An Unqualified Clan Head

The rooftop was open on all sides, with nowhere nearby to hide. As long as they watched their footing, there was no need to worry about anyone eavesdropping on their conversation. It was an excellent place to chat—at least, Sōken considered it far more reliable than those Secret Chambers that never saw daylight.

"Oolong Tea Flavor or Natto Flavor—which one do you want?"

Sōken held up two popsicles.

Though it was only April, Konoha's weather had already begun to heat up. The uncle in the clan who made popsicles had eagerly started experimenting with his own exclusive products, such as Oolong Tea Flavor and Natto Flavor popsicles. The former was fine, but the latter... Natto Flavor popsicles were truly baffling.

"Don't you have anything else?"

Shisui stared wide-eyed.

"Those are the only two today. I remember you quite like natto. Here, take it—the Natto Flavor one."

Without giving him a choice, Sōken stuffed the Natto Flavor popsicle into Shisui's hand.

"I don't hate natto, but that doesn't mean my popsicles need to be natto too..." Shisui looked at the Natto Flavor popsicle in his hand with an indescribable expression. If he had known, he should have gone to buy popsicles with Sōken. This sneaky bastard had done it on purpose, hadn't he?

Natto Flavor popsicle—

With complicated feelings, he took a bite... Huh! It unexpectedly didn't taste too bad. At the very least, it went down quite smoothly for him.

"Where were we?"

Sōken licked his popsicle and finally returned to the main topic.

"The Police Force's... reputation is terrible."

"That's right, the Police Force has a terrible reputation." Sōken nodded. "So, Shisui, what unforgivable evil do you think our clansmen in the Police Force have actually committed? Why is the Police Force's name now so foul that even children imitate adults by spitting behind their backs?"

Shisui fell silent.

Had the clansmen in the Police Force ever done anything so cruel and wicked?

Of course not. They were arrogant, looked down on others, and carried themselves with their noses in the air... They certainly had those bad habits, but precisely because of that bone-deep, contemptuous pride, they disdained doing anything illegal or undisciplined.

They had done nothing but follow the rules. At most, one could harshly criticize them for being overly rough in enforcing the law.

Even if they were unpopular with the villagers, they should not have been so thoroughly despised—

"Shisui, you're not some fool who can be easily tricked, and I don't think I'm eloquent enough to fool you either. So I'll be direct: the Police Force's reputation is this bad because someone has been sabotaging it from within. Some people are inciting the villagers to become hostile toward the Police Force, toward the Uchiha Clan."

"Our clan has fallen to its current state partly because of our own faults, but when it comes down to it, I believe the greater blame lies with the Third Hokage and the others forcing us into this position."

"To be honest, few people truly like a Coup. What's the point of slaughtering your own people until everything is soaked in blood? But if you ask me, the problem is that the village has been forcing us down the road of a Coup from the start."

"Sōken, the Third Lord wasn't... The one targeting our clan is Danzo..."

Shisui spoke up in defense, but he stammered, clearly lacking conviction.

He was not an idiot. His unwavering belief in the Will of Fire did not mean he was blind to the village's suppression and persecution of the clan.

It was simply that the teachings passed down by his elders had made him accustomed to viewing everything from the village's perspective, accustomed to thinking from the village's position. Fortunately, he still held feelings for the clan. He had not directly taken the village's side, instead hoping that the village and the clan could coexist peacefully, without distinguishing one from the other.

He believed the clan was part of the village. The clan should not separate itself from the village and stand against it; it should actively integrate into the village...

Yet although he wished to create such a future, he did not know how to reach that beautiful future.

Ideals alone could not solve problems.

But before he could weather more storms and find a way to solve those problems, the conflict had already escalated. Unable to bear the oppression from the village any longer, the clansmen gritted their teeth and began secretly plotting a Coup, setting foot on a dead-end road with no hope in sight.

The despair in Shisui's heart had arisen from this.

Even Kotoamatsukami could not alter the thoughts of so many people!

"This isn't any one person's problem. The Third, the two Elders, and that old bastard Danzo... They inherited the Second's wariness and guard against our clan, yet failed to inherit the magnanimity that let him accept an Uchiha as his disciple."

Sōken did not criticize the Second too much. After all, Shisui's ancestor, Kagami Uchiha, had been the Second's disciple. Besides, there was little point in harshly condemning a dead man.

He looked directly into Shisui's eyes. "Shisui, no matter what you think, I believe they forced our clan into its current state."

"Sōken!!!"

The popsicle in Shisui's hand slowly melted as he furrowed his brows tightly.

"What are you... trying to do by saying all this? Are you trying to convince me to support the clansmen's Coup? The problem is that it's an absolute dead end. Whether the Coup succeeds or fails, our clan will have no good ending."

"And will swallowing humiliation and bearing the burden let us survive? What did we do wrong? Do we have to live so miserably? Is it because of Madara Uchiha? Or that unknown Uchiha Clan powerhouse from the Nine-Tails' Rampage? Must we suffer for their mistakes?"

Sōken's voice rose considerably.

The two friends looked at each other for a long while. Sōken eventually calmed down and coughed lightly. "Like I said before, if I were the Hokage, I'd probably be hostile toward the Uchiha Clan too. But the problem is, I'm not the Hokage. I'm an Uchiha. Before considering the village's greater good, even if not for myself, I have to consider my parents and my Sister first."

The village viewed the Uchiha as a ticking bomb, one that could explode at any moment and harm the village again, so it had always worked to dismantle and defuse that bomb.

The Uchiha, meanwhile, believed the village was oppressing them too severely and deliberately suppressing them. Rather than wait for the noose to tighten around their necks, they wanted to strike first.

That was the current state of Konoha and the Uchiha Clan!

"...Sōken, after saying all that, what exactly are you trying to do?"

Shisui let the popsicle in his hand melt away, doing his utmost to remain calm as he asked, "Tell me, Sōken. What do you want to do? Since you said all this, you must have already thought it through, right? The problems between the village and the clan can't be explained in just a few words. You only need to tell me what you want to do!"

As expected of a genius of the Uchiha Clan, he had not let Sōken's words throw off his train of thought. He sharply detected a hint of something unusual.

Sōken bit off the last piece of his popsicle and crunched it to bits. Throwing away the wooden stick, he said bluntly, "Shisui, I want you to help me change the Uchiha."

"What?"

Shisui's brows furrowed slightly.

Change the Uchiha Clan? How, exactly? It was not as though he had never wanted to change the Uchiha Clan himself, but the problem was that he had no idea how. He had always felt like a traveler walking through the night, searching for a glimmer of hope in darkness where he could not tell east from west, north from south.

"What do you think of Clan Head Fugaku?"

"The clan head?"

Shisui was confused. The topic had changed too quickly. Weren't they talking about changing the Uchiha Clan? How had it circled around to the clan head?

"I want you to help me become the Uchiha Clan's next clan head!"

Sōken clearly intended to shock him to death with his words. Shisui's eyebrows shot up in alarm, and his ice pop fell to the ground with a slap, leaving only a bare stick in his hand.

"Sōken, you..."

Shisui truly could not sort out his thoughts right now.

Shouldn't their conversation have revolved around changing the Uchiha Clan? Why had it somehow circled back to a coup? Replacing Clan Head Fugaku... Were they planning to stage a coup rehearsal within the clan first?

"To change the Uchiha Clan, we need power. Otherwise, who would listen to us just because we talked?"

"But, but... we could persuade the clan head..."

"I don't trust him."

Sōken curled his lip and said coldly, "I can't trust Clan Head Fugaku. How should I put it? Our clan head has no real convictions. During the Nine-Tails' Rampage, he accepted the Third's orders to remain in the clan lands and not deploy. But the Fourth was the legitimate Hokage at the time! Supporting the Fourth was obviously the absolutely correct choice, yet he..."

"And later, during the Clan Land Relocation, not only did he fail to speak up and protest for the clansmen, but in the name of preserving the so-called bigger picture, he even helped the village suppress opposition within the clan. He preserved the bigger picture, sure, but the problem was that the village did not care about how we Uchiha felt at all."

"Now, the village higher-ups are becoming more and more brazen in suppressing us. The Radical Faction has gained the upper hand within the clan, and it looks like the clan head is preparing to support them in planning a coup again. He sways back and forth like one of those roly-poly dolls. Who knows what he's thinking all day..."

And when Itachi Uchiha went on his killing spree in the future, he would choose to sit back and wait for death. By the end, only his younger son would be left alive in the entire Uchiha Clan! Sōken did not say those words aloud, merely turning them over in his mind.

The people Sōken hated most now were Obito Uchiha and Itachi Uchiha, those two bastards. Next came Clan Head Fugaku. Even Danzo ranked behind him, because Danzo's position had never been unclear. From beginning to end, he had always known exactly who he was.

The Second's disciple, the Hokage Assistant, the leader of Root, and... the Uchiha Clan's enemy.

That was Danzo's position.

So no matter how cruel his methods were... people could hate him, curse him, or even dig up Danzo's ancestral grave, but there was nothing to complain about!

When dealing with an extremely dangerous enemy, of course one had to use every possible means.

That was only natural.

Yet the Uchiha Clan's Lord Clan Head seemed never to have figured out his own position. He had kept wavering between the village and the clan, utterly failing to fulfill the responsibilities of a clan head. In the end, he simply threw up his hands and died cleanly enough, but so many clansmen had died unable to rest in peace.

For someone like that to be the Uchiha Clan's clan head was the Uchiha Clan's greatest misfortune!