And here it is: the promised first part of the three-part epilogue! Stay tuned either tomorrow or the next day for the conclusion to another charactor's tale... or perhaps the start of a new story.

Addi out!

Neji's Epilogue

Hinata had slept most of the bus ride down to the airport, but Neji had found that his mind was too full to let him relax enough to fall asleep. The scene from earlier kept running through his head, almost real enough for him to taste the rain and smell the crisp night air. The breath of a cool breeze, the delicate dance of shadows against skin, spun back to him in tantalizing shards of memory as beautiful as they were sharp, making Neji glad when the ride finally ended and he could distract himself by rousing Hinata from her slumber and dragging her through the eerily empty security line.

There was almost no one else in the airport when Neji found their hate and sat down with Hinata, who promptly fell back asleep, but then again, it was absurdly early in the morning on a weekday, and, since it was a small airport, no other flights scheduled to go out for another two hours. Neji and Hinata had another four hours to wait, something she'd initially griped about upon learning that she might have had a few extra hours of sleep, but had given in gracefully when Neji had told her the next train wouldn't have left them with enough time to make it through security before their flight. She'd accepted this without complaint or questions, some Neji was glad for, since, while it was true, he'd also had another motive: to get out of Konoha before Shikamaru could get the chance to recharge and find him. He realized it was probably selfish of him, but Neji had already said goodbye to Shikamaru once and no desire to do it a second time, especially in front of Hinata.

With a sigh, Neji pulled out his phone and opened up his email. As he'd expected, the work he'd been ignoring for the past week had piled up into an almost insurmountable amount of organization. A gloomy feeling twisting down the corner of his lips, Neji settled down and got to work.

Unlike the Uchiha family, who preferred to fight their way through situations as they came, the Hyuuga were observers and preferred to find and watch situations in their infancy, often stepping in before a problem arose and only engaging in combat when no other option was available. Neji knew that while the two family's philosophies were very different, they were still sister families, treating each other like distant cousins, and often called upon each other for help, like Sasuke had done with him and Neji's uncle, Hinata's father, had done with Sasuke's father. More often than not, Uchiha and Hyuuga worked together in groups rather than apart, their individual gifts playing off each other more effectively than either one would be alone. Of course, since both he and Sasuke were very young by the standards of their family, neither had been on one of these joint venture before, so this experiment this summer had been exactly that on Neji's part: an experiment to see if he could work with the Uchiha boy without wanting to strangle him. He wasn't sure if Sasuke had passed or not. Or even if he had himself.

Then again, with the Hyuuga method of "nipping things in the bud" rather than "we'll fix it once there's a problem" like the Uchihas came a substantially larger amount of organization and paperwork. Paperwork. Hateful paperwork. That was Neji's job, collecting all the reports from all the far branches of the Hyuuga family and organizing them so they could be analyzed for patterns of spectral activity that could mean problems in the future. He was also asked to do much of that analyzing himself, but since a thousand reports might go by before one with something important came into him, he had to be on edge constantly, knowing that his call might be the one to save lives, but that the call was so rare that he might make one every three years. And yet, he still had to read every report as if it was the one that pointed to a potentially dangerous situation. It was a merciless, thankless job and Neji hated his uncle for dumping it on him at such an early age.

Between the wait before the plane ride and the two flights it took him and Hinata to get back to Seattle, Neji had almost finished all the work he had abandoned. With only a few reports left to file, he sighed, sent a single text message to an already ongoing conversation that read I'm here, and slipped his phone into his pocket. At his side, Hinata yawned - she'd slept through most of the last flight, even though she'd slept for hours in the first airport and through most of the first flight - and slipped her hand into his.

"Are we going home now, Neji?" She asked, delicately hiding another yawn behind a raised hand.

"Not quite. I have something to do, but I can call a taxi for you if you want me to..."

Hinata immediately perked up, interested in what he was saying. "Oooh, what? Can I come too?"

"Well…" Neji hesitated. He hadn't told Hinata - or any of the other Hyuugas - about his hobby or the friends that came with it. It wasn't as if what they were doing was illegal, it was just that he didn't think his uncle would think highly of how he chose to spend his time. "I suppose you could if you want to. Some friends of mine are coming to pick me up and I'm sure they'd have an extra seat if you wanted to come. Just… promise not to tell your father, okay?"

A delicate frown graced Hinata's mouth. "Why? What are you doing? It's not bad, is it?"

"No," Neji quickly assured her, craning his head as he caught sight of a familiar beat up minivan racing towards them. "It's just a little hard to explain, is all."

The phone in Neji's pocket buzzed, and he pulled it out to see So are we! scrolling across it in big letters. Shaking his head, he replied, I know. I can see you. That miserable piece of junk is impossible to mistake.

A few seconds later, the minivan rolled to a stop in front of them and two people jumped out. The first was a young woman with red hair who jumped on Neji without warning, squealing how happy she was to see him, and the second was a tall, dark-haired boy in his late teen years, who immediately pointed an accusatory finger at him and declared, "My car is not a piece of junk, thank you very much!"

"Could have fooled me, Konohamaru," Neji said with a grin as he pushed the girl, Moegi, off of him. "Moegi, please; I do need to breathe."

"Alright!" With a laugh, Moegi released Neji and grabbed his suitcase instead, throwing it the back of the minivan. "And I'm digging the hair!"

Neji sniffed as he realized that his hair was still tucked up in the loose bun he'd used to keep it contained after his close escapades with nature, but otherwise ignored the comment.

"You're cutting it close, Neji," a third voice called from inside the car, and Neji looked inside to see Udon at the steering wheel.

"Udon? You're driving?" He asked in surprise. "I'm surprised Konohamaru let you touch his baby."

"Konohamaru drives too slow!" Moegi giggled, sticking her head around from the back where she was packing Neji's luggage. "We never would have made it in time!"

"Of course I would have!"

"Please, Konohamaru. You lost a drag race to your grandmother!"

"THAT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO!"

This pleasant banter was interrupted by a slight whimper from behind Neji, and everyone looked back to see Hinata backing up slowly, fear in her eyes. "N-N-Ne-j-j-ji…"

"Oh? And who is this?" Konohamaru leaned around to get a better look at Hinata, but the Hyuuga girl just shuffled further behind her cousin.

"This is Hinata, my cousin," Neji answered for her, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder that she immediately melted into. "She's a little bit shy, so-"

He was cut off as Moegi rushed past him and grabbed Hinata up in a hug. "Oh, she's so adorable!" She cooed as she swung Hinata around in a circle. "Why have you never brought her before, Neji?"

"Because she's shy," Neji said through gritted teeth as he rescued his now traumatized younger cousin from Moegi's clutches. Hinata grasped onto Neji's shirtfront, shaking harder than a leaf in a stiff breeze.

"A-a-are th-these p-p-peop-p-ple y-your f-fr-friends, N-Ne-j-ji?" Hinata managed to ask through her stutter, which got exponentially worse the more people were being loud around her.

"Yes, they are." Neji shot a glare at his friends that told them they had better be more careful around his cousin unless they wanted a pounding from him. "You don't have to come with us if you're uncomfortable; I can call a taxi and have them take you home-"

"N-no," Hinata interrupted, surprising Neji. "I want t-to c-come with you."

Glancing up at Konohamaru, Neji asked, "Is that alright? Is there enough seats?"

"Dude, there's always enough seats in the ride to the Love Shack!" Konohamaru exclaimed with a goofy grin. "She's more than welcome!"

"L-l-love Sh-shac-k?" Hinata squeaked in terror, the look in her eyes making it clear that she was already regretting her decision.

"He's just referencing a song, Hinata. I know you don't listen to that kind of music." Neji fixed a glare on Konohamaru. "As someone else would do well to remember."

But Konohamaru only shrugged. "Be more chill and it won't make you so upset. Everyone needs a tunication."

"A w-wh-what?"

"Education of tunes. He means he thinks you should listen to some of his terrible choices in music," Neji translated, shuffling Hinata toward the minivan as Moegi stowed her suitcase in the back of the vehicle.

"It's not terrible music! You listen to it too, Neji!"

Neji ignored the jibe and gave Hinata a hand into the back of the minivan, then slid in after her. Moegi jumped in after them and Konohamaru once again claimed the passenger seat, and they were off as soon as the last door was shut, before Neji and Hinata even had time to do up their seat belts.

Turning around in the front seat to look into the interior of the van and completely ignoring his seat belt, Konohamaru flashed Hinata another silly grin. "So, little Neji's cousin, what kind of music do you like?"

Hinata flushed, but managed to stutter out an answer. "I l-l-like old-d m-music, l-like Handel."

"Handel?" Konohamaru wrinkled his nose. "You're a Baroque fan?"

"She likes cultured music, Konohamaru," Neji interjected, settling a hand on Hinata's shoulder protectively. "And put on your seat belt!"

Konohamaru made a face, but did as he was bid. "Oh, yeah, as cultured as that stupid violin you used to play?"

"That was a viola, Konohamaru."

Moegi cut off Konohamaru's sputtering reply by leaning in front of him. "So, do you want to eventually play with us, Hinata?"

"P-p-pl-play?" Hinata stuttered even harder, her eyes growing almost impossibly wide. "Wh-wh-what d-do you m-mean?"

"She's not going to play with us," Neji answered for her, giving Moegi a look that she completely ignored. "She's just here to spectate."

"S-sp-spec-c-t-ta-te?" Hinata started to shake. "Wh-wh-what are you d-d-doing, N-Ne-j-ji?"

"Nothing bad, I promise you." Neji leaned down and pressed a swift reassuring kiss to Hinata's forehead. "You'll see when we get there."

Three quarters of an hour later, Neji stood in front of a mirror adjusting a hot pink tie underneath his collar. The four of them, plus Hinata, had piled out of the minivan as soon as it had parked in the backlot of a bar, which had Hinata looking scandalized, then run into a back room. Again, Hinata had looked scandalized as Moegi had handed Neji a shopping bag of clothes and they all proceeded to change in front of each other, and was no less confused by the clothes they were wearing. They all put on matching outfits: black dress pants - or a black ankle-length pencil skirt in Moegi's case - and button up black dress shirts, complete with matching ties in an array of colors. Neji, through some stroke of illicit luck or design, had managed to draw the short straw on the hot pink tie.

"Remind me again why I have to wear the pink one?" He grumbled as he finished adjusting it below his collar and attached his tie clip, the one he wore every time they did something like this.

"Because you didn't answer my question when I asked you what color you wanted," Moegi replied from across the room where she was tying her own deep purple tie. "You snooze, I choose a tie for you."

Udon looked up from unbuttoning the buttons of his shirt that he'd buttoned out of line. "Real men wear pink, Neji."

"Says the guy wearing the green tie. The manly green tie."

Shrugging, Udon flipped his brilliant emerald green tie over his shoulder to better get at his buttons. "There can only be one real man. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made."

Konohamaru snorted from where he was tying on his sickly orange tie, a color no one tried to take from him ever because no one wanted it, and they were afraid of the exuberance with which Konohamaru did. "If there's only one real man here, it's gotta be me. Neji looks just about as gay as they come."

"We've been over this, Konohamaru: having long hair does not make me g-" Neji abruptly cut off as an image of heated shadows assaulted his memory, causing a shiver to go down his spine. Abruptly breaking eye contact with his friends, Neji turned away. "Forget it. I don't want to have this conversation."

Avoiding the four sets of curious eyes, Neji fidgeted with his already perfectly tied tie and hoped that his actions didn't look too transparent. Luckily, a reprieve came in the form of a woman opening up the door and sticking her head through the crack.

"Anyone still left in here- hey, Neji, you made it!"

"Yeah, I did," Neji answered with a grateful smile, turning towards the woman. "How are you, Kurenai?"

"Better now that you're here!" She exclaimed with a relieved smile. "I thought we were going to have to go on without our star tenor!"

Smiling a little, Neji tried to shrug off the praise. "Moegi could handle it on her own-"

"No way!" Moegi snuck up behind Neji and grabbed him in a stealthy hug. "It's totally different playing without you! I mean, sure, I could have done it, but it sounds totally different when you're not here!"

Drawn by the commotion, another head poked itself into the back room. "Ah, Neji!" Asuma said with a grin, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. "Great to have you back! How was the east coast?"

"To sunny," Neji answered truthfully. "I missed the rain."

Except for the one night it did rain, his mind whispered snidely, but Neji pushed it aside.

"Really?" Udon pulled a tissue from his pocket and blew his nose loudly. "I would have thought a break from the clouds would have been nice."

There was plenty of clouds, even when it wasn't raining.

"I know the rain," Neji said out loud, ignoring the jabs of his subconscious. "It reminds me of home."

"Glad to know you think so much of our humble city," Asuma said with a laugh, "but are you ready? We go on in twenty."

Neji and Moegi's eyes widened in tandem. "Twenty?" He asked incredulously as Moegi ran from him to a stack of large, oddly shaped black boxes leaning against the wall, crying, "My reed!"

"Ha! Woodwinds," Konohamaru sneered, pushing his chest. "We don't have to suck on those stupid things like you do!"

"But you do have to warm up," Kurenai warned pointedly, her verbal dart puncturing Konohamaru's enlarged chest and deflating it. "Make sure you're ready to play by eight, or else."

"Yes, Kurenai," Konohamaru answered dejectedly, moving to follow Moegi to the row of black boxes.

"Good. And the same goes for all of you," Kurenai said, pointing a threatening finger around the room at each of its occupants until it fell on Hinata, who looked like she had shrunk herself down as small as she could and plastered herself against the wall to avoid any notice. "Who's this?"

"My cousin, Hinata," Neji clarified, walking to her and laying a comforting arm over her shoulders. "She's here to watch. Can you find her a place to sit, preferably closer to us? She's a bit shy."

Kurenai's face lit up. "Of course!" She exclaimed, gesturing for Hinata to join her. "I love it when we get new recruits!"

"I don't know about a new recruit, but she did want to see me play." Neji looked down at his cousin, who was now glued to his side and looked like the last thing she wanted to do was let go. "You don't mind, do you? I have to finish getting ready."

"I g-guess…" Hinata stuttered, and Neji pulled her in for a brief hug, kissing her forehead with delicate swiftness.

"You can do it," he whispered in her ear before he let her go, and she looked a little bit more confident as Kurenai took her arm and pulled her out of the room.

"So, Hinata, how old are you?" Kurenai asked as the two started down the hallway, Hinata's stuttering answer trailing after them.

"I-I'm s-s-six-t-t-teen…"

After they had gone, Asuma snapped his fingers as if he'd just remembered something. "Oh, and Neji, Moegi, before I forget, are you two good to do the Duel tonight?"

Neji and Moegi cast a single look at the other, identical grins stretching across their faces. "Of course!" They answered in unison, the words so natural they didn't have to think twice about it.

"Excellent!" Asuma beamed at the pair of them. "I'll go tell everyone else it's in the program. Make sure to be ready on time! There's fifteen minutes until we go on now."

"Shit!"

There was a frenzy of activity as all four musicians ran to their instrument cases leaning against the wall and cracked them open, revealing the gleaming brass, and in the case of Konohamaru's trumpet, shiny silver, of the instruments inside them. Asuma shook his head and left them to their hurried preparations. Moegi and Neji both stuck dry reeds in their mouths to soften them as they pulled out the pieces of their tenor saxophones and combined them into a single instrument. Next to them, Udon pushed the slide onto his trombone and slid it up and down a few times, checking to make sure it moved properly, and Konohamaru put his mouthpiece in his pocket to prewarm it as he checked the valves of his trumpet, and finding that one stuck, unscrewed it to lubricate it.

Neji allowed a smile to pull up the corners of his lips as he slid the now soft reed into the mouthpiece of his saxophone and screwed the bolts on either side of it tighter to hold it securely in place. He'd missed this.

Fourteen and a half minutes later, Neji and his three friends stood in line with the rest of their bandmates, ready to cram themselves onto the too-small stage the bar had offered them. They were a local act, a community jazz orchestra, in high demand from the local business owners who supplied their customers with entertainment for their originality, talent, and - let's face it - cheapness. This particular night, however, had been booked months ago for the bar's changing-of-hands party, and was one of the biggest events the group had ever played at. That was why Neji had rushed back; he couldn't let his friends down by missing such an important event.

Neji wasn't quite sure why he kept playing with the orchestra. Sure, he loved music and playing music, but he much prefered the classical aspect of it, like Hinata. The only thing he could think of was that he could be another person with them, a person his family could never know or understand. That wasn't to say that this person was the real Neji because it wasn't, just as the strict personality he had cultivated because of his upbringing wasn't the real him, but perhaps it was closer than he dared think. Whatever the reason, he'd joined the group three years ago, close after its formation, and he'd been playing with it underneath his family's noses ever since.

"You ready for this?" Moegi hissed quietly, bumping his shoulder lightly with the bell of her saxophone.

"Course," Neji answered with a grin. "I can't wait to play the Duel. It's been too long."

"I agree." Moegi adjusted the shoulder straps of the harness supporting the weight of her tenor, flashing him a delighted smile.

Since the jazz orchestra was such a tight-knit group, they made sure every separate section had a song that showed them off and they could call the shots on, and the Duel was the tenor's song because it featured a massive improvisational solo for the tenor saxophone. Back when Neji had been the only tenor, the song had been known simply as "Neji's song", but when Moegi had joined them as a second tenor player, the nickname had been changed to "The Duel" after the two tenors had decided, not to split the solo in half, but to improvise together. It had taken a lot of work to get a feel for each other's playing styles and a lot of effort on Neji's part getting used to sharing his spotlight, but now the Duel was one of the best and most requested songs they played.

"Shh!"

Neji felt something bump into his back, and he turned around to see Udon with his trombone slide extended.

"Not so loud! They'll hear you!" He hissed, but Moegi just roller her eyes in response.

"No one can hear us, Udon. We could all launch into the national anthem and I still doubt they'd hear us. I think you're overestimating people's ability to concentrate on things that don't concern them."

"And I think you're overestimating their ability to find fault in things, but that's just my opinion."

"Alright, children," Asuma cut in from behind them. "Cut it out, please. It's time."

"Awesome!" Konohamaru held up his hand, and all three of his friends dutifully slapped it in turn. "Let's do this!"

As the band filed onto the stage, they weren't met with applause, or any reaction at all, for that matter. It didn't bother them; they weren't the only attraction that night, or the even the most popular one. That honor would most likely fall to the open bar on the other side of the dance floor, which was now covered in tables to accommodate the massive influx of people to the normally sparsely populated bar. But then again, that was what happened when you advertised for a big bash and cheap alcohol.

After placing his music on the stand in front of his chair and sitting down, Neji adjusted the neck strap on his saxophone and looked out into the audience, searching for the small dark head of his younger cousin. When he found her sitting at a table close to the stage with Konohamaru's mother, he smiled in relief and sent her a little wave, which she returned nervously. Kurenai must have passed her off to Konohamaru's mother before returning backstage to get her music folder and filing onto the stage to sit behind the electric keyboard set up in the rhythm section, something Neji was grateful for. At least Hinata wasn't sitting alone.

They had all tuned backstage, but still little farts and honks of sound could be heard in the back as various musicians tried out their instruments in the new space. Despite the noises, still no one in the room was paying any attention to them yet, but Neji knew that would change as soon as they started to play.

"Everyone ready?" Asuma called out from where he was seated behind the drum set, twirling a drumstick in his nimble fingers.

After everyone called back their assent, he nodded and started tapping the cymbal in a steady rhythm. "Alright then, let's give them a show! One, two, three, four!"

A veritable wall of sound blasted outwards into the space of the bar, effectively ending all conversation. As he always did when they first started to play, Neji had to stifle a grin. It was impossible to smile and play at the same time, and he wanted to play.

The time they had been hired to play was only two hours and since they had over five hours worth of music they could play together as a group, there was a lot of decisions to be made on which songs they would play and which would be put aside for the next gig. Of course, there were several favorites, several signature songs they always put on the list no matter what, and that included the piece that had been their closer, the last song they played, for years: the Duel.

At the end of the second to last song, the owner of the bar came up to the stage and said a few words about the band, thanking them for coming out to play for his event, yada yada; Neji wasn't really paying attention. He was too busy focusing on the song they were about to play. It had been a few weeks since he'd last played, and his mouth was starting to feel it; what you don't practice, you lose, especially with instruments, and Neji could definitely tell that he'd lost some ground in his playing. In preparation for the Duel, he'd dropped out of a few songs near the end of their set, letting Moegi take over and just holding his saxophone up and running his fingers over the keys to preserve his mouth for the final push.

While Neji had been busy not paying attention, the owner of the bar had left the stage, and now Moegi hit him with her elbow. "You ready?" She hissed quietly to him.

"As I'll ever be. Let's do this."

Together, they stood up, kicking their chairs backwards to give themselves a little more room. Beside him, Moegi, raised her hand, pulsed it three times in the air, then brought it down harshly - a silent count off since the reed of her tenor was already clenched between her teeth - and the music started behind them. It was familiar - so familiar that Neji could hummed the introduction in his sleep - calming despite the heart pounding tempo it was taken at. Neji's fingers lay gently against the keys of his instrument, caressing them softly, completely loose and relaxed; the mechanics of the song were too difficult for anything but the loosest of fingers to play. The tighter the grip, the harder it was for fingers to move faster.

Both Neji and Moegi had memorized this song years ago, so there was no need for either of them to glance down at their music as they started together in a complex pairing of melody and countermelody. Back when Neji had been the only tenor sax player and this had been his solo, he'd played the melody, but when Moegi had joined the band and they'd decided to include her in the song, he'd given up the melody and switched to the harmony Kurenai had written especially for them so they could have the pleasure of learning the song together, rather than Moegi feeling like she wasn't as good as Neji because he could already play it.

His eyes squeezed shut and his brow furrowed in concentration, Neji played his heart out with with Moegi by his side. This song required nothing short of pouring one's heart out and leaving it on the stage, and Neji was never one to shirk his musical duty.

The tension ramped up as the song flew through the main section and broke into the bridge, and Neji fought the mounting stiffness in his fingers as his nerves started flaring up. It had been a long time since he'd played this song. What if he messed up?

Then the music crested and broke, and Moegi took the lead in her first solo line. The brash confidence with which she played bolstered Neji's own flagging confidence, and he answered her in turn, the two parts now call and response rather than melody and harmony. The band behind them in turns pushed their notes up from below and swept them along in dizzying waves and spikes of sound, leading them on to the inevitable conclusion of the song.

The last third of the song was the hardest part and also the coolest, because it was the section where the two tenor soloists went completely off-script and improvised together. Improvisation was one of the most important, but also one of the most difficult, talents a jazz musician had to have at his disposal because so much of the music they played called for it. It required an advance knowledge of the chord structure of the song and music theory, an intimate knowledge of the instrument being played, and the ability to let go of the control sheet music provided and not be afraid to fly without a concrete plan. It had taken Neji a long time to grow comfortable improvising and even longer to learn to improvise with Moegi, to learn her style enough to be able to predict her movements and change his instantaneously so they fit together, but thanks to all the work the pair had put in together, they sounded amazing.

The part was coming; Neji could sense it almost instinctively. First the band would drop out, leaving only the rhythm section - the drum set, the electric guitar and bass, and the keyboard - to keep the beat and the basic chords structure of the song alive, then Neji would come in first, like he always did. Moegi would take over after a while, then Neji would join her, the two pushing and playing with each other's melodies until the rest of the band once again returned to their music and they finished with a bang, just as they had done a hundred times before. In preparation for the big moment, Neji opened his eyes to survey the crowd, hoping to catch Hinata's eyes, but froze when the eye he caught was one he never thought he'd see again.

I will follow you to the ends of the earth and forever.

No, no, no! Neji's mind chanted while his bozy remained frozen, looking into gaze he thought he'd left behind. He couldn't be here; it was, quite literally, impossible. So why was his apparition mocking Neji like some kind of ghost of his past?

Suddenly, Neji realized that his moment had come and gone, and he was standing, frozen, his tenor still emitting the single note he'd stopped moving while playing. Behind him was abject silence; even the rhythm section had ground to a halt, confused by his behavior. His eyes widened in fear, but the mocking apparition kept staring at him with those dark eyes, and he felt his heartbeat thud once, painfully, in his breast.

Then instinct took over again and he raised his head slightly and brought it back down, signalling to the band behind him that he was going to start. The rhythm section jumped back in again, a little haphazard at first but melding back together with him within a few beats. Notes poured from his saxophone, one after the other, faster and faster, taking the form of angry arpeggios, tense tritones and chaotic chromatics. Throughout it all, he stared at the apparition, daring it to contest him, daring it to disappear into the recesses of his mind or prove that it was real.

But it couldn't be real. He can't come this far away from Konoha. Remember?

Ignoring his inner voice, Neji put his entire mental energy into playing, pouring forth his emotions in the form of angry melodic poetry. Eventually, when he calmed down a little, Moegi poked him with a careful melody, and he let her take over.

That's right. This was his, his choice, his control; this moment belonged to him and Moegi and the band behind him. That stupid - or genius, as the case might be - phantom had no part in it. Neji closed his eyes again, letting the music take him where it willed.

When the song finally ended, with him and Moegi on the high note, the crowd erupted into cheers. It always amused Neji how an audience could be transformed from something so cold to something like this, crying out for an encore they, unfortunately, couldn't provide. The owner of the bar came back up onto the stage and said something else, but Neji wasn't paying attention; he was searching the crowded tables for a glimpse of the ghost he'd lost sight of when he'd closed his eyes for the second time earlier, but the dark-eyed phantom was nowhere to be found. Fidgeting uncomfortably in his chair and toying with the neck strap supporting his tenor, Neji wondered if he should be relieved that he was only hallucinating or not.

As they filed back off the stage with their music, Moegi poked Neji with the bell of her saxophone, hissing quietly, "Dude, what was that?"

"I know, I know," Neji said quietly, then raised his voice to a normal talking volume after they were out of earshot of the still chattering crowd. "I screwed it up, I'm sorry-"

"What?" Moegi grabbed Neji's shoulder and hauled him around so he could see her excited expression. "Don't be sorry! That was epic! The best you've ever played it!"

"What?" Neji's brow furrowed into a frown as he wondered whether Moegi had been listening to the same notes he'd been playing. "I thought it was terrible!"

"No, it was awesome," Moegi quickly assured him. "Yeah, the beginning was a bit rough, but other than that-"

"Rough is right!" Asuma interrupted with a half-joking, half-serious glare. "Why didn't you tell us that you were going to pull that little stunt? We probably could have pulled it off better if you'd told us what you were planning."

"Asuma's right; we would have fared better with a little warning," Kurenai agreed. "What's going on, Neji? It's not like you to throw wrenches into songs like that; that's Konohamaru's job."

Hearing his name, Konohamaru's head shot up. "Hey!"

A small smile pulled at the corners of Neji's lips. "She is right, though, Konohamaru." Then the smile disappeared as he pulled his saxophone, which had suddenly become almost unbearably heavy, off his body and sighed. "I didn't mean to do it; I thought I recognized someone in the audience, and I just froze. It was very unprofessional and I apologize profusely for it."

"Well, there's no harm's done so there's no need to be so stiff about it," Kurenai said warmly, but her eyes showed more concern than before. "But it isn't like you to be so jumpy. Are you sure that's all it was-?"

"He's been dead for a long time," Neji interrupted, moving away from the group to put his saxophone away and hoping that this piece of information would end the conversation.

Unfortunately, he had no such luck. "Oh, I'm sorry," Moegi cooed as she settled a hand on his shoulder. "Were you close?"

"No. I only knew him for a week or so." Neji's shoulders hunched automatically at the contact. "I'd like to stop talking about it, please."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to pry-"

"Then don't." Neji turned around after securing the clasp on his saxophone case and hefted the black monstrosity up into his arms with a strained smile he hoped everyone else assumed was due to the weight he was carrying. "Now, where'd Hinata end up? I'd like to ask her what she thought of my performance."

Hinata had loved the performance, she had told him again and again with shining eyes in that quiet voice of hers as Konohamaru had driven them to the Hyuuga house to drop the young girl off. On the way, Konohamaru had joked that Hinata had shown so much enthusiasm for their music, she would be joining them soon, an idea which put Hinata into a quiet panic and Neji into a fit of overprotectiveness that had Konohamaru chortling after they had left Hinata off, Neji delicately kissing his younger cousin on the forehead and promising to come see her early the next morning, until they had reached Neji's apartment.

Neji had gotten his own apartment as soon as he had turned eighteen almost two years prior, paying for it with the salary he received for the work he did for the Hyuuga family, and it was one of the best decisions he could have made. It allowed him to escape the stifling and sometimes toxic atmosphere that seemed to pervade the air inside the main household, and better yet, it let him offer that reprieve to Hinata every so often as well. The two had shared many pleasant memories, and in some cases, the best times they had spent together, within the walls of Neji's apartment.

When Neji finally made it through the door of his apartment, after spending a full ten minutes listening to Konohamaru say how cute his cousin was and then telling him in no uncertain terms what would happen to him if even so much as looked at her the wrong way, he threw off his jacket - having changed back into his regular clothes before leaving the bar - and collapsed onto the couch with a groan. Everything ached: his back, his neck, his arms; hell, even his mind hurt. What he needed to do was take some more of the kind of pills Sakura had given him and go to sleep, but unfortunately, he didn't keep any in his apartment and no matter how tired his body was, his mind was decidedly awake.

Groaning some more, Neji pushed himself to his feet and moved towards the door of his bedroom, prepared to fall into bed fully clothed and somehow trick his mind to at least pass out, if not sleep properly, but before he reached the door, his jacket, hanging precariously from the back of a chair, caught his eye. Normally, he would never leave something like that on the furniture - he always kept an impeccable home and never left his dirty laundry any place but the bin where it belonged - but he just couldn't make himself take those few extra steps back and pick it up.

I'll get it in the morning, he decided guiltily, trying not to think how certain interactions might have changed him over the course of the last week, then pushed the door of his bedroom open - and immediately froze.

There, sitting boldly as if it belonged there in the center of the floor of his room, was a familiar chessboard that he had thought he would never see again. While his mind was frozen, still trying to process what it was seeing, Neji's senses activated, sweeping the room and the surrounding area for spectral auras and coming up curiously empty.

Wordlessly, still in shock, Neji made his way into the room and sat down before the chessboard, then suddenly a grin stretched across his face. What are you doing, sitting here grinning like a fool? Neji's mind roared at him, beating at the confines of his skull. This isn't what you wanted! You left him, remember? How can he even be here, anyway? He shouldn't have been able to leave the town limits of Konoha! This isn't possible! This isn't-

Shut up, a new part of Neji's brain announced, a part he decided he rather liked. Don't think so much.

There was a piece of paper sitting in the center of the chessboard, and when Neji picked it up, he discovered that it was a note written in stocky blunt script. It read, simply: White Moves First.

The bottom dropped out Neji's stomach at the sight of those familiar words, and he found his grasp loosening on the slip of paper so it slipped from his fingers, drifting to the ground and turning over as it did so, revealing another word: Well?

Well, indeed? Neji marveled as his grin grew even wider. How about this?

Purposefully, Neji picked up one of his white pawns, raised it in a salute to the sky, and brought it down two spaces ahead of where it had been with a sharp clack. Not being able to sense the ghost's presence but still knowing that he could hear him, Neji leaned back from the board and placed both hands behind his head with a smirk. "Your move, Shikamaru."