After learning that Shinji had awakened his Mangekyō Sharingan before he did, Sasuke had already felt deeply frustrated. But he had never imagined that Shinji had awakened it so much earlier than him.
"The Night of the Massacre..." Sasuke's eyes lost focus as he murmured, "That's impossible! Didn't he nearly die that night? How could he have awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan?"
Kakashi offered no explanation.
Sasuke was an Uchiha. He knew that intense emotional trauma could cause the Sharingan to evolve. So he understood; it wasn't that he didn't know. He simply didn't want to admit it!
Sasuke snapped, "So he's been lying to me all along. Damn it!"
Thinking back to how arrogantly he had acted toward Shinji after awakening his Mangekyō Sharingan, he felt unbearably ashamed.
That humiliation was harder to bear than being beaten to a pulp.
"There's one more thing you need to know," Kakashi said.
"What?"
Sasuke had a bad feeling.
Kakashi spoke slowly. "Do you remember the incident when Naruto was attacked and the Nine-Tails went berserk?"
Before Kakashi could finish, Sasuke immediately caught on. "You mean Shinji was the one who stopped the Nine-Tails back then?"
Kakashi nodded. "Yes. He admitted it himself in front of Lord Hokage!"
Thud.
Sasuke slammed his fist into the tree beside him. The trunk shuddered, and the leaves rustled in the branches above.
The village had valued him and regarded him as an insurance policy to keep Naruto in check because of the incident where the Nine-Tails had been stopped.
Without that incident, he wouldn't have earned such a great reputation. It was what had given him the title of "Uchiha Prodigy."
Now he'd learned it had all been a misunderstanding. The one who had truly stopped the Nine-Tails was Shinji, who had already awakened the Mangekyō