Words That Could Not Be Said

In May, the evening wind in the Hidden Leaf Village blew in from the direction of the Naka River, carrying the scents of water vapor and earth.

The lights were already on in the houses of the Uchiha Clan compound.

Sakuya sat before a low table, chopsticks pinched in his hand, his eyes fixed on the bowl of miso soup before him. A few slices of scallion floated on the surface, while steam curled upward in rings.

His father, Takuma, sat across from him with his head lowered as he ate. His mother, Shizuka, was busy in the kitchen bringing out the final dish.

It was an utterly ordinary dinner.

Yet Sakuya had been staring at that bowl of soup for ten minutes.

He was thinking about something. Something that had been spinning around in his mind all day, ever since he woke up that morning, turning nonstop like a waterwheel on the Naka River, impossible to stop.

Tomorrow, the Ninja Academy had taijutsu class. Iruka had said they would be split into groups for sparring.

That was not what he was thinking about.

He was thinking about something else.

He knew where he was in the timeline. Of course he did. In his previous life, he had browsed countless Naruto plot discussion threads. The timeline of the clan massacre was something every Uchiha fanfiction writer had to check over and over again.

It was now May of Year 48 of the Hidden Leaf Village.

In two years, it would happen.

Two years. More than seven hundred days. To a seven-year-old child, that was a long time. To a transmigrator who knew everything that was about to happen, it was more than seven hundred sleepless nights.

His chopsticks lightly tapped against the rim of his bowl.

Takuma raised his head.

"Sakuya, don't play with your chopsticks while eating."

His voice was calm, carrying the natural authority of a father speaking to his son. It was not harsh, but it allowed no argument.

"Mm." Sakuya put down his chopsticks and lifted his bowl for a sip of soup.

The hot soup scalded his tongue, but he made no sound.

Shizuka sat down with a plate of pan-fried fish, kneeling beside Takuma. She wiped her fingers with a hand towel, then said with a smile, "I ran into Lady Mikoto in the clan today. Sasuke is such a beautiful child, even better behaved than Sakuya was at that age."

"Sasuke has always been well behaved," Takuma said, his tone carrying the detached pride unique to the Uchiha Clan head—not boasting, merely stating a fact.

"Dad."

Sakuya's voice suddenly cut in.

It was quiet. Like a question casually asked by a seven-year-old.

The table fell silent for a second.

Takuma and Shizuka looked at him at the same time.

Sakuya set down his soup bowl and placed both hands on his knees. The gesture made him look very small. His legs were not yet long enough; seated on the cushion, the tips of his toes barely touched the floor.

"What is it?" Shizuka asked gently.

Sakuya opened his mouth.

He had rehearsed the question he wanted to ask countless times in his mind. He had chosen every word, practiced the tone of every word. He had even considered how to smooth things over if his father got angry, and how to reassure his mother if she became worried.

But once he opened his mouth, not a single one of those rehearsed words would come out.

Because he suddenly realized something.

He was a seven-year-old child.

A seven-year-old would not ask, "Is there something wrong between our Uchiha Clan and the village?" A seven-year-old would not even realize that there was some kind of relationship between the "Uchiha Clan" and the "village" that needed describing.

If he said it aloud, what would his father think?

Takuma was no ordinary man. He was an Uchiha jonin who had participated in the Third Shinobi World War and held a certain position within the clan. If such a man heard his seven-year-old son ask something like that—

He would become suspicious.

Not suspicious that Sakuya knew something, but suspicious that Sakuya had "heard something."

A seven-year-old child could only have heard such words from someone else. That meant someone had discussed the relationship between the Uchiha Clan and the village in front of him. It meant someone had spoken where they should not have.

Then Takuma would investigate.

Would it lead to Shisui? To Fugaku? Or to certain people who should draw even less attention?

Sakuya's fingers tightened slightly against his knees.

"Sakuya?" Shizuka reached out and gently touched his forehead. "Are you feeling unwell? Your face is a little red."

"I'm fine," Sakuya said.

He lowered his head and picked up his chopsticks again.

"Dad, today's pan-fried fish is really good."

Shizuka smiled. "Then eat more."

Takuma did not press him further. He merely glanced at Sakuya. There was a father's concern for his son in that look, but there was also something more complicated. Sakuya saw it, but he could not say what it was.

Dinner continued.

The clink of chopsticks against bowls, the sounds of chewing, the occasional bits of clan gossip Shizuka mentioned—whose child had fallen into the river today, whose cat had wandered into the clan head's courtyard—these sounds were like a thin sheet of paper, covering the thing that had nearly burst through the surface just moments ago.

But Sakuya knew what lay beneath that paper.

He knew.

He knew too much.

That night, Sakuya lay on the tatami, staring at the ceiling.

His blanket had been kicked down below his stomach, because nights in the Hidden Leaf Village were still a little hot in May. His chakra perception was already considered outstanding for a seven-year-old—not because he had deliberately trained it, but because the sensitivity to chakra brought by being a transmigrator made it easier for him to catch the flow of chakra around him than children his age.

That was why he could sense that the light was still on in his father's study.

Takuma was in the study.

Sakuya turned over, facing the wall.

He wondered what would have happened if he had truly asked.

Suppose—just suppose—he had asked that question at the dinner table with all the sincerity a seven-year-old could possess: "Dad, is there something wrong between our Uchiha Clan and the village?"

How would Takuma have answered?

According to the original timeline, relations between the Uchiha Clan and the village had already fallen to freezing point. After the Nine-Tails incident, the Uchiha had been relocated to their clan compound, isolated and monitored. There was an Uchiha defector in the ANBU—Obito—but no one in the clan knew about it. Clan head Fugaku was planning a coup, Shisui was trying to find a peaceful solution, and Itachi had already been tormented physically and mentally by the bloody tears of the Mangekyo Sharingan.

And all of it would end two years later, on a single night, when a thirteen-year-old boy drew the final line with a kunai.

Sakuya closed his eyes.

He tried to imagine walking up to Takuma and telling him everything in the tone of an adult, using all the logic and powers of persuasion possessed by the Chinese college student he had been in his previous life.

"Dad, in two years, the village will order the clan's extermination. Itachi will make his move. You have to believe me. Take the whole family and leave the Hidden Leaf Village—"

And then what?

Would Takuma believe these words from a seven-year-old child?

No.

Even if Takuma loved his son, even if Takuma was an open-minded man—he would not believe it. The whole thing was too absurd. How could a seven-year-old know such things? How could he prove it? He had no evidence, no details, only the "plot knowledge" in a transmigrator's mind.

And speaking of such knowledge meant death.

Not death at his father's hands, but because once those words got out—once someone in the Uchiha Clan learned that a child had "foreseen" the clan massacre—what would that child be regarded as?

A prophet? Or a monster?

Either way, it meant Sakuya's identity would be completely exposed. His identity as a transmigrator.

Until now, he had carefully maintained the image of an ordinary Uchiha child. Average grades, a quiet personality, a few friends, a little curiosity about clan affairs—that was all.

He could not let anyone know that he knew the future.

That was the first rule he had set for himself. A rule he had established on the very first day he transmigrated here.

But—

Sakuya turned over again, this time facing the window. Moonlight filtered through the paper window, casting a blurry patch of white over the tatami.

But rules were rules, and feelings were feelings.

He knew that day was coming.

The details he knew—the Uchiha being suspected during the Nine-Tails attack, Danzo's hostility toward the Uchiha Clan, where Shisui's eyes ended up, how Itachi awakened the Mangekyo Sharingan, Fugaku's choice after the coup failed—were like nails driven into his mind, sinking deeper every day.

He could even calculate exactly how many days remained until that night.

Seven hundred and thirty-one days.

Or seven hundred and thirty, if there was a leap month that May. He was not certain of the calendar's details, but he knew the approximate time.

Two years.

Two years later, the people in this house would be killed.

His mother, Shizuka, would have her heart pierced by a kunai in her sleep. His father, Takuma, would be killed by Itachi—by his own eldest son—while trying to resist—

No.

Sakuya squeezed his eyes shut.

He was not even sure whether he was Takuma's biological son. In this world, he was "Uchiha Sakuya"; that name had been assigned to him. But his identity as a transmigrator meant that, by blood, he might not truly belong to this world.

But that did not matter.

What mattered was that, whether he was related by blood or not, every person in this house treated him as family.

Shizuka's voice was soft when she called him "Sakuya." The furrow in Takuma's brow when he checked Sakuya's homework was real. All of it was real.

And there was nothing he could do.

He could not warn them. He could not persuade them. He could not take them and run away.

A seven-year-old child had no power in this world to change anything.

His chakra reserves were decent, his talent for taijutsu was passable, and his writing—his grasp of plot knowledge—surpassed everyone else's. But before the night of the clan massacre, those things amounted to nothing.

He was not even sure whether he himself would survive when that day came.

With these thoughts weighing on him, Sakuya finally fell asleep.

The next morning, Takuma woke up fifteen minutes earlier than usual.

By the time Sakuya got up, his father was already standing in the entryway putting on his shoes. His jonin forehead protector flashed in the morning light.

"Is there a mission today?" Sakuya asked.

"A short mission. I'll be back in two or three days." Takuma tied his laces, stood up, and looked down at his son.

Morning light streamed in through the door, leaving half of Takuma's face in shadow. He looked older than he had at dinner the night before—not in appearance, but in bearing. Something heavy seemed to weigh upon his shoulders, bending his back ever so slightly.

"Sakuya."

"Yeah?"

Takuma was silent for a moment.

"...Study hard."

Then he opened the door and left.

Sakuya stood in the entryway, watching the door slowly close. The hinges gave a faint creak, just as they did every time his father left on a mission.

He suddenly remembered the question he had nearly asked at dinner yesterday.

—Dad, is there something wrong between our Uchiha Clan and the village?

He had not asked it.

Perhaps he never would.

Because it was something that could not be said.

He knew the answer. Takuma knew the answer too. But of the two people who knew it, one could not ask, and the other could not speak.

Was this the fate of a transmigrator?

Sakuya picked up his Ninja Academy schoolbag and walked out the door.

The morning breeze of May swept through the Hidden Leaf Village, carrying a slight chill. At the street corner, several crows perched on a utility pole, silently watching the seven-year-old Uchiha boy walk away.