Author's Note: Thanks for reading! Please leave a review - whether they're short and sweet or long and critical, they all keep me motivated! I'll reply to any constructive feedback. Did you think Neji's new disdain for Naruto is in-character? Let me know how you think that conversation should have gone...
"Hey, Neji! We need one more person for dinner so we can use Chouji's all-you-can-eat barbecue coupon!"
Naruto Uzumaki was one of the last people Neji wanted to see or hear, period. And on his return trip from the village bookstore, Risa's birthday card in hand, Neji was especially not eager to be bothered.
Naruto – freshly returned from a training retreat at Mount Myoboku – lingered along the main street of the village's downtown business district with Shikamaru and Chouji. After six months of subsisting on insects, leaves and grasses, the blonde ninja craved the taste of flame-grilled meat, and Chouji's craving never subsided. To Shikamaru's annoyance, Naruto insisted on a wait and see strategy to finding a fourth person after Sakura, Ino, Sai and Lee declined their invitations.
"Hello, Naruto. Shikamaru. Chouji," Neji replied, arms crossed. "I find it surprising the barbecue establishment hasn't banned all of you for causing untold damages last time."
"Listen, we've been out here for an hour already with this guy flagging down everyone he knows by name. You got anywhere to be tonight?" Shikamaru asked, before Chouji could protest Neji's last comment.
"I'm dining with my cousin. I've been called to observe this birthday 'celebration.'"
Neji didn't add the standard qualifier of unfortunately or I'm sorry, but… The prospect of spending a dinner listening to Naruto's mindless optimism and platitudes made his uncle's birthday banquet seem fun. Tension built in his chest at the sight of the hidden leaf's hyperactive knucklehead ninja – the naive wannabe-hero who lulled Neji with dreams of finding his own freedom despite his inferior birth. Promises that he'd change the Hyuga once he became hokage. Naruto really imagined himself as more capable of reforming the village's great clans than Hashirama Senju.
The arrogance, Neji thought. I can't believe I was so eager to accept his bullshit.
But for a few years, Naruto's declarations at the chunin exams had appeared vindicated. Until Neji realized he'd only found a little more room to pace in his cage. The bars remained solid as ever.
"Wait – but Hinata's birthday isn't until –" Naruto interjected, pointing a finger between Neji's unamused eyes.
"I have many cousins, Naruto. Dozens of them."
"Yeah? Then what's so special about this one?" Naruto yelled back.
His blue eyes narrowed in apparent confusion over why Neji would insist on observing the birthday of an unknown, faceless Hyuga cousin. With dozens of cousins, his friend would never stop attending birthday dinners.
"My uncle would like me to befriend her. He wants us to develop a relationship more suited to our current situation."
Neji allowed those two sentences, delivered in his best monotone, to stand in for all that Naruto missed during his absence.
"He probably means his wife," Shikamaru muttered to Naruto, just audibly enough for Neji to scowl at the word wife.
"Wait a second – Neji has a wife now? But...Ten-ten's birthday isn't until –" Naruto exclaimed, shaking his head.
"I think Shikamaru means to say that Neji's wife is also his cousin," Chouji explained to save Neji the awkward disclosure. "He got married while you were gone."
"Hey, what about Ten-ten? You guys broke up? And since when did you have a thing for your cousin? Man, I leave for six months and it's like everyone's a different person!"
"Ten-ten and I have a mutual understanding. I'm not sure how far your ignorance extends, but where marriage is concerned – the clan hardly cares whether I have a 'thing' for my cousin. You should know she's eight years older," Neji answered. "I really can't stay and talk all day – I'm expected at home within the hour."
Without saying goodbye, he turned toward the Hyuga compound and disappeared into the stream of pedestrians before Naruto could bombard him with follow-up questions. He left Shikamaru and Chouji to fill the gaps in their friend's knowledge of the painful story.
Behind him, Neji heard Naruto loudly objecting that the Hyuga's arranged marriage traditions were an outrage. The last thing he heard from Naruto's direction was –When I'm hokage, I'll make sure you don't have to stay married to that old lady cousin!
When will he understand? The hokage doesn't control the clans. – Neji thought.
He pictured Shikamaru restraining Naruto and urging him to save his energy for something he could actually change.
Despite the twinge of annoyance that arose at Naruto's obnoxious outburst, Neji felt unexpected gratitude that someone shared his outrage and vowed to support his bid for freedom. The rest of his chunin cohort had reacted to his marriage with whispered pity and muted dismay. They regarded the arranged union like the arrival of a summer thunderstorm – undesirable, but inevitable and entirely expected.
Naruto's bluster aside, Neji still fought almost entirely alone.
Before noon on Risa's birthday, the servants had delivered a tin of the 'finest' fertility tea from her aunt, a pair of earrings and a lengthy apology for his absence from Ko, several signed cards and a framed photograph of her and Neji exchanging vows. The final gift came from Hiashi Hyuga with a note that it would make a great addition to her bedroom wall. The Hyuga patriarch expressed his hopes that the couple might one day regard their wedding as the beginning of a wonderful bond.
Risa noticed that she received far fewer gifts and cards than usual. No invitations to dinner or tea. No acknowledgment from either set of grandparents. Or her friend and first cousin Hirono Hyuga. Or any of the cousins she trained as children or teenagers.
Her aunt's fertility tea went into the recesses of the spice cabinet. The accompanying note – a woman of your age may find herself needing assistance – went straight in the trash bin after a cursory reading.
The wedding picture remained on the kitchen counter, as Risa deliberated its proper place.
Not the bedroom, she thought. But not the trash bin either. Hiashi Hyuga's aspirations for the couple would stay unfulfilled until Neji stopped aspiring to escape the clan compound.
Her first ever birthday gift from the clan head, and she resented herself for not regarding it with greater excitement.
When she picked up Ryo for a walk around the village after lunch, he handed her a crayon-drawn picture of them holding hands. A third, male figure wearing a hidden leaf ninja headband stood at a distance to the right. Risa kept the folded paper in her pocket to add to her collection of birthday gifts from Ryo.
"Who else did you draw besides you and me, Ryo?" Risa asked as they passed the hokage tower. "And he looks lonely. Why doesn't anybody want to hold his hand?"
The figure's flowing black hair precluded Ko, or Ryo's father.
"It's big brother Neji," he babbled. "I didn't know if I was supposed to draw him holding hands with you. But I put him in the picture because he's your husband now."
"Well, I love your picture. It's...just like real life," Risa said, squeezing her baby cousin's hand. A smirk crossed her face.
Ryo giggled.
"Oh, so he doesn't hold your hand in real life?"
"Ah – no. Big brother is more like...a new friend to me. We don't like each other in the holding hands way."
She scolded herself for not anticipating the troublesome connections and questions Ryo would form in his precocious mind.
"Is that different from liking someone in the sex and hugging way?"
If he noticed her tense at the word sex, he gave no indication in his toddler grin or bouncing steps.
"Usually a boy and girl like each other in the holding hands way before they like each other in the other way, Ryo," she answered. "Liking each other in the friend way has to come before anything else."
And Neji will never become my friend, she finished in silence. A few gestures mean nothing after months of belittling me to my face, and what he does behind my back.
"I saw big brother Neji kiss you, though. Dad said he was being super rude and called him some mean words," Ryo said, mouth puckered in confusion. "But doesn't that mean he likes you? Maybe he was just too excited about how much he liked you."
"Big brother was making a joke, and I didn't think it was funny."
"Okay, then how long until you and big brother hold hands for real because you like each other?"
"It really depends on when it feels like the right time. Maybe it'll never be the right time. When you're older and you start liking girls, you'll understand."
"But I like you and my mom."
"No, that's not what I mean," Risa sighed. She cursed the imprecision of their language, how one word carried so many unspeakable emotions and meanings.
Leaving the downtown business district, the Hyuga cousins crossed a footbridge into one of the village's tree-lined parks, centered around a memorial commemorating the first treaty between the hidden leaf's great clans. Ryo tugged Risa's hand and pointed at the Hyuga sigil carved in granite, chirping that's us! She smiled and praised his attentive eyes.
In the memorial's shade, a seated couple shared an ice cream cone. Their hands tangled on the wooden planks between them.
"Look at the man and woman on the bench over there – when you like a girl, you'll want to be close to them and touch them. And spend a lot of time alone with them," she continued. "You have to be careful, Ryo. Liking a girl doesn't mean you should marry her. It doesn't mean you're good for each other."
"Have you ever liked a boy, big sister?"
"No...I haven't," Risa said, her words clipped.
You totally like Ko. You're obsessed with him, Risa – her former best friend Satomi's words crept into her mind.
No, he's just my cousin and a really, really good friend, she'd snap in response. His parents don't want me marrying him because he's in the main family and I'm not.
But you said marrying him was your dream.
So? Dreams are stupid when they can't come true.
Retracing their often-repeated conversation sent hot blood into her face and neck. She hadn't spoken to Satomi in over 10 years, yet she still bristled at her insistence that she knew Risa's heart. Risa's hand tightened around her cousin's, causing his tiny features to frown up at her with concern.
"How about we stop by the ice cream shop on our way back?" she offered, with an open-mouthed smile.
"Sure! Don't tell my mom because she doesn't want my teeth going bad."
"I won't."
A wave of sadness replaced her seething resentment.
Risa didn't want to say that his mother's efforts to stay alive overshadowed any fleeting concern for her son's dental health.
Over the past month, Ryo's chronically ill mother spent most of her days lying in bed. She only left her bedroom to cook, and receive taxing treatments that transcended Risa's rudimentary understanding of medicine. Risa suspected that Ryo's father requested mission after mission to avoid living alongside the reality that his wife faced an early death.
Returning to her kitchen after washing molten ice cream from Ryo's hands and face, Risa's eyebrows furrowed at the sight of a lone birthday card on the dining table.
Dear Risa,
Happy 27th birthday.
The brief message included no signature or other distinguishing mark from its sender. Almost as if the sender penned the characters under duress and with a shameful heart.
The perfumed rice paper card enclosed a reservation slip for a private booth in a sushi restaurant downtown – a reservation under her husband's name. Neji probably hadn't made dinner arrangements of his own initiative any more than he'd left the card because he wanted to celebrate her special day. Risa tucked the slip into one of the pockets of her dress and waited for 6 pm to arrive.
With Ko leading a mission in the Land of Tea, she had no other invitations for her time that evening. And declining an invitation from her own husband would reflect badly on a proper Hyuga lady.
There would be no hand-holding over dinner, and Risa preferred it that way.