Two Uchiha

The moon still hung in the sky.

Shuo Ye did not know how long he had been walking. From the reed beds by the Naka River to the edge of the clan district, it normally took only ten minutes. But tonight, he had walked for a long time. His left leg was trembling—not from cold, nor from exhaustion, but because his body was refusing to move any farther.

Yet he still reached the edge of the district.

The Uchiha Clan District had a particular kind of silence at night. Usually, that silence was mixed with faint breathing, the rustle of turning pages, and the occasional sounds of sparring. Tonight, the silence was dead.

Shuo Ye leaned against a maple tree, his legs slowly giving out beneath him as he slid down to sit beside its roots. There was dried blood on his hands—he did not know whose. It might have been his, or it might not have been. He had fallen by the Naka River and scraped his knee, but the bloodstains did not match the wound.

He did not care anymore.

When the night wind blew over, it carried a heavy scent of rust.

The smell of blood.

The entire clan district reeked of it.

Shuo Ye closed his eyes.

The lingering effects of the Mangekyo Sharingan still buzzed in his head. Tsukuyomi—Itachi had used Tsukuyomi on him. The few minutes he had spent within those Mangekyō Sharingan had felt longer than the entirety of his past seven years. Those images, those sounds, those truths, were like shattered glass lodged in his mind, digging deeper with every breath.

When he opened his eyes, he saw a point of light in the distance.

No, it was not light.

It was eyes.

Red eyes.

Sasuke stood at the end of the clan district's main road.

Large dark-red stains covered his Uchiha Clan uniform. His hair was a mess, and his face was completely expressionless. He stood there like a statue, both arms hanging at his sides, his fingers slightly curled—the posture of someone who wanted to clench his fists but could not.

His right eye was red.

One tomoe.

A newly awakened Sharingan. At the center of his pupil, a single tomoe turned quietly.

Shuo Ye slowly rose from the roots of the tree. His knee made a faint sound—a normal response from a body pushed beyond exhaustion. His legs were still shaking, but he remained standing.

The two stared at each other from roughly twenty meters apart.

Neither spoke.

The stone road of the clan district stretched between them, scattered with footprints—many of them, chaotic, pointing in every direction. Some showed signs of running, others of falling. Several doors stood open, their lamps still lit, casting crooked shadows across the corridors.

The wind passed through the gap between two houses, making a low, heavy sound, like someone sighing.

Sasuke's eyes glowed faintly red in the darkness.

Shuo Ye looked at those eyes, and something lodged in his throat.

He knew why the Sharingan awakened. An extreme emotional shock—fear, despair, rage, any of them could trigger it. In the original work, Sasuke's Sharingan had awakened after Itachi left. Today, though, Sasuke's eyes had already changed before Itachi departed.

Because Sasuke had witnessed Itachi killing people with his own eyes.

Shuo Ye did not know how much Sasuke had seen. But he knew that a seven-year-old child watching his older brother murder their parents would carry that image for the rest of his life.

Just as the images from Tsukuyomi would follow Shuo Ye for the rest of his life.

Shuo Ye took a step forward.

Sasuke did not move.

Shuo Ye took another step.

The stones beneath his feet made a faint sound, especially clear in the dead-silent clan district.

His eyes—his own eyes—were changing as well. The pattern of the Mangekyo Sharingan was fading from his irises, and three tomoe emerged again, like reefs exposed by a receding tide. The cost of using Tsukuyomi, coupled with his body being at its limit, had temporarily caused his Mangekyō Sharingan to regress.

Three tomoe.

Two more than Sasuke's single tomoe. But tonight, the difference between those two tomoe meant nothing.

One three-tomoe Sharingan, one one-tomoe Sharingan. Two Uchiha children standing among corpses.

This was all that remained of the entire Uchiha Clan.

Shuo Ye stopped three steps away from Sasuke.

At last, he could see Sasuke's face clearly.

Sasuke's lips were pale. His eyes—those newly awakened Sharingan—were bloodshot, but there were no tears. His jaw was clenched tight, the outline of his jaw muscles sharply visible beneath his skin. His right hand hung at his side, blood staining his fingertips—not his own blood, but blood trapped beneath his nails, perhaps left there when he had grabbed someone.

Shuo Ye lowered his head and looked at the ground by Sasuke's feet.

There was a pool of dark-red liquid there. It was no longer flowing, its edges beginning to congeal. Its shape was irregular, like a flower that had been trampled flat.

Sasuke stood at the edge of that pool of blood.

His sandals were soaked through.

Shuo Ye raised his head and extended his right hand.

His hand was shaking.

It was a small hand—the hand of a seven-year-old, its fingers slender and short, its knuckles covered with a thin layer of calluses. Before tonight, that hand had held shuriken, formed hand seals, and picked up stones on the riverbank by the Naka River. Now, stained with dried blood, it reached toward a child standing at the edge of a pool of blood.

Sasuke saw the hand.

His eyes shifted. The lone tomoe in his Sharingan rotated slightly, his red iris contracting—a stress response, his body instinctively drawing on every bit of perception it had to analyze the threat before him.

Or the comfort.

Sasuke raised his hand.

Then—

He slapped Shuo Ye's hand away.

The force was not great. The strength of a seven-year-old child struck the back of the outstretched hand with a soft slap. Shuo Ye's hand was knocked aside, swaying to the right before slowly dropping.

Sasuke did not pull his hand back either. His arm froze in midair, fingers spread, palm facing forward—the posture of someone pushing something away.

He was not pushing away Shuo Ye's hand.

He was pushing away the entire world.

Their hands remained frozen in the air for a second. Then Sasuke slowly lowered his hand, letting it hang at his side again. His fingers were still trembling.

Shuo Ye withdrew the hand that had been struck aside and placed it at his side.

He did not reach out again.

Silence covered everything once more. The moon emerged from behind the clouds, its cold white light falling over the stone road, the dark-red bloodstains, and the two seven-year-old children standing beside the pool of blood.

Sasuke did not leave.

He did not accept that hand, but neither did he turn and walk away. He simply stood there, at the edge of the congealed pool of blood, wearing sandals soaked in blood, looking at Shuo Ye with those newly awakened Sharingan.

There was too much in his eyes. Fear, rage, confusion, emptiness—emotions a seven-year-old should never have, all tangled together into something beyond words.

Shuo Ye looked into those eyes.

He said nothing.

What could he say?

"Sorry"? Useless. "Your brother had his reasons"? He could not say that. "Everything will be fine"? That would be a lie.

He could not say anything.

So the two of them stood there.

The moonlight was white. The bloodstains were dark. The night wind, carrying the scent of rust, blew from deep within the Uchiha Clan District and crossed the three steps between them.

A crow cried out in the distance.

Long and lonely.

Then silence returned.

Sasuke's Sharingan slowly faded. His red irises returned to their usual black, and the single tomoe vanished into the depths of his pupil. His body swayed—a reaction to chakra exhaustion. A seven-year-old child who had only just awakened the Sharingan had endured too much tonight.

He did not fall.

Shuo Ye remained where he was, watching Sasuke slowly adjust his balance, shift his weight from his left foot to his right, then shift it back again. His breathing became shallow and rapid, but he was controlling it.

Seven-year-old Sasuke Uchiha had not fallen, even on this night.

Shuo Ye silently confirmed something in his heart.

His Mangekyo Sharingan had temporarily regressed. The three-tomoe form had stabilized in his irises. He did not intend to activate it again in front of anyone. At least, not for now.

Everything Itachi had said in Tsukuyomi—about that mission, about Danzo, about the existence of transmigrators—had to rot inside his mind.

He could not tell anyone. Not anyone at all.

Not even Sasuke.

Especially not Sasuke.

Because if Sasuke learned the truth—learned that Itachi had been forced into it, learned that the clan massacre had been the decision of the Hidden Leaf Village's higher-ups and Danzo—Sasuke would hate the Hidden Leaf Village. He would hate the village. He would hate everyone.

Then he would become the Sasuke from the original work.

Shuo Ye could not let that happen.

He stood where he was, silent.

The moon continued moving. The night grew deeper.

Two Uchiha children stood amid the ruins left after the clan massacre.

Neither spoke.