“Father, does she hate me?”
High in the midnight sky, six-year-old Toneri Otsutsuki “gazed” at his father, a trace of nervous anxiety lacing his soft voice.
“No, child,” his father replied gently.
“That was simply her way of protecting herself.”
Kammoku Otsutsuki.
He was the father of Toneri Otsutsuki.
“Protecting herself?” Toneri asked softly.
“Is protection something people only need when they feel threatened by danger?
Is it because we made her feel unsafe that she reacted like that?
If so…
should we apologize to her?”
Toneri asked with innocent concern and a flicker of guilt.
Yet, facing his son’s earnest question, Kammoku remained completely silent.
The two of them were direct descendants of Hamura Otsutsuki on the moon from a thousand years ago, making them distant blood relatives of the Hyuga Clan on Earth.
Just like the Hyuga on Earth, Hamura’s lineage on the moon had split into a Main Branch and a Branch House.
However, unlike the absolute master-servant order that governed the Hyuga, the moon’s Main Branch and Branch House had engaged in a bloody, brutal war of ideological extinction—one so severe that the Branch House ended up slaughtering the Main Branch to the last man.
Yet, to completely wipe out the Main Branch, the Branch House had paid a devastating, irrecoverable price.
Now, the only surviving descendants of Hamura on the moon were this dying father and his young son: Kammoku and Toneri.
And…
Kammoku reached up, resting a frail hand gently against his own chest.
Years ago, during that apocalyptic war, he had suffered mortal, incurable injuries.
His time in this world was drawing to a close.
“Father?”
Toneri had been born without eyes, leaving his eye sockets completely hollow.
Yet even so, Kammoku felt as though he could see the profound confusion lingering in his son’s sightless gaze.
“Toneri, what do you think of the humans living on Earth?” Kammoku spoke calmly, opting not to answer his son’s previous question directly.
“Father has always taught me that the people on Earth have been trapped in an endless cycle of war, greed, selfishness, and hatred for a thousand years,” Toneri answered in a quiet, serious tone.
“The path of the Sage of Six Paths was fundamentally flawed; the humans on Earth have already proven his failure.”
It was the doctrine that had been drilled into his mind since the day he was born.
“If the humans on Earth have proven the Sage of Six Paths failed, then that girl named Hinata should likewise be the very embodiment of greed, selfishness, and hatred,” Kammoku said, looking down at his son with a warm, tender gaze.
“So tell me, Toneri…
why did you find her cute?
When I suggested she become your wife, why were you so happy?”
Toneri opened his mouth, but no words came out.
Facing his father’s gentle inquiry, he stood frozen on the clouds.
He pressed his lips together, wavering for a long time before muttering in a low voice:
“She…
she’s different from the rest.”
In the war between the Main Branch and the Branch House on the moon, there had been no true victors—only losers.
If nothing changed, in two or three short years, Toneri would be left completely alone in the cold void of the moon.
Even if Toneri somehow ended up marrying Hinata Hyuga in the distant future, his fate would still be growing old in utter isolation, dying alone on a barren rock.
Kammoku did not want his son to spend an entire lifetime trapped in such suffocating solitude.
Kammoku smiled faintly, looking down at the ancient compound belonging to the Hyuga Clan.
He fell silent for a very long time.
He was about to make a decision that directly violated the sacred teachings of his ancestors.
Perhaps from this moment forth, every single member of the Branch House who had fallen in that tragic war against the Main Branch would become an absolute joke.
At this precise moment, however, he was not the leader of a fallen clan.
He was merely a father.
An ordinary, dying father who wanted nothing more than to pave a path for his son before breathing his last.
The Hyuga Compound.
Hiashi Hyuga was just about to lead Hinata toward the Hokage Residence when his footsteps froze right at the main entrance.
His eyes locked onto the two figures standing directly in front of the gate.
Beneath his stern, imposing composure, a tempest of shock raged in his chest!
He recognized them!
That was an absolute top-secret secret handed down strictly by word of mouth through generations of Hyuga Clan heads!
They were their long-lost kin from the moon!
“Fellow kin of the Hyuga, this is our very first meeting,” the tall man in retro white robes began smoothly.
Though he appeared to be a forty-year-old man in his prime, his face was lined with deep wrinkles, and frost dusted his sideburns.
“My name is Kammoku Otsutsuki.
We share a common ancestor.”
Standing beside Hiashi, Hinata stared blankly at the tall man and the little boy beside him.
Wait, what?!
Does anyone know if I ever met Toneri Otsutsuki when I was six in the original canon story?!
Wasn’t his obsession supposed to be entirely a one-sided crush from afar?!
“Were you the ones in the garden just now?” Hiashi asked, his tone leaving no room for denial.
Simultaneously, he subtly shifted his body, shielding Hinata behind his back.
“Yes,” Kammoku replied calmly, sensing Hiashi’s extreme vigilance.
“There is no need for such guard.
I bear no malice.”
Meanwhile, the strange commotion at the front gates caught the attention of Hizashi Hyuga, who had been maintaining internal order across the compound.
“Brother…” Hizashi rushed over, about to ask what was happening, but he abruptly stopped mid-sentence.
His white eyes locked dead onto Kammoku Otsutsuki!
More accurately, he was staring at Kammoku’s pure, unblemished white eyes!
He knew every single member of the Hyuga Clan by heart, yet he had never seen this man in his life.
“Please,” Hiashi raised his hand, signaling Hizashi to stand down.
He stepped aside, clearing a path to invite Kammoku and his son into the main compound.
“Thank you,” Kammoku nodded slightly, expressing his gratitude to Hiashi.
“Brother, who is this man?” Hizashi asked, looking at his older brother in complete confusion.
“Speak not a single word of what transpired tonight,” Hiashi instructed firmly.
“Tell the clan that Hinata was playing with explosive tags and accidentally set off a blast.”
Hearing those words, Hinata, who had been racking her brains trying to remember if this scene ever happened in canon, snapped out of her thoughts and flared up with instant rage!
Damn it!
Am I really the kind of brainless person who plays around with paper bombs for fun?!
My dearest dad!
How can you frame me without even giving me a script first!
“Hinata, you are not permitted to follow,” Hiashi commanded, extending an arm to block her as she tried to step forward.
“Stay with Hizashi.”
“I…” Hinata opened her mouth to argue, but seeing the unyielding, uncompromising look in Hiashi’s eyes, she could only give up with a huff.
Not knowing whether these so-called relatives from the moon were friend or foe, Hiashi naturally refused to let a single variable touch his daughter.
Under normal circumstances, Hiashi was exceptionally lenient and doting toward Hinata, but on matters of life and death, there was zero room for negotiation.
“Hizashi,” Hiashi looked at his younger twin.
“Understood, Brother.” Receiving the silent order, Hizashi placed a protective hand on Hinata’s shoulder and nodded gravely to Hiashi.
Denied entry, Hinata could only stand at the entrance, watching Hiashi, Kammoku, and young Toneri walk toward the deep council chambers in the inner courtyard.
Just as they were about to disappear around the corner, Toneri turned his head, “looking” back directly at Hinata.
You blind little brat, do you even have eyes to look with?!
Hinata grumbled inwardly, glaring right back at his empty sockets.
Yet…
Watching those three figures vanish into the night, a subtle pang of melancholy touched Hinata’s heart.
She had already guessed the true reason behind this unexpected visit.
Simply because she had thrown a few paper bombs at them earlier, a dying father and his blind son—who were originally supposed to just take a quiet peak and leave—had gone out of their way to make a formal, risky appearance…