▸ Column · The shinobi era of the Hidden Leaf Village, among the Hyuga clan and their squads
NEJI HYUGA replies.
Replied to by Neji Hyuga, with a rebuttal from Hinata Hyuga.
The letter
I share a squad with a kunoichi named Priya, and for nearly a year we've been at each other's throats. Every person I've gone to — my partner, my mother, my two closest comrades, even the medic-nin I confide in — has heard me out and agreed that Priya is the unreasonable one. The trouble is I've started to notice I only ever tell them the parts that flatter me. I leave out the cutting note I left on the mission board, the way I rolled my eyes at her in the briefing tent in front of the whole squad. I honestly believe I'm the more disciplined shinobi in this rivalry — but I'm also the one who hand-picked everyone I asked. How do I find out whether I'm the one in the wrong, when everyone I trust has only heard my version, and when, if I'm honest, some part of me would rather not know at all?
Neji Hyuga replies
The hardest part is already behind you. You have seen the eye-roll, the cutting note you quietly left out of every retelling. Most people never get that far. So I will not flatter you by calling it small.
You know the Byakugan sees in every direction. What people forget is that it keeps one blind spot — a single point, directly behind the one who wears it, where his own conduct lives. You have just looked into yours. Do not look away now.
I once stood certain I had read the world correctly. I looked down on a boy who tried harder than I did and called him a fool — I had my account, my witnesses, my pride. He beat me. Admitting I had been completely wrong was not the humiliation I feared. It was the strongest thing I have ever done, because it meant tearing down a wall I'd spent my whole life building.
Stop assembling a jury for your defense. The verdict you want from them is worthless and you know it. Go to Priya. Name your part plainly — the note, the eye-roll, that the fault was yours — without folding it into a misunderstanding. The part of you that would rather not know is the wall. Take it down yourself.
— Neji Hyuga
Hinata Hyuga weighs in
Neji, you'd have them stand before Priya and confess like it's a crime. I know that certainty of yours from the other side — you once aimed all of it at me, and a verdict was never what healed us. Patience was.
You are not the villain. Listen — the fact that you caught yourself curating, that you flinched at your own eye-roll? That's the quiet steel. Cowards don't audit themselves. Don't hammer it into self-punishment.
One small step. Tell one person the whole story, eye-roll included. Just one. And before you write Priya off — was the worst of her who she truly is, or who she was on a hard day?
— Hinata Hyuga
▸ Read next