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“I’ll protect you with everything I’ve got!” Rock Lee flashed a row of perfectly aligned white teeth, eyes blazing with conviction as he thrust a thumbs-up.
Framed by that green spandex bodysuit, he looked like…
a watermelon absolutely brimming with fighting spirit.
Sakura Haruno’s expression froze solid.
Then pure horror flooded her face and she scrambled back three steps, hands flailing wildly in front of her.
“No, no, absolutely not!” Her voice rang with open revulsion as she forced herself to glance at Rock Lee’s thick, broom-like eyebrows.
“Your eyebrows are way too thick, classmate!”
The hopeful light in Rock Lee’s eyes snuffed out in an instant, as though every ounce of strength and purpose had drained straight out of him.
He shuffled miserably to the side, crouched down, and started drawing circles in the dirt with a stick.
“Ah…
what a blow…”
The white-eyed youth had already stopped paying attention to the dejected Rock Lee.
He turned his gaze toward A on the other side of the landing, thin lips pressed tight.
He hesitated for a few seconds.
Then he drew a slow breath, extended his palm, and let a light of cold resolve kindle in his clear, pale eyes.
“Hyuga Branch House — Neji Hyuga.
I request instruction from the Raikage of the Hidden Cloud Village.”
That single sentence hit the stairwell landing like a silencing jutsu.
The noise cut out completely.
Every eye went wide.
People stared at each other.
“Is that kid…
out of his mind?”
“A genin challenging the Raikage?
That’s just asking to die.”
“Are all Konoha genin this insane?”
Rock Lee was still wallowing in the misery of Sakura’s rejection.
The moment Neji’s words landed, he flashed through several body-flickers and materialized at Neji’s side like a green bolt of lightning.
(Hurricane no Tadori Nada: opening-round backstab, you know how he is.)
He grabbed Neji’s arm in a firm grip, face dead serious, thick eyebrows practically knotted together.
“Neji, you—”
“Neji, don’t!” Tenten went pale beside him, grabbing his right arm, urgency written all over her face.
She looked toward A.
Her heart was a mess, pulled in fifteen directions at once.
On one side was A, who had made her heart flutter the very first time she saw him.
On the other was her long-time teammate, someone she’d trained and fought beside for years.
It was like trying to choose between the palm and the back of her own hand.
Either way, if someone got hurt, it would hurt her too.
[And he’s the Raikage…
a powerhouse on the same level as the Hokage.
Neji is a hundred percent going to die…] The color drained from Tenten’s face. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
She could already picture Neji lying in a pool of blood.
Izumo and Kotetsu, standing at A’s side, looked like they were about to have a collective breakdown.
“Cut it out!” they barked.
“What do you think you’re doing?!
Stand down at once!”
In their heads, they’d already cursed Neji Hyuga’s ancestors back eighteen generations.
They had just barely kept that Cloud brute, the Fourth Raikage, from causing a full diplomatic incident, and now this Hyuga brat jumped out to torch everything.
What, was Konoha not peaceful enough for you?
Neji’s face was set in stone.
He kept his eyes locked on A, unyielding fire burning inside that pale gaze.
Did he not know how massive the gap was between himself and the Raikage of the Hidden Cloud?
He knew.
But some things aren’t done because you have a chance of winning.
They’re done because you have no choice.
[Father…] Hizashi Hyuga’s face surfaced in his mind, slow and inevitable.
That familiar face.
That warm smile.
It felt like it was only yesterday.
It hurt.
God, it hurt.
A thousand needles driving into his heart at once, the pain so sharp he could barely breathe.
Hizashi Hyuga’s death was tangled up with the Main House in ways too complicated to unravel.
But stripped down to its most direct cause, it was the man standing right in front of him.
The Fourth Raikage of the Hidden Cloud Village.
He could choose patience.
He could become a predator biding its time in the dark, waiting until he was strong enough to take revenge.
He could even use his age to his advantage and simply outlast A, wait for him to wither and die.
But that path was an unbearable humiliation to Neji.
That was the way of cowards.
His enemy was standing right here.
Even knowing he was nothing but an ant in front of A.
Even knowing his challenge looked pathetic and laughable to everyone watching.
He still had to move.
The Caged Bird sealed him, he couldn’t raise a hand against the Main House.
If he died at the hands of his other enemy instead, that was fine by him.
“Hah!” He shouted, veins spiking at his temples, and every drop of chakra in his body surged out without restraint.
He ripped free of Rock Lee and Tenten both, shot forward like a loosed arrow, and launched the strongest attack he could muster at his current level, Eight Trigrams: Sixty-Four Palms!
A watched the white-eyed kid come barreling straight at him.
He glanced sideways at Izumo and Kotetsu.
“Is he always this brave?”
Neji Hyuga charged in.
Neji Hyuga went down.
The dull impact echoed off the walls, and the boy who had rushed in with death in his eyes now lay face-down on the ground, eyes shut, enjoying the soundest sleep he’d had in years.
(Neji: “Cured my insomnia in a single hit.
Truly a miracle worker, Doctor A~”)
A slowly withdrew his knife-hand strike.
One hit.
What else was there to say?
Izumo and Kotetsu felt the massive weight lift from their chests.
They had genuinely been bracing to collect a corpse.
He was the Kage of a village, after all.
Even if A had gone full force and killed Neji on the spot, they’d have had no ground to stand on, Neji threw the first strike.
That was just how it was.
As for the Hyuga clan…
he was Branch House.
How many people were really going to lose sleep over a Branch House member?
“We sincerely apologize, Lord Raikage.
This child—”
“Forget it.
I’m not holding a grudge.” A waved a hand and cut Izumo off.
He had zero interest in listening to anyone grovel.
“Get the brat out of my sight.
He’s an eyesore.”
He knew Neji Hyuga’s backstory well enough.
He could even understand the hatred.
The kid’s father really had been killed because of the Hidden Cloud.
Back when he used to watch the anime, he’d seen everything through Konoha’s eyes, through Neji’s eyes, and naturally had nothing but contempt for the Hidden Cloud, that village always trying to steal other people’s things.
But position shapes perspective.
He was the Fourth Raikage now.
He couldn’t afford sentimentality.
If Neji hated the Hidden Cloud and hated him personally, that made Neji an enemy.
And enemies belonged in graves.
He had felt the urge to kill the boy just now.
In the end, he chose the gentlest option available: knock him out cold.
Because whether it was Tenten or those two Hyuga sisters, they all had deep ties to Neji.
Making things uglier than necessary would only cause problems down the road.
A cold glint moved through A’s eyes.
If he could use the Caged Bird situation as leverage and fold Neji Hyuga into his own camp, that would be the ideal outcome, happy all around, and the boy kept his life.
But if this so-called “Hyuga Branch House genius” turned out to be uncontrollable?
Then he could go keep his father company.
➤ Next: Three-Pronged Kunai, the Nine Rookies
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