Chapter 4

Neji POV

When I was four years old, my father was killed inside the Hyuga Manor. I watched it happen and I can still remember every little detail of it. He died trying to protect me and my mother. Some details are a little fuzzy, but I remember the three of us being asleep in my father's childhood bedroom. He told me it was same as it was when he was a teenager; my grandparents hadn't changed a thing about it.

My parents had only been married a few short months. We were waiting for the few finishing touches on our new house to be over with. I remember my mother telling me earlier that day that I was going to be having a little brother or sister.

I can still hear the creak of the stairs as the infiltrator came up the stairs to the bedroom the three of us shared. The sound rings through my ears at night, every time I close my eyes I hear the door swing open and hit the wall waking up my mother and father.

My mother protectively wrapped her arms around me as my father got out of bed to fend off the trespasser.

My mother reached for the phone to call 911 but was halted when the man pulled out a gun.

Looking back on the incident, I've come to realize that the man had been crazy. He was confused and he was scared. He told my father to open the safe in the corner of the room and hand him all the valuables sealed inside. When my father refused, the man raised his voice and pointed the gun at both my mother and I, "Open it or your family dies," he said.

This scared my father. His biggest fear was losing his family. He took his time opening the safe, but this made the man grow impatient. He shouted at my father to hurry up.

My father had the money in his hands but he hesitated to hand it over. I now realize that the money he was holding was the money that he and my mother had been saving for when I would need it in the future. He didn't want me to not have all the options.

My father silently slid the money back into the safe and locked it back up. He stood up and turned to face the man standing in the middle of the room with the gun in his hand.

"What are you doing!?" the man yelled, "I told you to give me the money!"

"I can't do that," my father said to him, "You see, the money is for my son. I would hate for you to be the one who has taken away opportunities from him."

"Open it!" he yelled again, "I don't care about your kid! I need the money for mine!"

"I'm sorry, but I just can't do that for you."

Before I could blink, the gun had been fired. My mother screamed and the shooter ran. I sat in the bed confused and scared as my mother bent over my father's body. My aunt and uncle had now entered the room. My aunt screamed in terror and my uncle picked me up out of the bed to bring me away from the crime scene. He set me in the spare bed in the room that his daughter slept in and tucked me in, telling me that everything was going to be okay and to sleep.

I couldn't sleep of course; I remember over hearing the police carry my fathers body out of the house and into the medical examiners car.

The moment I heard the door close behind the last of the police is when my mother screamed again, "you're having a miscarriage," said my aunt, "You're in shock."

Since that day I was never an ordinary kid. I was quiet and only spoke when spoken to. Then when I got to kindergarten, I met Tenten. She and Lee became my best friends. We did everything together. They were the only people I ever told about my father's murder and they were the only people I was ever going to tell. It hurt so badly, but I had to keep strong for my mother and my friends. It was then when we were twelve, Tenten's father left.

Tenten loved her father more than anything. Every time we were asked to do a project for school on the person we looked up to the most, she chose him. They talked about everything, they shared the same interests and oddly enough, the same birthday. I had never seen someone hurt that bad in such a short period of time.

When we were fourteen, Tenten accidently let it slip out that she liked me. She was so embarrassed she didn't talk to me for days. And when I told her I liked her back, she was so happy she wouldn't shut up. We had our first kiss that day. It was after school under the cherry blossom tree that we sat under everyday while we waited for our mothers to pick us up.

It was late September our freshman year when I finally asked her to be my girlfriend. She said yes of course.

And that whole year, everything had been going great, we were together and we had our group of friends. I couldn't have asked for anything more. But one day the two of us just became so stressed out that neither of us ever wanted to do anything anymore. We sat alone in our rooms daily and sulked, we stopped talking to Lee and our other friends, and we got new friends. Friends that were feeling the same things as us, friends that cut themselves and intoxicated themselves with drugs and alcohol, they told us that if we did those things, the pain would go away. At that point we were willing to try anything. We smoked enough weed to not feel anything for days, we drank before bed every night hoping to pass out from intoxication. Our arms and legs became cutting boards, and we spent our time between classes fucking in the bathroom. Nothing was ever the same. But it worked, it stopped the pain. Not permanently but just temporarily was enough. It kept us from going insane.

Our families didn't even realize that our rebel was an unexpressed cry for help.

Lee tried talking to us, but eventually we cut all ties with him, we just didn't care.

Eventually I quit playing soccer and Tenten quit dance Team. We both stashed away our guitars under our beds. Tenten covered her piano and I covered my drums. She stopped singing, and I stopped writing music. It was as if we were an empty shell and the only thing we had was each other.

The first time we made love was when I cut her name into my right hand. I told her I would be with her forever and never leave her. We were in love and there wasn't anything anyone could do to pull us apart. She was my shoulder to cry on and I was hers. We were two halves of a whole. But how could we be a whole if neither one of us had even half of what we should have?