Naruto's Secret

At the edge of Hidden Leaf Village one afternoon, sunlight stretched the shadows of the earthen walls long.

Shuo Ye walked home, clutching the taijutsu training report card he had collected from the Ninja Academy. An A. It was nothing unusual for a first-year student, but he knew his mother, Ayano, would pin it to the living room wall, beside Sasuke's shuriken target score from last month—ninety-three rings.

He turned past a low wall, then stopped.

At the end of the alley, Naruto crouched on the ground with his back against a peeling gray wall. He had not received his forehead protector yet and still wore those greasy goggles on his head. His orange clothes were coated in dust. Three older children stood before him, the one in the middle idly flicking a thin branch.

"Here we go again," the child in the middle said. "Nine-Tails demon fox."

Naruto did not look up.

"Your mother destroyed the village, and so did your father. Why don't you just get lost?"

Shuo Ye stood at the corner, his shadow a short, compact patch cast onto the ground by the sun.

He recognized the boy in the middle—the son of a tofu seller in Akimichi Town. He was two years older than Naruto and five years older than Shuo Ye. Shuo Ye did not know the other two, but he could tell from their mouths that they were saying the same things.

Shuo Ye's fingers tightened slightly.

He knew he should turn around and leave. It would not look good if someone from the Uchiha Clan got involved in this sort of thing. His father had said there was much going on within the clan lately, and he should not draw unnecessary attention outside.

Naruto still did not look up. He crouched there with his arms wrapped around his knees, sunlight reflecting off his goggles so that his expression could not be seen.

"Hey, say something." The tofu seller's son poked Naruto in the shoulder with the branch.

Naruto flinched instinctively, but did not move.

Shuo Ye took a deep breath.

Then he walked forward.

His footsteps rang clearly through the alley. The three older children turned at once, and the boy in the middle visibly froze when he saw Shuo Ye—a child of the Uchiha Clan. They knew him.

"What are you playing at here?" Shuo Ye asked. His tone was flat, as though he were asking about the weather.

"What's it to you?" The tofu seller's son steadied himself. "His mom was the Nine-Tails—"

"I know," Shuo Ye said. "You've said it three times."

He took another two steps forward and stood in front of Naruto, blocking part of the three children's view.

Then his eyes changed.

His left eye changed first. Dark crimson spread across his iris, and a white crescent-shaped tomoe appeared within his pupil. Then his right eye. When both eyes fixed on the three children before him, the temperature in the alley seemed to drop by three degrees.

One-tomoe Sharingan.

Shuo Ye did not take a fighting stance, form hand seals, or reach for a shuriken. He simply stood there and watched them quietly with those eyes.

The three older children backed away.

The tofu seller's son's mouth was still open, but his feet had already shifted back half a step. The other two simply turned around. All three ran down the other side of the alley, their footsteps frantic before vanishing around the corner.

The alley fell silent.

Naruto was still crouching on the ground.

Shuo Ye's Sharingan slowly faded, his irises returning to ordinary black. He looked down at Naruto's crown—golden and messy, like an untended patch of weeds.

"...I didn't need your help."

Naruto finally spoke. His voice was muffled, squeezed out from between his knees.

"I wasn't helping," Shuo Ye said. "I was just passing through."

Naruto raised his head, pushing his goggles onto his forehead and revealing a pair of blue eyes. They were a little red, but there were no tears. He stared at Shuo Ye for three seconds, then turned his face away.

"Those eyes just now," Naruto said. "They're weird."

"I was born with them." Shuo Ye crouched beside him, resting his back against the same gray wall.

The two crouched side by side beneath the wall without speaking. At the end of the alley stood a crooked jujube tree. A few shriveled fruits from last autumn still hung from its branches.

"Those things they said," Naruto suddenly asked. "Are they true?"

"Which part?"

"All of it."

Shuo Ye looked at a crack in the ground ahead, stretching from the base of the wall to the middle of the alley like an unhealed scar.

"Your mother was from the Uzumaki Clan, right?" Shuo Ye said. "Your father was the Fourth Hokage."

Naruto whipped his head around.

"Who told you that?"

"There are old yearbooks in the school library," Shuo Ye said. "The Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze. His wife, Kushina Uzumaki. You look like your mother."

Naruto opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"You're lying to me."

"Go check the library yourself."

Naruto remained silent for a long time. In the distance, a dango vendor called out, his voice drawn long and echoing twice through the alley before fading away.

"Then why are you talking to me?" Naruto asked.

"You're blocking the way," Shuo Ye said. "It would take longer to go around."

Naruto stared at him, then suddenly rubbed his nose hard with his sleeve.

"You're a weird person," Naruto said. "Everyone in the Uchiha Clan is arrogant."

"Who did you ask about the Uchiha Clan?"

"I didn't need to ask," Naruto said. "Everyone says it. Arrogant Uchiha, genius Uchiha, Uchiha who don't put anyone else in their eyes."

Shuo Ye did not respond.

He was speaking the truth. The Uchiha Clan's position in Hidden Leaf Village was delicate—more so after the Nine-Tails incident. The villagers distrusted the Nine-Tails' jinchuriki, and they distrusted the Uchiha Clan as well. Two currents of malice ran in different directions, occasionally intersecting to create situations like this one.

"Why did you come this way today?" Naruto asked.

"Walking."

"Your house isn't this way."

"I took a different route."

Naruto looked at him again. There was something complicated in those blue eyes, a look no seven- or eight-year-old should have possessed. But Naruto had it. He had eaten ramen alone for too many years.

"Hey," Naruto said. "Will those eyes of yours change again?"

"Maybe."

"Can I see them?"

"No."

"Cheapskate."

Shuo Ye stood up and brushed the dust from his pants. He looked down at Naruto and held out a hand.

Naruto looked at that hand.

"What?"

"How long have you been crouching there?"

"...I don't remember."

"Are your legs numb?"

"They aren't!"

But Naruto took his hand.

When Shuo Ye pulled him up, Naruto's balance was unsteady. He stumbled forward, nearly crashing into Shuo Ye. He quickly steadied himself, planted his hands on his hips, and put on an expression that said, I'm perfectly fine.

"Which way do you live?" Shuo Ye asked.

"What's it to you?"

"It's getting dark."

Naruto looked up at the sky. The afternoon sun was indeed beginning to slant westward, its light changing from white to pale gold.

"...That way." Naruto jerked his chin east.

"I'll walk you to the intersection."

"I told you I don't need—"

"The intersection is in the direction of your house. I'm just passing by."

Naruto shut his mouth. The two walked out of the alley one after the other and parted at the fork in the road. Naruto went east, while Shuo Ye went west. After walking a dozen steps, Shuo Ye heard a tiny voice behind him—

"Thanks."

The voice was so quiet that the wind could have scattered it.

But Shuo Ye heard it.

He did not turn around.

On the way home, Shuo Ye kept thinking about one thing.

He had read about the conditions for awakening the Sharingan in a Naruto setting guide in his previous life—intense emotional fluctuations, or some kind of mental shock. He was not entirely sure what had triggered it today. Anger at seeing Naruto bullied? Or something he had seen in the instant Naruto lowered his head?

He recalled something he had read in his previous life: for twelve whole years, no one had ever told Naruto, "It wasn't your fault."

Shuo Ye could not change those twelve years. But starting today, he could let Naruto know that someone would not stay away from him just because he was a jinchuriki.

When he reached the stone torii at the entrance to the Uchiha Clan compound, he paused.

The stone torii bore the Uchiha fan crest. Weathered by decades of wind and rain, its edges had grown smooth. Beyond this torii lay the world of the Uchiha Clan. The outside world was slowly becoming hostile toward the clan, while those within the clan had begun responding with the same coldness.

His father had said something major would happen next month.

Shuo Ye folded his report card, tucked it into the side pocket of his ninja tool pouch, and passed through the torii.

During dinner that night, Sasuke chattered away about things at school—who had fallen during tree-climbing training, whose shuriken had missed the target and flown into Iruka's hat.

His father, Takuma, listened quietly and nodded from time to time.

Ayano served Shuo Ye a second bowl of rice. She noticed the report card folded and stuffed in his bag, but did not open it on the spot. She only said, "Wash your hands before touching paper."

Everything looked perfectly normal.

But Shuo Ye noticed that his father had returned earlier than usual today. There was also a fresh cut on his finger—not deep, but neat, as though it had been sliced by some sharp blade.

Clan gatherings were becoming more frequent.

Shuo Ye lowered his head and shoveled rice into his mouth, placing Naruto's "thank you" and the wound on his father's finger into separate compartments in his heart.

One compartment held friendship.

The other held a ticking clock.

The clock was already running.

Late that night, Shuo Ye sat on his bed before a small mirror.

His mother had bought it for him. Its plastic frame was slightly crooked, making the reflection faintly distorted. He leaned closer to study his eyes.

Black irises. Black pupils. Ordinary eyes.

He tried to recall what had happened in the alley that day.

When those three older children had bullied Naruto, the first emotion that rose in him had not been anger—it had been confusion. Memories from his previous life had let him understand Naruto's circumstances, but when he had truly stood in that alley and seen Naruto crouching in the corner with his head lowered, that confusion had turned into something else.

Not anger. Sadness.

Sadness for what a seven-year-old child should never have had to bear.

The Sharingan had awakened at that moment.

He stared at himself in the mirror and tried to recreate that feeling.

There was no response. His irises remained black.

Perhaps the Sharingan could not be awakened by trying to awaken it. It required genuine emotional turmoil, something that could not be faked.

Shuo Ye put down the mirror and turned off the light.

In the darkness, he could hear Sasuke breathing next door—steady and peaceful, the breathing a seven-year-old child with nothing to worry about ought to have.

What did Naruto eat tonight?

The question suddenly came to him.

Then he told himself he would bring Naruto something tomorrow.