A Bird in a Cage…!!

While medics attend to the injured Hinata, Neji peels back his headband to show the mark burned into his brow, then explains what it represents. The Hyuga divide themselves into a ruling main house and a subordinate branch, and each branch child is stamped with the cursed seal that chains them to guarding their high-born relatives. Neji received his the year Hinata, heir to the clan, turned three.

His resentment, he reveals, runs deeper than status. Though the branch-born Neji plainly outshone Hinata in ability, that gift counted for nothing under clan law, a slight that embittered his father Hizashi. The wound grew when the clan head Hiashi cut down a Cloud shinobi caught trying to steal the young heiress away. To smooth over the crisis with the Land of Lightning, Hizashi, Hiashi's identical twin, was handed over as a stand-in corpse. Neji closes with a grim verdict: his father existed only to be spent for the main family's sake.

Neji reveals the Hyuga branch seal on his forehead and recounts its purpose. The split between main and branch houses is explained, along with the kidnapping attempt on Hinata by Kumogakure. Hiashi kills the intruder, and his twin Hizashi is surrendered to the Cloud as a body double, shaping the grievance Neji carries into his match.

The installment supplies the backstory that drives the Neji and Hinata rivalry during the Chunin Exams, exposing the caged-bird logic behind the seal. Viz released the chapter under the title The Caged Bird…!!