A Thousand White Eyes
IV: Interlude
It was technically Hinata's fault. But as Neji was going to be Hinata-sama's shadow, it fell to him to fix it. If he could, he'd have grumbled that Hinata-sama could clean her own messes. And then he'd have left for training. Tenten had been showing up late and sweaty, and he was fairly sure she had been training with somebody else.
"First," Hidama murmured to him, "you lift the tatami."
Hidama then proceeded to nearly effortlessly lift a 3-by-1 mat and lean it against the wall. Next, he knelt, and somehow got his fingers under the floor's second layer.
"And then, you— hguaa— lift… the… under…floor…ing."
The flooring made groaning sounds nearly as loud as Hidama's, but he eventually managed to pry it up. Doing so created, naturally, a gap between the under-flooring and the base layer, which was where one would find the clamps that rubbed against the under-flooring's nails.
The older man wiped his brow, staring at the ground beneath him. They stood there like that, two Branch House Hyuuga solemnly contemplating either the nature of life or the nature of nightingale floors, for several moments. Neither said anything.
Main House members walked right past them, lines of sight sliding obviously to the floor, then rolling heavenward, even as they continued the spiral-walk that characterised movement in the Hyuuga Compound. Never once did either Hidama or Neji look up from the floor.
"And the rest is up to you."
And then he was gone, leaving Neji to figure out how to fix the floor.
(more complete than you'd think)