At Ichiraku Ramen, the warm yellow lights blurred softly against the chill of the late night air.
It was already very late. Only two people from the Hyuga clan sat along the long bench, yet… the stack of empty bowls on their table was almost touching the hanging lantern.
"T-this is… the twelfth bowl already."
Ayame's hand trembled slightly as she held the order board, watching Teuchi place another bowl of miso chashu ramen in front of Hyuga Hinata. The girl ducked her head in embarrassment, but her hands still skillfully twirled the noodles with her chopsticks.
Hyuga Kiyonari silently tallied up the bill.
A bowl of chashu ramen cost 85 ryo; an egg was another 8 ryo. But "extra egg" here usually meant half of a marinated egg. If you wanted a fried egg, it'd be 15 ryo—and a bottle of cola was also 15 ryo.
From that alone, you could tell Ichiraku's prices were on the expensive side. But Teuchi's cooking skills completely made up for it.
Kiyonari patted the three thousand ryo he had "earned" that afternoon, and couldn't help feeling a bit relieved. He hadn't expected Hinata to have such terrifying "combat power" even as a kid.
"Another chashu ramen, please. One side of bamboo shoots, and half an egg."
He added to the order calmly, sneaking glances from the corner of his eye at Hinata sipping the broth, cradling the bowl with both hands. Her cherry-colored lips carefully avoided the steaming rim of the bowl.
She could definitely still eat more, but Hinata herself would be too shy to say it.
When the fourteenth bowl was set down, Hinata suddenly put down her chopsticks and pressed her hands together in front of her nose.
"Thank you for the food… After this bowl, I really can't eat any more."
Kiyonari counted out the exact amount and handed it to Ayame to settle the bill. Resting his chin in one hand, he looked down with some curiosity. After fourteen bowls of ramen, her stomach was only slightly rounded.
Noticing the shift in his gaze, Hinata subtly turned to the side and drew her stomach in.
On the way back, the snow started falling harder, landing in soft layers on their shoulders.
Under the dim halo of the streetlamp, Hinata said quietly, "I made you spend a lot…"
Kiyonari shook his head slightly. "It's fine. My financial situation might be tight, but I'm not so poor I'd stress over just this."
"N-next time… let me treat you instead. How about yakiniku?"
"Then I'll be sure to look forward to it."
Just then, she glanced sideways at his face, her gaze slowly moving up until it settled on his forehead.
"How… do you feel about this?"
"The Caged Bird Seal?" Kiyonari answered very calmly. "I look at it with my eyes. How else?"
It was a throwaway line, but Hinata understood the joke.
For most branch family members, the Caged Bird Seal was a mountain—a weight pressed down on them at three or four years old, one they had no power to resist. Rather than spending every day in sorrow and resentment, they might as well take it as it is. Just accept fate.
But that wasn't what Hinata wanted to hear, and she knew Kiyonari wasn't the type to just blindly accept the rules either.
"The branch family… everyone clearly…"
"Hinata-sama," Kiyonari suddenly cut her off, "do you really think all their resentment is because of the seal itself?"
"I've heard a bit about what happened with Neji and Hizashi-sama as well. But what I want to say is—geniuses like Neji are rare. People like me, the useless majority in the branch family—that's what most of us are."
"For us, the Caged Bird Seal does have a protective function. The blind spot it creates isn't something we can't live with. What everyone resents… was never the seal itself."
In that instant, Hinata remembered that line again—What was it that truly killed Hyuga Hiashi?
She had assumed the answer was the Caged Bird Seal. But now, she realized the root might go much deeper. The divide between the branch and main families had probably begun long before that.
For most branch family members, the existence of the Caged Bird Seal had some positive meaning. But for the main family…?
"Does the main family really need the Caged Bird Seal?"
Hinata couldn't help murmuring, as if asking Kiyonari and herself at the same time.
Kiyonari tilted his head back to look at the moon and sighed. "I'm not main family. How would I know? Maybe… you're the only one who can find that answer, Hinata-sama."
"Me?" Hinata lowered her head, fingers unconsciously twisting the hem of her sleeve. "You trust me that much, even though I…"
Her words cut off.
A black notebook with a gold-stamped cover suddenly floated up in her mind. On her own, she might not be able to do it. But if she borrowed that…
"I trust you because you're already thinking about it, aren't you?"
In that moment, Kiyonari's voice dropped, the rare seriousness in it filling every word.
Rather than say Hizashi hated the main family and the Caged Bird Seal because he saw Neji's amazing talent, it might be more accurate to say he hated the fact that he wasn't born into the main family. He—and people like him—resented that they weren't the ones high above, giving the orders.
What they hated wasn't the system itself, but the Hyuga main family. And even if they rebelled, the result wouldn't change. Because… no matter who's holding the leash, the leash is still there.
Neji's life had already proven it: under the Caged Bird Seal's constraints, all the branch family could do was resent. If anything was going to truly change, it would have to come from the main family. Wasn't that exactly what Hiashi had tried to do?
Without exaggeration, as long as Hinata could break free from that old way of thinking, she would become the savior of the entire branch family. In the whole Hyuga main family, she was the only one this kind, kind to the point of naivety.
"We're here."
Kiyonari suddenly stopped. The streetlamp ahead lit up the plaque over the main family compound gate. "See you tomorrow."
"Mm, see you tomorrow!" Hinata nodded hard, as if making a promise.
After they parted, Kiyonari could hardly wait to open the system and tally up his gains.
[Act One: A Snowy Encounter]
[Completion: Complete]
[Rating: C]
[Review: Although the script is short, the excellent performances of the leads still brought out a surprisingly charming scene, portraying the first meeting between the boy and girl with subtle warmth. As the opening chapter of a series, this act has fulfilled its role.]
[Calculating rewards…]
[Correction Points Earned: 100. Please keep up the good work.]
A C rating wasn't surprising.
The script was short, lacked any grand spectacle, and had almost no dramatic highs and lows. Plus, to stay in character, Kiyonari had kept his own role very restrained, only lightly touching things in many places.
There were flaws, and there were limits—but overall, Hyuga Kiyonari was already quite satisfied.
Next, he did some digging and discovered that a hundred correction points could actually do a lot.
For example, he could erase the Caged Bird Seal on his forehead. But that would do nothing but make him stand out from the crowd, and in his current situation, there was no urgent need. He could completely treat these points as something to invest.
Turn Hinata into a genius?
Maybe not a true prodigy in the strictest sense, but making her quickly master a particular skill and become a "genius" in everyone else's eyes—one hundred correction points was more than enough for that.
Or he could… bring in a new lead.