Night of the Clan Massacre (2)—Running

Shuo Ye was running.

He did not know how long he had been running. One minute? Ten minutes? Time had no meaning on the night of the clan massacre. The second hand moved across the clock face, and the moon drifted through the sky, but none of it had anything to do with Shuo Ye. There was only one thought in his mind—

Run.

His bare feet struck the stone-paved road. The sensation beneath them changed from initial coldness to warmth, then stickiness. He did not dare look down. He knew what it was. He knew that more than moonlight lay spread across those stone slabs.

As he ran past the first street, he saw Uchiha Seiji's corpse.

Seiji was a young ninja in his early twenties who handled patrols for the clan. He was unmarried. Shuo Ye remembered his face—square, a little dark-skinned, his eyes narrowing into slits whenever he smiled. During the festival in the clan grounds last month, Seiji had helped maintain order outside the shrine. When he saw Shuo Ye, he had even crouched down and given him a handful of roasted chestnuts.

Now, he lay on the steps outside his own home.

Facing the sky. His eyes were still open. His black pupils had lost every trace of light, becoming two hollow circles.

There was a wound across his neck. Deep, sliced from his left ear all the way to his right. Blood poured from it, ran down his chin, and pooled on the ground.

When the wind blew, tiny ripples spread across the surface of the blood.

Shuo Ye did not stop running.

He could not stop. If he stopped, he would become the next person lying on the steps.

The second street. More doors stood open. Behind every door was the same sight—bodies on the ground, blood spilled across the floor, extinguished lamps.

Two bodies lay outside Uchiha Misaki's house.

Aunt Misaki and her three-year-old daughter.

Misaki lay on her back, arms spread wide as though trying to block something. Beneath her was the little girl—she had shielded her daughter with her own body.

But the weight of a mother's love could not stop kunai.

A kunai was buried in each of their chests.

The little girl's eyes were closed. Her face was clean, without any blood—the blood had been blocked by her mother's body. She wore pink pajamas embroidered with a little rabbit.

Shuo Ye knew her.

Her name was Mizuki. Every time Shuo Ye passed Misaki's house, Mizuki would lean against the windowsill, pat the window with her tiny hands, and call out "big brother" in an indistinct voice.

She was only three. She could not even speak in complete sentences.

Now, she would never call him "big brother" again.

Shuo Ye stumbled on the stone pavement.

He caught himself against the wall beside him. It was made of stone, marked by fire—one of the houses on this street was burning, and the flames had heated the nearby walls. His palm pressed against it, feeling the searing heat.

Hot.

Everything was hot. The burning houses were hot, the blood on the ground was hot, the air was hot. The entire Uchiha Clan compound was like an enormous steamer, trapping a seven-year-old child inside and slowly cooking him with heat and the stench of blood.

He released the wall and kept running.

On the third street, he found someone alive.

"—Run—"

A voice came from behind the bushes by the road. It was weak, as though something were pressing it down.

Shuo Ye stopped.

Behind the bushes was Uchiha Takashi. He leaned against the base of a wall, both hands covering his stomach as blood continuously seeped through his fingers. His eyes were open, but unfocused. His gaze did not settle on Shuo Ye.

"Uncle Takashi—"

"Run." Takashi repeated it again. His lips moved, with long pauses between every word, as if he were squeezing out each syllable with all his strength. "...Not... Itachi... Someone... else..."

His voice grew softer and softer.

"There were two... beneath the moon... red..."

Shuo Ye crouched down. His knees pressed against the stone slabs, their heat reaching his skin through the fabric of his pants.

"Uncle Takashi, I—"

"Run." Takashi's eyes suddenly focused. Those vacant eyes lit up again in their final moment, staring straight into Shuo Ye's face.

"You are... Takuma's child... Get out... Don't look back..."

His hand slipped from his stomach and seized Shuo Ye's wrist.

His grip was strong. Far too strong for someone with a fatal wound.

"Tell... the people outside the village... the Uchiha... did not lose..."

His voice broke off there.

His hand loosened.

Uchiha Takashi's hand slid from Shuo Ye's wrist and fell to the ground. His fingers curled slightly, as if grasping at something that no longer existed.

His eyes remained open.

But the light was gone.

Shuo Ye knelt on the ground, looking at Takashi's face.

He had seen that face countless times. Clan festivals, gatherings, patrols, the training grounds—Takashi had always been that middle-aged ninja standing in the corner, not much of a talker. His wife had died of illness three years ago, and he had rarely smiled since. But whenever he saw a child from the clan, he would still pull a piece of candy from his pocket, press it into the child's hand, and say sternly, "Don't tell anyone."

Now, those hands would never pull candy from his pockets again.

Shuo Ye stood.

His knees trembled, and his legs felt filled with lead. He forced them to move—left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot—taking steps mechanically, numbly, without any emotion.

He could not stop.

If he stopped, he would become another corpse by the roadside, just like Takashi.

He ran to the Naka River.

The river flowed beneath the moonlight. The red moonlight dyed its surface into a dark crimson ribbon, and the sound of the water was slightly louder than usual—perhaps blood from the drainage ditches had flowed into the river and changed the sound of the current.

Shuo Ye stood on the bank, gasping for breath.

His lungs burned. The soles of his bare feet had been scraped open by the stone roads, and every step sent stabbing pain through them. His knees were scraped too—he had fallen while running, though he could not remember where.

He lowered his head and looked at his hands.

There was blood on them.

Not his own blood.

He did not know what he had touched. Maybe a wall. Maybe the ground. Maybe—

He did not want to think about it.

He looked up at the opposite bank.

The far side was the other half of the Uchiha Clan compound. Fire had burned the sky there orange-red. From here, he could see several houses burning, flames bursting from windows and burning through rooftops.

The smoke was thick. Columns of black smoke rose into the sky and mixed with the red moonlight, turning the entire night sky into a suffocating color.

He saw more corpses.

There was one in the grass by the riverbank. A young woman wearing Uchiha Clan clothes lay facedown on the rocks beside the river. Her long hair was submerged in the water, drifting with the current.

There was another beneath a large tree by the road. An old Uchiha ninja—Shuo Ye could not remember his name, but he remembered that deeply wrinkled face. He had seen this man many times while fishing at the Naka River. The old man always sat in the same spot, fishing with a bamboo rod for an entire afternoon.

Now, he sat beneath the tree with his head tilted to the side, as though dozing off.

But he would never wake again.

Shuo Ye took a step back.

His foot stepped on something. He looked down—it was a pair of shoes. Small ones. A child's shoes. Beside them was a schoolbag—a Ninja Academy schoolbag, printed with the Uchiha crest.

The schoolbag's zipper was open, and textbooks and pencils were scattered across the ground.

Shuo Ye recognized it.

It belonged to Takashi's daughter. What was her name again—Koharu? Koyume? He could not remember. She was six this year, not yet old enough for the Ninja Academy, but she always carried an Academy schoolbag everywhere, saying she was "getting ready early."

There was no body beside the schoolbag.

Maybe she had run away. Maybe she had been taken away. Maybe she was somewhere Shuo Ye had not passed through.

Maybe—

Shuo Ye looked away from the schoolbag.

He could not think "maybe."

"Maybe" was a cruel word. It gave people hope, then strangled that hope. To a seven-year-old child, "maybe" was more terrifying than "certainly."

A burst of chakra exploded in the distance.

Very close. In the direction of the center of the clan compound.

Shuo Ye's chakra perception automatically caught the fluctuation—two powerful chakra signatures collided near Naka Shrine. One was killing intent so cold it reached the extreme. The other was—

He recognized the other one.

Fugaku.

The chakra of Uchiha Clan head Fugaku.

The chakra fluctuation lasted for roughly ten seconds, and then—

It vanished.

Both vanished at once.

Like two stars going out in the same instant.

Then, everything went quiet.

Not ordinary quiet. It was a vacuum-like silence, one that had swallowed even the sounds of insects.

The night of the clan massacre was over.

Uchiha Fugaku was dead.

Shuo Ye stood on the bank of the Naka River, his bare feet on the gravel of the riverbed. Water flowed through his toes, icy cold, utterly out of place with the temperature of that night.

He looked around.

The fires still burned. The corpses still lay on the ground. The blood still flowed.

But the chakra of the living—

He searched desperately with his perception. One, two, three—he searched the entire range of the Uchiha Clan compound, sweeping every house, every street, every corner.

Living chakra.

He found it.

Two signatures.

One was in a large residence at the northern end of the compound—Sasuke's house. The chakra was weak, but still there. It was Sasuke's.

The other—

Was moving.

It was moving from the direction of Naka Shrine toward the outskirts of the compound. Fast. The killing intent was fading, replaced by something more complicated.

Itachi.

Uchiha Itachi.

Shuo Ye stood on the riverbed, bare feet among the stones, looking up at the red moon.

The moon was no longer quite as red. Clouds had drifted over and covered part of it, dimming the crimson light, but its underlying color remained red—the kind of red that would not wash away after being soaked in blood.

He lowered his head and looked at his hands.

Blood. They were covered in blood.

He walked to the riverbank, crouched down, and put his hands into the water.

The river was cold. In May, the Naka River's water temperature was around ten degrees Celsius. The icy current flowed over his fingers, washing the blood away little by little.

The water turned red.

He watched the red water flow through his fingers, merge into the main current of the Naka River, dilute in the greater volume of water, scatter, and finally disappear.

Blood could be washed away.

But some things could not.

Shuo Ye pulled his hands from the water and rested them on his knees.

They no longer trembled.

Not because he had calmed down. But because they had already trembled enough. The fear and breakdown a seven-year-old body could endure had all been released during a night of running. What remained now was an empty numbness, a numbness containing nothing at all.

He stood.

The waters of the Naka River flowed past his feet.

He had to find Sasuke.

He had promised Sasuke—"No matter what happens, we're brothers."

He had said that two days ago. Beneath a gray sky, on the bank of the Naka River, at the moment their palms had struck together.

He could not break his word.

Shuo Ye turned around and stepped barefoot onto the river embankment.

The soles of his feet were bleeding. His knees were scraped. His clothes were covered in ash and dried blood. Something had cut his face at some point, leaving a gash from the corner of his left eye to his cheekbone.

But he was still alive.

He took the first step.

Then the second.

Then the third.

He walked toward the northern end of the clan compound.

The moon was behind him, red, enormous, silent.

It shone upon a seven-year-old boy, barefoot and covered in blood, walking through streets littered with corpses.

That was the last night Uchiha Sakuya walked as a child.

From this day onward, everything about him would change.