Chapter 3
Sasuke didn’t sleep that night. The entire plan had been a bust in his eyes, just like he’d known it would be. He cursed and threw his pillow across the room angrily. His breaths were haggard and his eyes stung from unshed tears. He turned to his bedside table and groaned when he saw the double digits in the hour's slot; he might as well get ready for another dreadful day. Sasuke dragged himself out of bed and trudged over to his bathroom to take a shower. When he turned the faucet the water shot out like icy bullets; he winced and urgently fiddled with the faucet to find the hot water. He hated the cold. He hated everything right now.
The evening couldn’t have gone any worse, he thought. What the hell was Neji’s problem? He admitted that the conversation was pleasant at first, I mean, he and Neji were similar characters: prideful, talented, geniuses, maybe a bit aggressive at times, rude to a fault, people hated them, others loved them, etc. It was nice to talk to someone who got it, or at least, someone he thought would understand.
He scowled at the memory and impulsively punched his shower wall…
“Ow! Fuck!” He screamed into the nothingness, hearing his voice bounce off of the ceramic, feeling the pain ricochet through his arm. Sasuke winced as he inspected his sore arm; he broke the skin on his knuckles. “Goddamnit…!”
He was furious at the whole thing! The fact he put so much mental energy into making something only to have the majority of his team bring NOTHING, and somehow that was both annoying and embarrassing. Not only that, but Sakura had invited a whole other team on her own accord without consulting anyone else! She pretended to know Sasuke so well, but she wouldn’t have invited anyone at all if she did. Finally, the conversation shifted constantly between different topics involving their different cultures and Neji had to make a huge deal out of his birthday.
His lip curled downward and he felt the familiar sting of tears in his eyes and wiped them away. He tried to remind himself that it wasn’t all their fault; no one would know what would set him off, but…
Thinking about his birthday, in general, soured his stomach, but his thirteenth birthday was supposed to be different…it was supposed to be special. Neji was correct in that regard, it was supposed to be his coming-of-age ceremony. Except he couldn’t do that…there was no one to do that…
Sasuke flinched when he heard a loud knock at his door; he groaned. It was Tuesday. His team knew not to bother him on Tuesdays if they didn’t have a mission. It’s the same rule as every other day.
Frustrated with his shower time being cut short, he flipped the water off and hastily dried himself off with a towel.
He ripped a robe off of a hanger. “Stupid, Kakashi and his stupid training! Stupid, Naruto and his idiot face! Stupid, dumb, irritating…!” The raven mumbled angrily to himself as he stomped off to his front door. He flipped the lock and yanked the handle, “What the hell do you–” Sasuke paused mid-scold.
Neji Hyuuga, of all people, was waiting patiently outside his door. He eyed him up and down, taking note of his current state of undress. Sasuke suddenly felt self-conscious of his half-hazard appearance and pulled the robe closer to himself.
“What the hell do you want?” Sasuke repeated while making sure to complete the statement this time.
“Good afternoon to you too.” He began and eyed him curiously, “Are you just now getting up?”
Sasuke blushed and glared at the other boy, “No! I was just waiting to take a shower! What? Are you the shower police, or something?”
Neji blinked, “Or something.”
He scoffed, “Whatever. You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. I was kind of busy.”
“Of course you were,” Sasuke swore he saw him roll his eyes. “Listen, I want to apologize for my behavior last night. It was completely insensitive and I shouldn’t have brought it up, especially with the knowledge that I have of your condition. I was insulting and out of line.”
Sasuke was shocked, but he squinted as he analyzed the apology. “My condition? What the fuck does that mean?”
Neji seemed to backtrack on himself, “Nothing. What I meant was–”
“No, I know what you meant. Thanks for the apology, asshole.” Sasuke went to shut the door, but he felt an unfamiliar impact get stuck. He looked down; Neji’s foot was caught in the door!
“Ouch.” He replied monotonously.
Sasuke reopened it bewildered as the Hyuuga retracted his sore foot. “Ok, why would you do that?”
Neji remained stoic as he shifted most of his weight to his left foot. “I wasn’t finished talking with you.”
He scoffed, “Well, I am. Go bother someone else.” Sasuke tried one more time to shut the door in his face, but alas, Neji stopped him again. This time, he grabbed the door and pulled it back open.
“Look, let me make it up to you, because you’re right, I can be an ass sometimes.” Sasuke raised a brow, “How about we go to the library together?”
He was confused. “The library? Why would we go there? Least of all, why would I hang out with you? We’re strangers to each other.”
Neji shrugged, “Not entirely. We met at the Chuunin Exams and have interacted briefly ever since.”
Sasuke rolled his eyes, “Yeah. That makes us besties.”
“It’s Tuesday of the Leaf’s cultural week. You know, the day we’re supposed to be retelling the stories of our clans’ pasts’? Given that I made a fool of myself yesterday, I thought I would spoon-feed you the opportunity to educate me.”
He had to admit, that made him think. Sasuke loved proving people wrong; one of his favorite things was being right! And besides, everyone else he knew was likely spending time with their families and their clans right now. Even his teammates were probably tired of him after yesterday's display. Did he really want to spend the day with Neji of all people? On the other hand, did he want to spend the day alone?
He sighed; Neji couldn’t be the worst company in the world.
“Fine,” Sasuke accepted, “but one more screw-up like yesterday and I am kicking your ass to the curb!”
Neji nodded and smiled, “I’d expect nothing less of the Sasuke Uchiha.”
“Whatever. I’m going to get dressed, I guess.” Then he was finally able to shut the door.
Neji stared at the newly shut door and sighed. He couldn’t believe he was in charge of this! Naruto or Sakura would have been much better suited, in his opinion. He turned over his shoulder and peered over the Uchiha’s railing. Neji spotted the blotches of pink, green, and orange, a tell-tale sign his other peers were hiding out behind the stack of boxes and trashcans outside the opposing apartment, and threw a thumbs up in their direction.
“Yes!” Sakura exclaimed excitedly as she got the message from the Hyuuga. “He said yes!”
“So, what?” Naruto asked as he knelt behind the wall. “We’re going to spy on Neji and Sasuke all day?”
“The point is to try and get Sasuke’s birthday as true and authentic to the Ash Day that the Uchiha’s would throw,” Tenten commented. “Neji is going to be our inside ears. Hopefully, he can get your guy to talk.”
“He’s not ours,” Sakura clarified, even though she blushed at the idea, “but Tenten is right. Neji had an easy way in because of his ignorance.”
Lee hummed, seemingly concerned. “I do not have full confidence that Neji can achieve this outcome, Sakura-chan.”
She turned over her shoulder, “Why is that?”
“Well, Neji is a horrible liar. Team Guy is never requested for stealth mission because he sucks at it.”
“That and you’re too flamboyant, Lee.” Tenten corrected, “but, yeah. Neji is awful at keeping a cover.” Naruto and Sakura paled.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE SUCKS?!” The blonde yelled aghast.
“You didn’t think to tell us this before we recruited him?!”
Tenten shrugged, “Guys, we’re minor characters. Lee is a completely underutilized character and I barely have ten lines in the entire series. I’m surprised we even have Neji as a main character in this.”
“What the hell are you going on about?!” Naruto scolded again as Sakura shook her head in the background.
“Whatever. I have faith in him. All he has to do is keep Sasuke-kun distracted while we dig up some information.” They all nodded. It shouldn’t be too hard to keep him away from them.
“So, where to first, Sakura-chan?”
She put a finger to her chin in thought, “Neji said that the library would be a good place to start, and they’ll have the most amount of history to look at, so I say we go there.”
“Alright! Everyone hands in!” Lee exclaimed, and even though no one except Naruto wanted to engage, the girls eventually gave in. “One, two, three, TEAM KAKAGUY!”
Tenten blinked, “...team KakaGuy?”
“Yes! It combines our two teams together!”
“Uh,” Naruto squinted, “doesn’t that sound a little–”
“We’ll workshop it.” Sakura compromised, “Let’s just get there before it gets too busy out there.” With that, the four genin naively traveled to the same place that the other two boys were going to end up: the library.
The life drained from Neji’s face as he made eye contact with Tenten across the library. He and Sasuke had just entered the building, how did he screw this up already? Good thing Sasuke was currently distracted by the display case by the door as if he had never been in a library before because that gave Neji time to make a crossing motion over his neck with his finger. Tenten instantly got the memo and rushed to where Neji only assumed was the rest of the crew to alert them that Sasuke was there.
“Guys, bad news.” Tenten alerted as she rounded the corner, out of breath. Sakura turned to her from where she was reading a hefty book on the History of Konoha and Naruto was skimming through a picture book. Lee…was seeing how many books he could balance on one foot.
“What’s wrong, Tenten?” Sakura asked.
“It’s Neji,” she heaved, “he and Sasuke are in the library!”
“What?!” She gasped, “It hasn’t even been ten minutes!”
“I told you he was bad at this.” Lee gloated in his ridiculous handstand.
“In his defense, we didn’t exactly clarify where we were all headed first.” Tenten reasoned.
“That’s a significant miscommunication on our part,” Sakura mumbled to herself, “we just have to be extremely mindful about us being here.”
“How do we do that?” Naruto asked unhelpfully from his crisscrossed position on the ground.
“We just avoid him.”
“Sakura-chan, how are we supposed to avoid the guy with a kekkai genkai that can detect literally everything?”
“Well, he doesn’t have it activated, idiot!” She hit him in the head and then regained her composure. “We just need to keep a lookout and stay out of their way.” The others nodded, now on edge that their secret mission was going to fail, and continued to do their research, while also being hyper-aware that Sasuke was right around the corner.
Sasuke made his way toward the aisle that Tenten was just standing in and Neji spastically chased after him. He urgently gripped the other boy’s shoulders and spun him around like a top. Sasuke had an appalled glare; Neji quickly released him as if he had been burned.
“Um,” he stuttered eloquently, “I was thinking we would head down this way.”
He blinked, inspecting him up and down like he was trying to find where Neji found the audacity to touch him. “What does it matter?”
Neji boldly grabbed his hand and dragged him into one of the furthest aisles lined with towering bookshelves. Sasuke ripped his wrist out of his grip and just stared, aghast. The Hyuuga chuckled nervously and grabbed a book from the shelf at random, shoving it into the Uchiha’s chest.
“Here. Take a look at this! It might be enlightening.”
Now, Sasuke just seemed perplexed beyond reasonable measure and offended by Neji’s impudence. The raven turned the book over to examine the cover, jadedly, before glancing up at the brunette through his eyelashes. His face showed that he was unimpressed.
“What to Expect When You’re Expecting?” He asked incredulously.
“Huh?” Sasuke flipped the book back over to show the daunting picture of a pregnant lady on the front. He ripped the book back and shoved it into the empty space it came from. Sasuke seemed mildly amused by his kooky antics. He sighed, promptly avoiding eye contact with the dark-haired boy, “I had a fifty-fifty shot of giving you something useful.”
“Guess you lost the gamble.” He teased and looked around himself, “truthfully, I’m not sure if we would find anything in the prenatal section.” Neji blushed some more and Sasuke scoffed at his humiliation. “Speaking of,” he asked regaining his composure, “what are we looking for anyway?”
“Anything on the Uchiha family, I suppose.” Neji suddenly got an idea to further cement the believability of his lie, “That’s why I dragged you to the T-W aisle. I figured Uchiha history would be here somewhere.”
“Ah.” Sasuke shoved his hands into his pockets, “I hate to break it to you, but you won’t find anything here.”
“What?” Neji scanned the room with his perceptive eyes to see if the others were listening somewhere. He picked Naruto’s big head peeking around the corner…with three other heads.
“Yeah, I looked here yesterday morning for some old recipes and they didn’t have a single thing. The only information I found on my clan was in the back in the archive room.”
“I see, well then let’s go there.”
Sasuke raised a brow, “Are you sure you want to go back there? Just to hear some Uchiha tall tales?”
“Hey,” he defended, “that story about the Sharingan on the moon was freaky and awesome. I would love to hear more.”
Then, a small smile etched into the corner of Sasuke’s face. “Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He started walking in the direction of the others and Neji saw their heads duck down into the shelves. Sasuke turned over his shoulder, “You sure we don’t need anything else here? We don’t need to read the Kama Sutra, right?” Neji’s face turned tomato red as the infuriating smirk on Sasuke’s face grew.
Neji huffed, “No, we certainly do not! Taking you here was a mistake!”
That was true in more ways than one.
Sasuke chuckled, “Whatever. Let’s get you to the archives. Maybe you can find your sensibility there.”
As Sasuke rounded the corner and led the way to the archives, Neji couldn’t help but sigh at his situation. Sasuke was never going to let him fight him at this rate!
Neji followed Sasuke through the library leisurely, constantly surprising himself with how many bookshelves they passed.
“They’re in the back.” Sasuke had responded cryptically when he asked, “It’s not in the main library.”
Neji found that rather strange, but didn’t question it. He was, however, getting more annoyed by the minute at the group of teens stalking them. He knew he was bad at the stealth thing, but did they really think it was inconspicuous to trail them like this? They weren’t even keeping a safe distance! It was more surprising that Sasuke hadn’t noticed, being the amazing ninja he was. When they reached an extremely narrow hallway with a run-down door, Sasuke stopped.
“It’s down there.”
“Down this hall?” Neji gapped and Sasuke nodded, before walking down it. The brunette looked around; something about this felt…illegal?
“Psst, Neji!” He groaned as he turned to the group of people hiding horribly to his left. “Follow him!” The pink-haired girl whispered loudly. He rolled his eyes and hurried to catch up with the dark-haired boy. You know, considering they were supposed to be doing the research and he was supposed to be the distraction, why did he feel like he was doing all of the work? Sasuke opened the suspicious door at the end of the short hallway, if you could even call it that, and walked fearlessly into a dark, dank room that smelled like saturated dust and old water.
“I can’t see shit.” He complained as he ran straight into a spiderweb. Neji swatted at it and coughed through the dust cloud and stringy webbing.
“Relax. I’m working on it.” Sasuke responded calmly. A small flickering light emerged in the darkness that popped and crackled; Neji recognized quickly that Sasuke had lit an old oil lamp that had been left forgotten on an even more ancient, neglected table. “Voila.” He announced unenthusiastically while referencing the flame. With that minuscule flame, he was able to examine the flickering circle that it lit up.
The room was less like an archive room and more like a neglected closet. It was cramped and stuffed with tons of decrepit boxes that were falling apart at the creases. There wasn’t a single bookshelf in sight! He almost felt sad, as he looked around the space. If the Leaf did keep information about certain clans here then there was something inherently wrong about that and Neji wasn’t sure if Sasuke realized that or not.
“I didn’t hear you cast a jutsu.” He decided to say because he didn’t want to open that can of worms. His relationship with Sasuke was already rocky after last night, so he shouldn’t give him a reason to bolt.
Sasuke shrugged as he started opening a gross box tucked in the corner, “It’s just something I can do. No jutsu needed.” Neji’s eyes bugged as Sasuke grabbed a couple of books from the box, some with covers, some without.
“You can do that without weaving any signs?” Neji asked amazed.
The boy pulled out a rusted iron chair, scraping it against the ground, and plopped the small stack of books in questionable states on the table, uplifting a puff of dust. They both started coughing before Sasuke sat in the seat and Neji followed his lead. “Well,” Sasuke began, “it’s not uncommon. At least, when you consider how long I’ve been doing fire-style jutsus and the size of the flame. I mean, the flame wasn’t even the size of my thumbnail.”
“Yeah, but that’s still impressive.”
Sasuke gave him a questionable look. “You don’t weave any signs?”
“I suppose, but I mostly use taijutsu.”
He rolled his eyes, “Whatever.”
“You know, considering how proud you are, I’m surprised you aren’t boasting about your abilities.”
“It’s really not that impressive. Can we get to why we came here?” Sasuke spit out.
Now, it was Neji’s turn to roll his eyes as he picked up a book that looked to have an extreme amount of water damage. He cringed, “We’re starting with these? Aren’t there better ones?”
“Nope. This is it.”
“This is it?!” Neji was baffled.
He nodded, “These six books are the only ones mentioning the Uchiha in the entire Leaf library.”
That…that just didn’t seem right.
“So, Hyuuga,” Sasuke began, “what are we looking for?”
“Oh, you can call me Neji.”
“Right.” He flipped his yellowed pages, “So what are we looking for?”
Neji cringed; Sasuke didn’t seem to care about honorifics. “Alright, well, how about your holidays?” The raven glared at him and he backtracked, “How about stories and proverbs?”
“Like what?”
“Anything. I want to be educated.”
“Hmph.” Sasuke huffed but said nothing else as he gently flipped through the pages. Neji gulped and turned to the side where their three idiot friends hid behind an abandoned filing cabinet.
He sighed and turned back to the reserved boy before him: Neji always thought that he and Sasuke were cut from the same cloth, but the longer he spent with him the less he believed that. Sasuke was more reserved and quickly got defensive about the smallest things. Neji was an active member of Team Guy, so he could at least hold a conversation. Sasuke seemed incapable of doing that.
Neji opened his own book and tried to find anything on the Uchiha. Of course, he was specifically looking for information on Ash Day.
He cleared his throat, “Is there…anything on Ash Day?” Sasuke froze and Neji stiffened as he watched Sasuke’s life flash before his eyes. “Hey, Sasuke?”
The boy looked up surprised, then shifted quickly to a glare, which Neji began to recognize as his default defense mechanism.
“How do you know about that?” The boy seethed suspiciously, like Neji just asked him something taboo, which, he supposed he did.
“It’s very similar to the Flowering ritual of the Hyuuga.” He defended, “Plus, the village used to talk about the Uchiha’s Ash Days in awe. They were enigmatic because we all knew the name, but none of the details.”
Sasuke huffed, “Whatever,” he swallowed, “it’s…not that special.”
“Isn’t it a birthday celebration?” He asked, even though he already knew the answer. Neji hoped it would lead Sasuke to talk about the event's details so that the losers hiding behind the filing cabinets near the door would know what to set up for his birthday.
“It is.” Sasuke clipped. “I’ve only ever been to one.”
“Is it really such a sore subject?” Neji taunted.
He sighed, “No. I’ll look.” Sasuke started flipping more pages in search of the Ash Day.
Neji smiled; he knew Sasuke couldn’t resist anything disguised as a challenge. He turned to the four in the corner and gave a little smirk. They each gave him a thumbs up with different levels of enthusiasm. Neji looked at his book and his smirk fell. He flipped to a new page, confused, and sure enough, each page was written in hieroglyphics.
“Well, this is confusing.” He commented.
“What is?” Sasuke answered dryly without looking up from the book, head leaning lazily on his knuckles.
“This book. It seems to be written in a different language. Older than the Leaf, probably.”
“It’s K’aibi.”
Neji gapped at the boy in front of him. An unfamiliar sound popped from the Uchiha’s throat that seemed to flow easily, like melted butter.
“What was that?”
“K’aibi.” Sasuke clicked, like, literally clicked. The sound was so bizarre coming from the Uchiha’s mouth. He rolled his eyes, “It’s an old Uchiha language. All of our scrolls and monuments were written in them. We were required to learn it in the clan because it’s an ancient tradition.”
“The Uchiha spoke a different language?”
“Yeah,” Sasuke’s eyes turned downcast, “I don’t remember it much though. It’s pretty much a dead language.”
“That’s amazing.” Neji ogled, “The Hyuuga don’t have a special language. We speak the same thing everyone else does.”
Sasuke looked irritated, “That’s because the Hyuuga were developed after the Leaf was created. The Uchiha ancestors were in the Land of Fire long before the country had a name.”
“Incredible.”
Sasuke smirked, “So the written language here?” He educated and pointed to a sentence in his book, “It’s similar to kanji, but we have different forms. You read from left to right instead of right to left, but you still read the characters vertically.” Neji nodded. Sasuke continued, “All of the punctuation within the sentence is a sound. For example, this thing is a tsu. It looks like an apostrophe, but when you see it you’re supposed to make a clicking noise at the top of your throat, in addition to pronouncing the first letter. Hence, K’aibi.”
Neji was absolutely enamored by the language. It didn’t sound like Sasuke at all! He paused; it did sound like Sasuke’s voice, but it seemed to be more comfortable and natural to him.
Sasuke blinked, “You’re staring, Hyuuga.”
“Neji.”
“Tsk, whatever.”
Neji gapped and felt a small smirk creep up on his face. “Oh my god.”
“What?”
“That noise you make, I thought that you did that out of annoyance, or arrogance, but that’s more like a tick, isn’t it?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your infamous tsk! That’s because the language you learned as a kid has different sounding clicks!”
Sasuke didn’t seem to connect what he was saying, which frustrated Neji because he wasn’t stupid. He connected the dots; he definitely did.
“Tsk, that’s ridiculous.” Suddenly, a sort of realization crossed Sasuke’s face.
“Told you.” Neji gloated.
“Kuh, whatever–” then Sasuke let out a short, amused giggle, “Damn it!”
Neji smiled, “I am never going to look at you the same again!” They chuckled at each other for a few more seconds, because neither of them were very humorous people, therefore it was short and brief.
“Ok,” Sasuke began as they reverted to their normal personalities, “here’s one on Haino’en’sai.”
“What did you just call me?” He joked, knowing that those dull clicks and soft vowels were a K’aibi translation.
“Heh, no.” Sasuke pointed to a passage, “This is Ash Day. It essentially translates to ‘The Ash’s Sacred Flame’, or something.”
“I see. So, this page is about how you celebrate your birthdays?” He purposefully said the last part louder to ensure the three sneaks could hear the information.
“...why did you do that?”
He averted his gaze, “Do what?”
Sasuke blinked…then he sighed. “You’re a weirdo. You’re just like Naruto.”
Neji felt lightning shock his soul and split his heart into a billion pieces. He slumped, “Really? I’m like that guy?”
Sasuke smirked, “Almost exactly. It’s like looking in a mirror.”
The brunette’s head thunked on the desk, his once beautiful long hair dull, falling like a sad canopy.
Sasuke looked bemused but said nothing else, a satisfied grin plastered on his face.
“Anyway,” Neji groaned as mushrooms sprouted from his head, “what’s it say about Ash Day?”
He shrugged, “The usual stuff.”
“Like what?”
“What does it matter to you?”
Neji sat back up, “I’m curious about it. I already told you.”
“Well, even if I wanted to tell you about it, I can’t read all of this. I learned this language when I was two and haven’t read or spoken it in thirteen years.” He sounded annoyed, which was fair.
“What do you remember about it?”
He groaned, “Come on…”
“Indulge me.” Neji looked hopeful and even then they had a five-minute staring contest before Sasuke caved in.
“Fine.” Neji grinned and turned to make sure the others were listening: they were. “You’re right, it’s very similar to the Hyuuga’s Flowering ritual, but it’s way more complicated. This tradition has been around since the dawn of shinobi, so it was important to my clan that it was done by the book.” Neji nodded, invested, and Sasuke continued, annoyed. “The year of legality and recognition is thirteen,” Sasuke paused, but Neji gave him time. He cleared his throat, “And, anyway, the more people that show up to your Ash Day, the more people recognize you as an adult in the clan. You’re especially valued if the elders come to your Ash Day.” Each word that Sasuke spoke grew quieter and Neji felt bad that Sasuke wouldn’t be able to have that. Even though his birthday wasn’t a familial event, he understood the importance of being recognized as strong and capable by the people you respected.
He didn’t want to make him talk about such a depressing ordeal, but they needed to know how to conduct it!
“So, is it like a regular birthday party? Confetti, balloons, and a giant birthday cake?” Neji was trying to lighten the mood, but Sasuke only seemed to get angry and offended. Well, he wasn’t known to be the jocular one on his team.
“No,” Sasuke clipped, “it’s a ritual! A ceremony and the details are only meant for the Uchiha to know!”
“You’re really going to let your culture die with you?” And shit, he hadn’t meant to say that so harshly, but the Sasuke bravado absolutely shattered.
“How dare you–”
“Wouldn’t you rather tell someone so that the Uchiha history can live on?” He added, attempting to divert the angry boy.
“I don’t–”
“So your Ash Days are special and unique birthday rituals. What makes them so intricate?” Neji pushed.
Sasuke took a deep breath like he was pondering whether or not to reveal all of the family secrets, before looking down, shoulders slumping. “Fine. There’s a reason it’s dubbed Ash Day. It’s not just a play on words because the Uchiha are known for their fire jutsu techniques, but…we bathe in the ashes of our ancestors.”
“...you what?”
“Ok, see? You don’t get it! This is why we kept the traditions to ourselves because you all judge what we do!”
“No, no!” He shook his hands, “I just was shocked! It’s definitely not weird…or scary.”
Sasuke rolled his eyes and crossed his arms, slouching in his iron seat, “The Uchiha don’t bury our dead, they’re cremated. Their ashes are kept in a crypt.”
“You have a crypt?” Neji asked, “Isn’t that for dead bodies?”
“For a typical crypt, sure, but the Uchiha do things differently.” He didn’t miss a beat.
Neji felt a chill run up his spine but pushed through the unease. “That’s…unique! What did you mean by you bathe in them?” That sounded even less comforting than the Uchiha owning a family crypt.