#otherwise he cannot exist without weaponizing himself for some cause 😞

[fatedefy]

actually, no one ever talks about the effects of living a good chunk of your life purely out of spite ⸻ growing out of spite, surviving out of spite, mastering any and every skill out of spite. neji literally gives away a quarter of his youth to the erred belief that, if this is all that his life will ever amount to ( being a hyūga branch member, a throwaway weapon meant to protect the main house ), then he'll become so outstanding, so near-perfect that they'll regret casting him ( and by extension, his father, because everything neji does is implicity about hizashi ) this lot in life. and then when he finally overcomes this fatalistic outlook, he keeps tethering himself to pursuing excellence simply for the sake of it, because he doesn't know what to do or who to be without pushing himself past every limit humanly possible. neji has never once lived just for himself, and i'm not quite certain that, if asked, he could procure another reason outside of "to better himself" for why he keeps going