urgent. The children quickened their pace. The long shadows of the bamboo cage seemed to twist around the blindfolded girl in the center.
In the night of the dawn…
The crane and turtle slipped…
Who is right behind you now?
The four children stopped. They all turned their gaze to the girl in the middle.
"..."
Hyūga Neji also looked at the blindfolded girl surrounded in the center. Staring at her unfamiliar yet familiar silhouette, his muddled thoughts began to clear.
The nursery rhyme, sung in childish voices, still echoed. Against the backdrop of this desolate scene, the once cheerful lyrics felt profoundly eerie.
Especially the bone-chilling cold emanating from the two hands holding his, which filled Hyūga Neji with a surge of fear.
He suddenly understood the rules and meaning of this song and game.
—If the girl guessed who was behind her, then the person guessed… would have to replace the bird in the cage as the scapegoat.
"..."
The blindfolded girl lifted her head, her pink lips parting slightly.
"Hyūga… Neji…" she whispered softly.
Hearing his name spoken, Hyūga Neji's entire body began to tremble uncontrollably. The two children beside him gently released his hands.
"No! I don't want to!"
He found himself stepping forward uncontrollably, kneeling before the girl. The four children gathered closer. Their gazes were devout, fervent, as if witnessing a sacred rite.
Finally, the girl raised her joined hands, gently caressing Hyūga Neji's face. But her thumbs pressed against his eyes.
Schlick!
Thick, crimson blood gushed forth, pooling on the ground with a wet sound.
"AHHHHH!!"
A scream of unparalleled agony tore from Hyūga Neji's throat, as if a red-hot iron rod had been driven into his brain.
But after he was fitted with the new "eye cover," the four children once again joined hands and began to circle. Their swaying shadows seemed to sew him into the cage. The cheerful, eerie nursery rhyme began again.
Kagome, Kagome…
The bird in the cage…
When, oh when will it come out?
The innocent voices gradually warped into an incomprehensible, bizarre language. Static filled Hyūga Neji's vision. Distorted images began to flash before his eyes.
Gradually, the scene began to change.
He saw countless people branded with ugly seals on their foreheads. He saw them shielding figures without the seal. He saw them fall one after another, dying gruesomely on bloody battlefields.
He saw a figure with the Caged Bird seal, its face blurred, killing. He saw that figure constantly gouging out the eyes of others. He saw that figure writhing on an altar, clutching its eyes in silent agony.
He saw that figure descend from the altar, carve something onto a stone tablet, then walk away. Anyone who tried to stand in its way—whether bearing the seal or not—was slaughtered instantly.
Even when someone raised their hand to activate the seal, it didn't stop the figure's advance.
Hyūga Neji watched the figure walk into a shrine. The survivors gathered outside, not daring to enter. In the silent air, only the heavy sound of overlapping breaths could be heard.
Soon, the grand shrine was engulfed in flames. The figure emerged from the blaze, fire licking at its cheeks.
In its hand, it held a severed, elderly head, the face frozen in terror. The pale, bloody spinal column dragged along the ground, leaving a trail of stark crimson blood.
The figure stopped. The blood pooled into a dark red mirror on the ground, reflecting the terrified white eyes of the onlookers. And within those white eyes, the figure's own bloodstained eyes were reflected.
They were a pair of eyes different from the Byakugan.
They were a pair of deep blue eyes.
Hyūga Neji stood at the very back of the crowd, unable to move or speak, always observing from the sidelines.
Having just experienced the agony of being the "scapegoat," and now witnessing this massacre unfold, he felt a perverse sense of gratification deep within.
However, in the next moment, the figure lifted its gaze, which had been downcast, and made direct eye contact with Hyūga Neji.
Hyūga Neji suddenly had a feeling.
That person… could see him.
He saw two lines of thick, bloody tears flow from those eyes, trickling down the blurred face.
"A clan this ugly… has no reason to exist."
The figure slowly raised one hand. Its palm seemed to grasp a sword. A golden light extended upward, piercing through the night sky's clouds.
"Purge the filth." The voice was soft. "Golden Wheel… Reincarnation Explosion."
The golden light descended, illuminating the pitch-black night. The fear of death became tangible.
BOOM!
Faced with such vivid, undeniable death, Hyūga Neji instinctively exerted all his strength to dodge. But he only managed to snap his eyes open, tumbling off the bed before he could even process what was happening.
"..."
He stared blankly at the ceiling. The dull ache spreading through his body finally pulled him back to reality.
"What… was that?" he whispered. "Who was that person?"
"And those eyes…"