The document contained only one line.
“Bloodline contamination assessment: failed. Eligibility for the Chunin Ninja Exams revoked.”
Hinata Ryo folded it four times, tucked it into his jacket pocket, and walked out of the elders’ council chamber. The hallway lights were white, as blank as the deepest ring of the Byakugan. He had walked this hallway for fifteen years. Every time he passed through, he thought he belonged in the room at the other end.
It turned out he had never belonged there.
Someone was waiting outside. It was Hinata Jin, a classmate half a head taller than him, whose Byakugan perception was a full three times stronger. Jin said nothing. He only glanced at Ryo, then lowered his head and stepped aside.
That hurt more than anything he could have said.
Ryo didn’t go back to the dorm or seek anyone out. He walked alone to the cliff at Konoha’s eastern edge, sat down, unfolded the paper he had folded four times, held it down against the wind, and read it again.
“Bloodline contamination.”
His Byakugan was real. His chakra was real. The sweat he had shed, the calluses he had formed, every failure he had endured over fifteen years, all of it was real.
But that line said he was unqualified, so unqualified he was.
Ryo let go of the paper. The wind swept it over the cliff, and it vanished into the dusk. As he watched it disappear, he suddenly felt something stir inside his chest. It wasn’t sadness or anger.
It was more like something ancient had finally decided to awaken.
