Chương 40: Right and Wrong

"I'm home."

"Itachi?" Mikoto emerged from the back room, surprised to hear her son's voice. He was in the entryway, crouching to unlace his sandals—still in full ANBU gear.

"You're back early today." She studied him. Itachi rarely came home before evening, let alone midday.

"Have you eaten?"

"I'm not hungry, Mother." His voice was low. Flat. Something was off. His shoulders sat wrong—not the quiet composure she was used to, but something heavier. Duller.

"Is everything alright?" He didn't answer.

"Is Father home?"

"In his room, reading." She glanced toward the closed door down the hall, then back at Itachi.

"Did you need him for something?" Reading.

"... No. Never mind. I'll be in my room." …… The moon was the color of blood. It hung in a pitch-black sky, vivid and wet, as though the red might drip from its surface at any moment. Below it, the earth burned. Crimson flames surged across the ground in every direction, tongues of fire twisting upward into the dark, and the heat hit Itachi like a wall—searing, suffocating. He gritted his teeth against it. There was no way out. Fire stretched to every horizon, an ocean of it, and the air itself seemed to combust.

It was as if he'd been cast into some crimson hell—thrashing, enduring, with no release. The only things visible through the inferno were the burning earth below and that impossible moon above. He stared up at it. Three black tomoe materialized across the moon's surface, reflected in its blood-red glow like the pattern of a massive, lidless eye. Itachi shot upright on the tatami. His breath came in ragged bursts. He stared at his own hands, trembling, and realized his entire body was drenched.

His undershirt clung to his skin, and the futon beneath him had soaked through with sweat—as if the fire had been real, as if his body had genuinely endured that heat. He sat there for a long moment, letting his pulse slow. Then he stood, gathered clean clothes, and walked to the bathroom.

"Itachi? Is that you in there?" Mikoto's voice came through the door at the sound of running water.

"Mother—could you change my bedding? I got it wet. Sorry."

"Oh—sure." He emerged a few minutes later in a plain black shirt, hair still damp, and found Mikoto in the kitchen wrapping strips of dried meat into a cloth bundle.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"I made jerky today." She tied the bundle and smiled.

"I'm going to bring some to Shin."

"Shin?"

"Sasuke's classmate—the one who walked him home. You've met him." Itachi knew perfectly well who Shin Takami was. What he didn't understand was why his mother was bringing the boy food.

"Our families were close, once. Shin's father and your father were best friends." Mikoto's smile softened.

"It's been a long time." Were they? Itachi had no knowledge of this. He knew Shin was an orphan—parents dead, raised by Tsume Inuzuka's family. But the idea that Fugaku had ever had a best friend... he'd never heard that. Never thought to ask. How little do I actually know about my father?

"You should ask him yourself," Mikoto said lightly, rising to carry the bundle to the counter. Itachi hesitated. Then he turned and walked toward Fugaku's room. He knocked once at the door. A voice from within: "Come in." He slid the door open and stepped inside. Fugaku sat cross-legged on the tatami, a thick book held open in both hands, reading with the kind of stillness that made it seem like he hadn't registered Itachi's entrance at all.

Itachi crossed the room and lowered himself to his knees opposite his father, leaving a respectful distance between them. He really is reading. The village and the Uchiha have come to this—and you're sitting here with a book. He kept the thought behind his teeth. The room was very quiet. The only sound was the dry whisper of pages turning. Neither spoke. Itachi knelt motionless, hands flat on his thighs. His eyes found the title on the book's thick cover: The Annals of Konoha. He'd read it.

Every shinobi in the Leaf had. It was required reading at the Academy—a comprehensive history of the village from its founding to the present day: the wars fought, the policies enacted, the leaders who shaped the nation.

"You remember this book," Fugaku said without looking up. Itachi nodded.

"The first volume tells the story of the Senju and the Uchiha. The First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, and our ancestor Madara Uchiha—founding the Hidden Leaf together." Madara Uchiha... Something in Itachi's expression shifted. A shadow crossed his face—there and gone—and his jaw tightened. Fugaku didn't notice. His eyes remained on the page, and he began to recite—the words printed on the book's frontispiece, words Itachi also knew. He'd first read them at five years old and understood nothing."

Once, there were those who despised one another..." Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more." Their corpses rotted in the fields. Their blood stained the souls of heroes."" Bonds were severed by the blade."" And true hearts wept in the darkness..." Even now, the meaning remained half-shrouded. Itachi could feel it—a shape in fog—but couldn't quite grasp it whole.

"A great deal was left out of this book," Fugaku said.

"The ancestors did much. What later generations see is only cold, edited text. Simple words rewritten by someone else's hand." Silence.

"You once taught me," Itachi said, steadying himself, "that a shinobi's worth isn't determined by how they live—but by what they accomplish before they die." He paused.

"What the ancestors contributed can't be contained in a single book. And they wouldn't have cared how any book chose to record them." He looked up.

"Would you care how a book recorded you, Father?" A thin, sardonic smile crossed Fugaku's face. Not an answer.

"What did you come here for?"

"You... and Shin Takami's father," Itachi said after a moment's hesitation. Fugaku went still. He closed the book slowly and set it down, then looked at Itachi with an expression that revealed nothing.

"You want to know?" Itachi hesitated, then nodded. He didn't meet Fugaku's eyes—just knelt there, gaze lowered to the floorboards. In all things, Itachi was proper. Measured. He carried himself with the gravity of someone far older than thirteen, and he never dropped the courtesy, no matter the person, no matter the circumstance.

"Do you know who Tsukasa Takami was?" Fugaku asked. Itachi nodded.

"During the Third Shinobi World War, he served as deputy commander on the Land of Water front. He was instrumental in defeating the enemy there. Later, a misjudgment on a mission caused severe losses for the village—he resigned out of guilt, and was subsequently killed during the Nine-Tails attack." Itachi recited the facts as he knew them, then looked up.

"He was Shin's father?" Fugaku's face wore that sardonic look again.

"Is something wrong?" Itachi asked.

"No. Nothing wrong with any of that." Fugaku let out a short, dry laugh—the kind that made it impossible to tell what he found funny.

"Everything in that file is technically correct. But there are too many people alive who know what actually happened, which makes the file rather laughable. I wonder who wrote it." He paused.

"Tsukasa Takami and I were squadmates. We fought side by side." The ghost of that cold smile still hadn't left his face.

"That's all."

"... That's all?" Itachi frowned inwardly.

"Isn't that enough?" Fought side by side. Those four words could contain a thousand stories. They were enough to explain why Mikoto would look after Shin. But they weren't the answer Itachi had been looking for. He wanted more. That afternoon, not long after Shin got home from school, someone knocked on his front door. Visitors were rare. Kiba and Hana never knocked—they just walked in, and they didn't need to do otherwise. Shin crossed to the entryway and pushed the heavy old door open.

A beautiful woman stood on the step, gentle-featured and smiling, a cloth-wrapped bundle in her hands.

"Aunt Mikoto?" He couldn't keep the surprise from his voice.

"Shin." She smiled warmly.

"Hello."

"Oh—please, come in." He stepped aside quickly to let her through. …… Mikoto stepped inside, and Shin led her to the living room. Her eyes moved over everything as they walked—the walls, the hallway, the familiar layout of a house she clearly knew. She settled onto the sofa. Shin went to prepare tea.

"A lot of things are missing," Mikoto murmured, more to herself than to him.

"But so much of it is still the same." A quiet sigh.

"You used to come here often?" Shin returned with a tray—a teapot, two cups. He set it on the low table in front of her.

"I did. But after your parents passed, Tsume wasn't exactly welcoming toward us. So I stopped." She accepted the cup he poured for her.

"It's only hot water, I'm afraid. I apologize."

"What went wrong between you and Aunt Tsume?" he asked. Mikoto blinked—then let out a soft laugh.

"You really don't talk like a child, Shin."

"The way you speak... it's like talking to a grown-up." She covered her smile with the edge of her cup, eyes warm. Shin paused at that, then gave a small, rueful half-smile of his own. He let the observation pass without comment.

"Things between our generation are... complicated. Too tangled to explain quickly." Her tone was light, the kind of lightness that closed a door gently. She didn't want to go further. Instead, she placed the cloth bundle on the table and unwrapped it.

"I made some jerky. I thought you might like to try it."

"Thank you." Shin dipped his head. This was a gift Mikoto had gone out of her way to bring—and given what she'd said about the two families' history, refusing it was out of the question.

"I hope you'll keep looking out for Sasuke at school," she said, smiling.

"That's too much credit."

"Sasuke can be... withdrawn. He doesn't open up to many people. But the fact that he let you walk him home—" She tilted her head.

"You must be someone special to him." He probably just thinks of me as a rival, Shin thought. An image of Sasuke's usual scowl—the prickly, stubborn kind that was almost endearing—flickered through his mind. A faint smile touched his face before he could stop it.

"See? I knew it." Mikoto caught the smile and beamed.

"You two should keep looking after each other." She watched the softness in his expression, and something in her own face shifted. A shadow of sadness, surfacing without warning. Growing up without parents... it must have been so hard for him.

"If only Tsukasa and Yuki were still here," she said quietly. The words came out on a sigh, heavy with a grief that hadn't faded. The name hit Shin somewhere unexpected. He thought of the dream from that morning.

"Shin, help Mommy wash the dishes."

"Shin, your father's very busy—try to understand."

"Shin, take this over to your Uncle Fugaku's house." If what Mikoto said was true—if both his parents were still alive—the two families would have been inseparable. He and Sasuke might have known each other since they were barely old enough to walk. And Kiba, and Shino—they'd all be close, too. Kiba's personality would guarantee constant arguments with Sasuke, and Shin would have to play mediator every time. Shino would probably just watch from the sidelines... The thought made his expression gentler still.

It was the kind of life that was easy to long for. He felt no particular attachment to his parents—not in this life, not in the last one. He'd forgotten what it felt like to have them. But the Inuzuka family had given him something close enough. Tsume, Hana, Kiba—they were his family in every way that mattered. Even without parents, he was fine. If people were good to him, he'd repay that goodness a thousandfold. That was enough.

"Does Shin use a sword?" Mikoto's voice broke through his reverie. She'd noticed the black-sheathed katana mounted on the wall. As far as she knew, neither Tsukasa nor Yuki had been sword users.

"No—that was a gift from Hana." Shin shook his head.

"I have some interest in it, that's all. I just mess around with it when I'm bored."

"I see. We have quite a few swordsmen in our clan—I could introduce you."

"That's kind of you, but there's no need." Another shake of his head. Having an actual kenjutsu expert try to teach him would create more problems than it solved.

"That sword is really just a toy to me."

"If you say so." They talked for a long time after that. Mikoto seemed to have an inexhaustible well of things to say—stories, memories, feelings she'd been carrying for years that spilled out now in Shin's quiet living room. And Shin listened, as he always did, saying little but offering the kind of steady presence that drew people out. Through all of it, he could feel it clearly: the depth of Mikoto's bond with his parents had been real. Two people with similar temperaments made for easy conversation.

The afternoon slipped away, and it wasn't until the light began to turn golden that Mikoto finally rose to leave.

"You have to come visit us sometime, Shin. Promise me." At the door, she held his hand, reluctant to let go.

"I will." He bowed slightly.

"Take care." She crouched down in front of him and reached out, brushing her fingertips gently across his cheek. Her eyes shimmered—something vast and unspoken moving behind them. Then she stood, and she left. The Uchiha compound. Itachi was still kneeling across from Fugaku, in the same room, in the same silence.

"Itachi. If you cling to what's on the surface, you'll never find your answer." Fugaku placed the book face-up on the floor between them, its cover turned toward Itachi so the title was readable.

"This is the surface."

"... Tell me, Itachi. What do you see when you look through this book?" A cold smile.

"A strong, prosperous, harmonious Leaf Village. The God of Shinobi who ended the Warring States, the First Hokage. A Second Hokage who created countless jutsu and policies that benefited generations. A Third Hokage who won war after war and led the village to its greatest era of prosperity." The smile sharpened.

"These things are carved deep inside you, aren't they?" Itachi said nothing. Fugaku was right. These beliefs were bedrock—hammered in since childhood. Not just for Itachi. Every young shinobi in the Leaf had grown up on the same stories, the same heroes.

"So does that make me the villain for trying to tear it all down? Is that what the Third told you?" Fugaku's voice was quiet, edged with contempt.

"And what about Tsukasa Takami? Was he wrong? The Land of Water front was the first to achieve victory—yet our casualties exceeded even those on the Land of Earth front. Whose fault was that?" Silence.

"On the day of the victory parade, the whole village praised the brilliant leadership of those in power. Everyone mourned the shinobi who died needlessly." The contempt thickened.

"Is that the laughable notion of right and wrong you're so attached to?"