Uchiha Fugaku glanced over the crowd and lowered his eyes. "He's already left to carry out a secret mission."
"So he left us here to be his sacrificial pawns?! What are we to Minato, to Konoha?!"
Before Fugaku could finish, one of the men stood up and rudely cut him off, speaking loudly in outrage.
"My wife and child both died in this war. Now I'm all alone. Clan Leader, did our family fight with everything we had for a village that refuses to accept us? We did it for the clan!"
"But now, fewer and fewer of our people are left with every battle. What are we even doing here?"
When he finished, the burly man slowly sank to the ground. Thinking of his wife and child, he covered his face and wept.
Fugaku looked at him, at a loss for words. The others said nothing, but their silence felt like an invisible hand, clamping tightly around his throat.
The clan's resentment toward Konoha was growing, while Konoha was increasingly open about its suspicion and unease toward the clan. Being caught in the middle was agonizing.
Fugaku had been born in the early years of the Second Hokage's rule, just as the Ninja Academy system was being introduced. Though he had never attended the Ninja Academy, the idea of "Konoha" had deeply shaped him.
Kagami in particular had played a major role in shaping his values when he was young.
But he had always known that his surname was Uchiha.
That surname represented history and strength, but it also represented hurt.
When people spoke of the Uchiha, they no longer respected them as one of the village's founders. Instead, they called them "trouble."
The Second Hokage had played a part in that, as had the Uchiha themselves. But no