Chương 67: Monster

Shin was still thinking about Sōen Kuriyama on the way home, drifting through the streets without much direction.

"One red bean dango, please." The voice stopped him cold. He knew it and for a moment his feet locked in place. He turned. Outside a nearby stall, a black-haired young man was accepting a skewer with a smile. Shisui.

"Thanks." The young man paid and walked away, folding into the crowd.

"Shisui." The word left Shin's mouth on its own.

"Shisui!" He broke into a run, calling out as he pushed through the crowd. The black-haired figure ahead walked at an easy pace and stayed ahead no matter how fast Shin moved, as though the sound of his name hadn't reached him at all. The figure turned into an alley. Shin came to the corner. And stopped. The rush drained out of him, clean and sudden. He stood at the mouth of the alley, looking at the dead end ahead, at the shadow pooled at the far wall, at the figure waiting inside it. This wasn't Shisui.

This had never been Shisui. He was standing in the light of the street. Inside the alley, just visible in the dark: Danzō. Shin didn't move from the entrance.

"Shin." Danzō's voice was low, the cane planted in one hand. He watched Shin with half-lidded eyes.

"Why won't you come closer?" Shin looked at where Danzō stood, at the distance between them. The busy street hummed at his back. He smiled, just slightly.

"Does a man as busy as Lord Danzō really have time to spend chasing after one child?" Danzō started walking. Each step was deliberate. And as he came toward the light, something behind him seemed to move too — at the very edge of Shin's perception, something dark and formless reaching after him, trying to pull him back. Shin refocused. Kept his eyes on Danzō. There were people behind him. Danzō wouldn't act here. Danzō stopped at the edge of the shadow. His body was still in darkness. Shin was still in the light.

Between them: almost nothing.

"You care so much about Shisui." Danzō's voice dropped further. Shin's jaw set. He said nothing.

"Since you care so much — don't you want to know how he died?" He wanted to know. He was desperate to know. But what Itachi had said came back to him, unchanged: what good does knowing do you right now? If he got pulled into the truth before he was ready for it and ended up buried there, it would cost him everything. He still had a debt on Shisui's behalf.

"Are you afraid of me?" Danzō looked down at him.

"Or is it the dark you're afraid of?" The geometry of it registered belatedly. Behind Danzō: black, cold, without end. Behind Shin: warm light, noise, the smell of food stalls.

"Do you believe," Danzō said, "that where you're standing is the light?" A short, cold sound from his chest.

"How much darkness is hiding inside all that warmth? Are the respectable people performing on that stage actually clean? Who among them truly fights for Konoha — besides your father?" My father. Shin didn't understand why Danzō kept circling back to him. He didn't trust a single word the man said. He was starting to find it tiresome.

"Think about what happens to a man whose thinking doesn't match the group. Your father was once the most loyal man in the Hokage camp. Guess what the Third did to him in the end. And those people who go around calling themselves your father's friends — ask yourself how they actually treated him." The amount of information Danzō was trying to land on him made it difficult to separate anything useful from the noise.

"Do you know what Shisui's standing was in this village — in the beginning?" Danzō's tone shifted. A faint curl at the edge of his voice.

"Shisui Uchiha, one of the most prominent members of his clan. Do you know why he died before the rest of them? At the moment the Uchiha's relationship with the village was at its most strained, Shisui was still pouring himself into trying to make peace work. A man who cared that much for his clan and his village — if you were in power, how would you treat someone like that?" Shin held the words and turned them over. He didn't know how much was true. Probably not all of it.

But he already knew things, and those things and what he was hearing now pointed in the same direction. Shisui hadn't deserved what happened to him. He'd always known that. His eyes stayed on Danzō.

"Shisui was once my finest student." Something shifted in Danzō's voice. Almost tired.

"His death pains me. You are his student. That makes you matter to me. I have no intention of harming you." The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Shin said nothing.

"You don't have to believe me." Danzō was unbothered by the silence.

"I'm not asking you to. My appearing like this must seem sudden and strange. Being on guard against unexpected people is sensible. The people around you have spent a long time warning you I'm dangerous. You'd think that between a sudden stranger and the people you've lived alongside for ten years, the choice is obvious. But if I'm wrong about something — what exactly makes you so certain they were right?"

"..."

"There are people around you right now who are working to prevent your early graduation. Have you forgotten who helped you arrange it in the first place, Shin? Have you never asked yourself why those people are so resistant to you graduating early — why they're so resistant to watching you grow up? You believe that ten years of living together means you know each other honestly. But how do you know those ten years haven't been a blindfold over your eyes?" It was an absurd thing to say. Shin recognized that.

But standing here — the light at his back, the dark at Danzō's — left a cold that had nothing to do with the night air. …… Danzō said much more, and then he was gone, slipping back into the dark without any further pressure. Shin stood alone. His picture of things had never been detailed. Danzō had scattered it further. Politics had never been something Shin understood — in his previous life, with Fujino and Yuko beside him, he hadn't needed to think. He had only needed to follow.

For someone who had lost everything and found life without meaning, becoming an instrument in someone else's hands had felt like enough. In this life, he had felt much the same. He didn't care if the people around him were deceiving him. He didn't care about the true shape of things. He had only ever wanted the people near him to be safe and for the days to stay quiet. If you could live warmly inside a lie, why break open the thing that shelters you? Those who went chasing the truth — had any of them fared well?

But this was different now. Because of Shisui. He couldn't let it go. He would not. No matter who was responsible. He stood at the alley's edge, and his face had gone somewhere cold that didn't belong to the person he usually was. The warmth he wore like a second skin was nowhere. He had always been good at being gentle. He had sometimes even mistaken it for who he actually was.

He had wanted to bury the version of himself that moved through the world with a blade — to become someone different, someone easier to accept. But someone kept pressing the knife back into his hand. He breathed out. Slowly, the steadiness came back. He stepped into the night market and let the crowd close around him.

"Shin!" The voice came out of the noise. He looked up. A flash of gold and orange, an arm waving. Naruto. The smile arrived before he'd decided on it. Naruto jogged over, face bright.

"Hey, what are you doing out here?"

"Errands." Shin looked at him.

"Oh." Naruto fell into step beside him without being invited.

"I'm bored at home. What are you doing next? Can I come?" The sky was getting dark. Shin should probably head back. He looked at Naruto's face and swallowed the words.

"Walking for a bit. Then home."

"I'll come." The grin landed immediately.

"Let's go." They drifted through the market together. Naruto talked — easy, nonstop conversation that never seemed to be about anything and somehow never stopped. He was genuinely pleased about all of it. Shin walked alongside him and listened, adding a word here and there. It wasn't bad.

"Dango! Get your dango!" A vendor's call. Shin looked over. The same stall. The owner was holding up two skewers, scanning the crowd. Red bean dango. Shisui. This is what he always liked. The thought arrived without his permission. He went still looking at the stall, the crowd around him going distant. Naruto had been talking. He noticed the silence, turned, found Shin staring at a dango stall like something was on the other side of it. He called Shin's name once. Nothing. He looked at the stall again.

Back at Shin. His hand moved to his pocket and found his wallet. He stood there a moment. Then he ran off. Naruto? Shin tracked him, watched him head straight for the stall, and understood. A small smile came to him before he could stop it. He's surprisingly perceptive. He watched Naruto's back.

"Get away from here!" The shout was sudden and violent.

"You —" Naruto was shoved backward, hard. The foot traffic around the stall stopped. A crowd began to form.

"We don't sell to you. Get your cursed luck out of my sight!" The vendor's face was purple with contempt. Shin's feet locked.

"I just wanted one skewer." Naruto had gotten back up, dirt on his clothes, facing the man with an expression Shin had no word for except earnest.

"Just one."

"Nothing! Get out!" People gathered. Fingers pointed.

"That kid again."

"Fox demon."

"You shouldn't sell to something like him." Naruto looked at all the faces turned toward him and something moved through his own — a flash of panic, quickly schooled. He found Shin across the crowd. He shook his head, very slightly. His mouth moved: don't. It's not what you think. Don't do anything.

"Get out of my sight, monster." The vendor grabbed a skewer and threw it at him.

"Stop standing in front of my stall!"

"That's enough." Shin was already moving. He stepped through the crowd and put himself between Naruto and the vendor.

"What did he do?" Flat.

"Tell me exactly what he did wrong." Recognition spread through the watching crowd.

"Isn't that — Shin Takami?"

"Tsukasa-san's son."

"The hero's child."

"Shin, you really shouldn't —""Come away from the monster, it'll bring you —" He turned around and looked at Naruto. Naruto was staring at him. His face was afraid. Still: don't. Still: it's not like that.

"Shin, you're young, you don't understand what this is —" the vendor said, softer now.

"No." Shin's voice came out loud. Loud enough to cut through everything around him. He pointed at the vendor. Let his hand sweep across the watching crowd.

"You're the monsters." He grabbed Naruto by the arm and pulled him through the gap. Behind them the voices started up again, but he was already moving. He didn't stop until the street behind them was quiet and the market was a distant glow. He let go of Naruto's arm. Naruto stood there with his head down. The loud, easy person who'd been filling every moment of the evening with chatter was gone.

"Naruto." Shin's voice came out quieter than he intended.

"They were wrong. None of it was true. You're Naruto. That's all you are." Naruto looked up. He was smiling. The same wide, loose grin, like it had all bounced off him.

"I'm fine, haha — I'm going to be Hokage someday, something like this can't stop me, ahaha —" He scratched the back of his head, laughing too much, refusing to stop. Naruto. How many times have you had to learn how to smile like that? Shin said nothing. He just looked.

"Here." Naruto held out his free hand. A skewer of red bean dango.

"Didn't drop it." A small grin, real this time.

"Heh."

"Naruto..."

"You don't like it?"

"I do." Shin reached out and took it.

"Red bean dango is my favorite. My absolute favorite." The last words came out unsteady. He hadn't planned them.

"Yeah?" Naruto exhaled a little.

"Good. I wasn't sure." Shin bit one off the skewer and held it out toward him.

"Your turn." Naruto hesitated. Then he leaned in and bit one off. A pause.

"... Good," he said, barely audible.

"Really good." And then the tears came, quiet and without warning, running down his face while he was still holding the skewer.