The fever had returned.
Hyuga Shokuhi lay in his futon, drenched in sweat, his thin body trembling beneath the thin cotton sheet.
The world swam in and out of focus…the wooden ceiling of his room, the paper lantern casting flickering shadows, and more importantly…the concerned face of his sister hovering somewhere above him.
“Sho-kun, please…
you need to drink something.”
Hinata’s voice felt like it came from very far away, muffled as if through water.
He tried to respond, but his throat felt like sandpaper, and the words refused to take form.
His head throbbed with a familiar, crushing pain…the kind that had plagued him since birth, the kind that stole his vision and left him gasping.
“Sho-kun!”
Her small hands pressed a cool cloth to his forehead.
He could feel her chakra…always gentle, steady, and warm, trying to soothe his fever.
It wasn’t working.
It never worked.
“Mother…
Mother would know what to do.”
Hinata’s voice broke as she mentioned their mother.
After all, she was only eleven, just like him, but she carried the weight of both their grief.
It’s been three years since their mother had died.
Three years since the only person in the clan besides Hinata who had ever truly cared about him had slipped away, leaving behind only memories and a few worn photographs.
Sho wanted to tell her that it was okay.
He wanted to reassure her, the way she always reassured him.
But the pain was too much, and his lips wouldn’t move, and all he could do was lie there, drowning in his own body.
<><>
The door slid open.
Sho’s awareness shifted from the suffocating heat of his fever to the cold presence that had just entered the room.
He didn’t need to open his eyes.
He knew the weight of those footsteps, the particular quality of that silence, the way the air seemed to thin whenever he entered.
Hiashi Hyuga.
His father.
The head of the clan.
“Sho-kun!” Hinata scrambled to her feet, bowing quickly.
“Father, he’s-he’s very sick.
I’ve been trying to bring the fever down, but-”
“Hinata.
Leave us.”
“But-”
“That was not a request.”
The words were firm and utterly final.
Hinata hesitated for a moment, and Sho felt her hand squeeze his one last time before she rose and shuffled toward the door.
“Yes, Father.”
He heard the soft thud of it closing behind her.
And then he was alone with his father.
Sho forced his eyes open.
The effort was monumental, but he needed to see.
He needed to understand.
Hiashi stood near the doorway with his back to Sho, speaking in low tones to the clan healer who had accompanied him.
The healer, who was an elderly man with tired eyes and a perpetually worried expression, shook his head slowly.
“The fever is too severe, Hyuga-sama.
His chakra pathways are…
constricted.
Narrower than I’ve ever seen.
The illness is exacerbating his condition.
If the fever doesn’t break by morning…”
“By morning what?” Hiashi’s voice was flat, unreadable.
The healer hesitated.
“He may not survive the night.”
There was a long silence after.
And then…his father said something that made his heart seize in his chest.
“I see.”
It was just two words.
But the tone…the tone in his father’s voice contained no grief whatsoever.
It was not worry either, or even resignation.
It was relief.
Sho had grown up reading silences and subtleties.
When you were weak, when you were sick, when you were a disappointment to everyone around you…then you would become good at reading people.
This was something that came out of necessity, because you needed to know what they were thinking before they said it.
After all, their words would only confirm what you already feared.
He knew that tone.
He’d heard it in the whispers of the clan elders.
He’d seen it in the glances of the other children.
He’d known it in his bones for eleven years.
His father wished that Sho had never been born.
He already knew this, but…hearing it from his father’s own lips still felt like being stabbed in the heart with a kunai.
“Shokuhi has been a burden to this clan since the day he arrived,” Hiashi continued, his voice quiet enough that he likely thought Sho was unconscious.
“His illness has consumed resources.
His weakness has brought shame.
I have been…
lenient, allowing Hinata to dote on him.
But perhaps it’s time to be practical.”
“Hyuga-sama…” The healer tried to hide his shock at what he was hearing.
“He is your only son.”
“He is a liability.
The clan’s future cannot afford-” Hiashi paused, and Sho heard him draw a breath.
“If he does not survive the night, it may be for the best.
He will no longer shame the clan with his weakness.
And Hinata…”
Another pause.
“Hinata will be able to focus on her training without any more distractions.
She will be a fine heir, given time.
She does not need this…
this weight dragging her down.”
Sho closed his eyes.
He will no longer shame the clan with his weakness.
Hinata will be able to focus on her training.
This weight dragging her down.
He wanted to cry.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to beg his father to look at him, really look at him, and see that he was more than just a burden.
But he had no strength left.
The fever was consuming him from the inside out, and Hiashi’s words were finishing the job.
Because the terrible truth was…that he was not wrong.
For many, being born into one of the most powerful ninja clans in all the Elemental Nations, would be considered a blessing.
And even more so, being born as the only son of the clan leader.
If circumstances had been different, he could have lived a long and pleasant life, surrounded by all kinds of luxuries and never lacking anything.
Unfortunately…the gods have a twisted sense of humor.
He had been cursed with a weak body that was always sick and feeble.
For a clan that takes so much pride in their martial might, he had been nothing but a burden.
He was shaming the clan with his existence.
Everyone knew it, even if only a few dared to say it out loud.
The elders who spoke behind their hands.
The branch members who couldn’t meet his eyes but often laughed and whispered after they thought he could no longer hear them.
And even his cousin, Neji, whose hateful glare had been a constant presence since he was three years old.
Neji.
Sho’s mind drifted to the older boy, the cousin who had once been kind to him.
Before the kidnapping.
Before Hizashi’s death.
Before everything had gone wrong.
At three years old, Sho had been taken by a Cloud envoy who mistook him for the Hyuga heir.
Unaware he was just taking the useless replacement.
His father had still rescued him, and during the rescue, he had been forced to kill the kidnapper, and in the political fallout that followed, it led to the death of Hizashi, who chose to take his brother’s place.
Which meant that Neji’s father had essentially died because of Sho.
And Neji hated him for it.
“I have to go,” Hiashi’s voice cut through Sho’s thoughts.
“There is a council meeting.
Keep me informed of his condition.”
“Hyuga-sama, if he…if the worst happens-”
“Then he will be cremated.
Standard ceremony.
Small, private.” A pause.
“The clan doesn’t need the spectacle.”
Sho heard the door slide open.
He heard his father’s footsteps retreating down the hallway.
He heard the healer sigh, shuffle over to check his pulse one last time, and then leave as well.
And then he was alone.
Utterly, completely, devastatingly alone.
<><>
The fever burned hotter.
Sho’s body convulsed, and he felt the sweat soaking through his bedclothes, felt his heart hammering against his ribs.
His Byakugan throbbed behind his eyes, desperate to activate, but the pain was too great.
He couldn’t see through his eyes.
Couldn’t see through the white blindfold of his fevered brain.
Maybe this is it.
The thought came quietly, without fear.
Maybe this is for the best…no more pain…no more being a disappointment.
He thought of Hinata.
His twin.
His protector, and his only ally.
She had spent her entire life defending him, sacrificing herself for him, loving him despite everything.
And what had he given her in return?
Nothing.
Only more weight.
More worry, and more reasons for the clan elders to look down on her.
She would be free…she deserves that much.
He thought of Naruto.
His only friend at the academy.
The loud, obnoxious, lonely boy who sat at the back of the class with him, the only other student who was worse than Sho.
They had bonded over their shared failure, their shared isolation.
Naruto didn’t care that Sho was weak.
Naruto didn’t care that he was a burden.
He was such a kind boy…he never understood why the village hated him so much.
He would be sad.
For a while.
But he would move on.
He would find better friends.
He thought of his mother.
Her gentle smile.
Her soft hands brushing his hair back from his forehead.
Her voice, always patient, always loving.
“You are not a burden, Sho-kun.
You are my son.
My precious son.
Never forget that.”
But she was gone.
And the memory of her words couldn’t save him.
The pain in his head intensified.
It felt like his skull was splitting open, like something was clawing its way out of his brain.
He cried out…a weak, pathetic sound, barely audible over the pounding of blood in his ears.
Let it end.
Please.
Let it end already.
He closed his eyes and surrendered…he would allow the darkness to rise up to claim him.
But instead of the release of death, he received something else entirely.
Images.
Images began flooding his consciousness like a broken dam.
He saw a young man, maybe sixteen or seventeen, lying in a hospital bed.
An IV drip in his arm.
A heart monitor beeping steadily.
He had extremely pale skin, like someone who had barely felt the sun in their entire life.
He had hollow cheeks, and dark circles under his eyes.
This young man was sick…very sick.
Just like Sho.
Always sick…always bedridden.
But this person lived in a different world from his own.
He learned all about it in an instant… some buildings were so tall that they seemed to scrape the sky.
They had large metallic birds that flew without the need for chakra and carried dozens of people inside.
Small screens that everyone carried in their pockets and could communicate with each other in an instant.
They had technology beyond anything Sho had ever seen.
The young man was watching a screen.
Fighting enemies with a controller in his hands.
Laughing with friends over a headset.
Reading books that transported him to other worlds…worlds of magic, of adventure, and conquest.
A short life.
Barely seventeen years long.
Cut short by the same weakness that had plagued him from birth.
But full of moments.
Full of connections.
Full of a different kind of strength…the strength to keep smiling despite everything.
A final breath.
A fading heartbeat.
And then…
Darkness.
And then Sho.
Something clicked into place inside his mind.
A puzzle piece he hadn’t even known was missing.
A doorway that had been closed his entire life, finally, finally swinging open.
His headaches.
The fever.
The constant pressure behind his eyes that had made his Byakugan feel like a curse.
It was all clear now.
It had been this.
All of it.
He had been carrying two sets of memories inside his skull.
One soul with two minds trying to inhabit one body.
Two lifetimes of experience, knowledge, and pain, all compressed into the fragile vessel of a small child.
He had been born with memories of a life he hadn’t lived.
And his body, already weak, had been unable to process the weight.
But now…
Now the memories were no longer trapped.
They were flowing freely.
Integrating and becoming part of him, no longer a foreign presence that he was fighting against without realizing.
And along with these memories…something else had awoken.
Something that came along from a very distant world.
When he opened his eyes again, something was hovering in his field of vision.
[System loaded…
initiating…
Welcome, Hyuga Shokuhi.
Congratulations.
You have survived the installation process.]
What is that?…’ He wondered if he was having hallucinations brought on by the fever.
But then, the message disappeared and was replaced by another one.
[Your soul has successfully integrated with the memories of your previous life.
In recognition of your perseverance, you have been granted access to the Second Chance System.
Would you like to proceed with initialization?…]
“…huh?.”