(Several years before the story starts...)
The sliding door to her father's study was made of paper and wood, but it felt like a seal on a tomb.
Hanabi, seven years old and already tired of silence, didn't knock. She shoved the door open.
Hiashi Hyūga sat at his low table, the room lit only by a single flickering oil lamp. The shadows stretched long and sharp against the walls, mimicking the jagged tension that always filled the Main House. There was a smell in the air—sharp, fermented, and sour. Sake.
"Father," Hanabi said, her voice small but her chin high.
Hiashi didn't look up. He was staring at a scroll, but his eyes weren't moving. The veins around his temples were pulsing faintly, a sign that his Byakugan was active, or that he was holding back a headache.
"I saw Neji-niisan," Hanabi said. She stepped into the room, her bare feet cold on the tatami. "He was in the dojo. He was bleeding. He said the seal hurts when you're angry."
Hiashi's hand tightened around his small ceramic cup. "It is training, Hanabi. Go to bed."
"It didn't look like training," she insisted. She felt a hot, prickling sensation behind her eyes. Not the Byakugan, just tears she refused to shed. "It looked like punishment. Why do you hate him? He's Uncle Hizashi's son. He's family."
Hiashi slowly set the cup down. The ceramic clicked against the lacquer table—a sound like a bone snapping.
He turned his head. His eyes were pure white, two moons that offered no light, only judgment.
"You speak of things you do not understand," Hiashi rumbled. His voice was low, vibrating in the floorboards. "The Branch Family exists to protect the Main Family. Discipline is necessary to keep the order. Without order, the Hyūga fall."
"That's stupid!" Hanabi yelled. The words ripped out of her before she could check them. "It's mean! Mother wouldn't have wanted you to hurt him!"
The air in the room stopped.
The name hung between them. Hanami. The Flower. The woman who had died quietly, fading away like a cherry blossom in a storm, hiding her illness so she wouldn't be a burden.
Hiashi's face twisted. It wasn't rage, exactly. It was something uglier. It was grief that had curdled into resentment.
He stood up so fast his chair fell over. He grabbed the sake bottle and hurled it at the wall.
CRASH.
Shards of pottery exploded outward. The smell of alcohol filled the room, stinging Hanabi's nose.
"Do not speak her name to lecture me!" Hiashi roared.
Hanabi flinched, taking a step back. She had never seen him lose control like this. He was the Sun. He was supposed to be constant, burning, unmovable.
"Why can't you be more like her?!" Hiashi shouted, his breathing ragged. He looked at Hanabi, but he wasn't seeing her. He was seeing a ghost. "She knew her place! She knew silence! Why must you and your sister be so... so..."
He trailed off, his hand shaking.
Hanabi didn't wait for him to finish. She turned and ran.
She ran through the corridors, her socks sliding on the polished wood. She ran past the portraits of the ancestors who stared down with blank, white eyes. She ran until her lungs burned and the perfectly manicured air of the house felt like it was choking her.
She burst out into the gardens.
The night air was crisp and bit at her skin. The Hyūga gardens were famous for their perfection—every stone placed just so, every tree pruned to mathematical exactness. There were no weeds. There was no chaos.
Hanabi hated it.
She stomped over the gravel path, the stones crunching loudly under her feet, destroying the silence. She wiped her eyes furiously with her sleeve.
Why can't you be more like her?
Be like Mother? Dead?
Be like Hinata? Scared?
Hinata never yelled. Hinata took the hits and apologized for bruising Father's fist. Hinata was "good."
Hanabi kicked a stone into the koi pond. Plop. The ripples distorted the reflection of the moon.
"I don't want to be quiet," she whispered to the fish. "Quiet people get hurt."
"Quiet people often do," a voice rasped from the shadows. "But loud people often get hit."
Hanabi jumped, spinning around.
Sitting on the engawa of the retired elder's quarters, wrapped in a thick quilt, was her grandfather.
Hisashi Hyūga was old. His skin was like crumpled parchment, and his hair was a thinning cloud of white. He sat with a cup of tea steaming in his hands, looking at the garden with eyes that had seen too much and solved too little.
"Grandfather," Hanabi sniffled, trying to straighten her kimono. "I wasn't... I was just..."
"Making ripples," Hisashi said gently. He patted the wooden spot beside him. "Come here, Hanabi-chan. The stones are cold."
Hanabi hesitated, then walked over and sat down. The heat radiating from him smelled of old tatami and herbal medicine.
"Father is stupid," Hanabi muttered, pulling her knees to her chest.
Hisashi chuckled, a dry sound like leaves scraping together. "He is. He is a man holding a very heavy roof with very tired arms. It makes him grumpy."
"He threw a bottle," Hanabi accused. "He told me to be like Mother. To be quiet."
Hisashi sighed. He took a sip of his tea, his white eyes closing.
"Your mother... Hanami," he said the name carefully, tasting it. "She was a beautiful woman. 'Flower Viewing.' Do you know why she was named that?"
Hanabi shook her head.
"Because she was meant to be watched," Hisashi said. "She was lovely, and she faded quickly. Her nature was Nice. She saw pain, and she tried to smooth it over. She stepped between people to stop the fighting, to keep the peace."
He looked at Hanabi.
"And your sister, Hinata. Her nature is Sweet. She sees pain, and she absorbs it. She endures it so others don't have to. She supports."
Hanabi frowned. "So I'm bad? Because I'm not nice or sweet?"
Hisashi reached out. His hand, shaking with age, cupped her cheek. His thumb brushed away a tear track.
"No, little firework," he whispered. "You are not nice. You are Kind."
Hanabi blinked. "What's the difference?"
"Niceness is politeness. Sweetness is submission," Hisashi said, his voice firming up. "But Kindness? Kindness is a weapon. Kindness is seeing something unfair—like your cousin bleeding in the dojo—and feeling it in your own gut. It is seeing injustice and refusing to look away."
He leaned in closer.
"You do not think of yourself. You do not think, 'Will Father be mad?' You think, 'Neji is hurting.' You feel his pain as your own. That is called empathy, Hanabi."
Hanabi felt her lip wobble. "But Father hates it."
"Father fears it," Hisashi corrected. "He fears it because empathy requires you to look at the cracks in our clan. He wants you to be blind, because being blind is easier than fixing the foundation."
He sighed, a long exhale that seemed to deflate his frail body. Then, the corners of his wrinkled eyes crinkled. He smiled.
"You yelled at the Clan Head for the sake of a Branch member," Hisashi murmured. "You are a good girl, Hanabi."
The dam broke. Hanabi buried her face in her grandfather's quilt and sobbed. He held her, his hand patting her back in a rhythmic, soothing motion, while the perfect, silent garden watched them.
"Don't let them take your eyes, little one," he whispered into her hair. "Even if they are white, make sure you see."
After a long time, Hanabi pulled away. She wiped her face, feeling lighter, though her chest still ached.
"I should go back," she whispered.
"Go," Hisashi said. "Sleep. Tomorrow, you will be loud again."
Hanabi smiled, a small, fierce thing. She hugged him one last time, then hopped off the porch and ran back toward the main house, her steps a little lighter on the gravel.
Hisashi watched his granddaughter disappear into the shadows of the corridor.
He picked up his tea. It was cold.
He stared at the moon reflected in the pond. It was a perfect circle. Unbroken. Just like the lie of the Hyūga.
Empathy, he thought bitterly. A dangerous gift in this house.
He remembered his own sons. Hiashi and Hizashi. Twin brothers. One born minutes earlier, destined for the sun. One born minutes later, destined for the cage.
He remembered the day the seal was applied to Hizashi. He remembered his own father, the stern Hokkocchi, standing over the boy. Hokkocchi, who had sacrificed his own free will to the previous generation, believing it was duty. He had passed that chain down to Hisashi, who had passed it to his sons.
Hisashi looked at his hands. They were spotted with age, but he could still see the chakra network flowing beneath the skin. The Byakugan saw everything. It saw the tenketsu, the flow of energy, the walls, the distance for miles.
But it was a cursed eye.
It magnified the world, zoomed in on the details, on the flaws, on the physical mechanics of life. But it struggled to see the heart.
Did I raise my sons with the empathy to see as clearly as their kekkei genkai? Hisashi wondered.
He thought of Hiashi, throwing bottles at the wall, terrified of his own grief.
He thought of Hizashi, dead by his own choice, a sacrifice that was half-love and half-spite.
He thought of Hanami, who died smiling to protect them from the truth of her weakness.
No, Hisashi realized, the cold tea bitter on his tongue. I taught them to see 360 degrees of the battlefield, and not one inch of each other.
He set the cup down.
"At least," he whispered to the empty garden, "the little firework is watching."