The Distance Between Brothers

The sound of the Naka River was especially clear in the autumn night.

Shuo Ye sat on a rock by the riverbank, took off his shoes, and dipped his feet into the water. The river was bitingly cold, flowing between his toes and carrying away the heat from his skin. The moon above reflected on the water, broken by the current into scattered shards of silver.

He was waiting for Sasuke.

They had not arranged to meet—he had merely happened to notice that Sasuke came to the Naka River every Thursday night. He would sit on a rock beneath the bridge and do nothing, simply stare at the water. Sometimes he tossed stones into the river one after another, not going home until it was fully dark.

The wind was strong tonight. The reeds by the river bent neatly in one direction, looking from afar as though someone were kneeling in worship. Shuo Ye rolled his pant legs above his knees, stood, and walked upstream along the bank.

After about two hundred meters, he saw Sasuke.

Sasuke was crouched beneath the bridge, his back against the stone wall, knees drawn to his chest and arms wrapped around them. His shadow stretched long beneath the moonlight, cast against the arched ceiling overhead like someone far older than he was.

Shuo Ye walked over and sat beside him.

Sasuke did not look up.

They sat like that. The river flowed, the stone wall was cold, and a dog barked once or twice in the distant village. The moonlight on the water shattered, gathered, then shattered again.

About ten minutes passed in silence.

"Sasuke."

Shuo Ye spoke. His voice was quiet, but the space beneath the bridge was silent enough for it to carry clearly.

Sasuke did not respond.

"I have something to tell you."

Sasuke's chin was buried in his knees. His eyelashes were long, hiding half his eyes.

"During training," Shuo Ye said, "you don't have to be like that."

Sasuke's hands clenched. His fingers dug into his sleeves, his knuckles turning white.

"They aren't your enemies."

The river rushed noisily. A drop of water fell from the stone wall onto the back of Sasuke's neck, but he did not wipe it away.

"I know you can't—"

"Stop talking."

Sasuke's voice was soft, so soft that the sound of the water should have drowned it out. But Shuo Ye heard it clearly.

Sasuke raised his head and looked at him.

Moonlight fell across his face, revealing eyes without expression. Not anger, not sorrow—emptiness. Like a well frozen over in winter. Throw a stone into it, and there would be no splash. Only a hard, hollow echo.

"Stop talking."

Only three words.

Then Sasuke stood and left through the other side of the bridge.

His steps were steady. He made no sound as he walked over the gravel—an Uchiha Clan habit, drilled into them since childhood. When he reached the other side, his shadow left first. Half a second later, he too vanished into the night.

Shuo Ye remained where he was.

Three words.

"Stop talking."

He reached into the river, scooped up a handful of icy water, and splashed it over his face. Water dripped from his chin, ran down his neck, and slipped into his collar. He did not wipe it away.

Since the massacre, what stood between him and Sasuke was not distance. It was the corpses of an entire clan. Every window along the street Sasuke walked each night had once been lit. Behind every door he opened, there was no one. Every morning when he woke, he remembered the dreams from the night before—his father speaking at a clan meeting, his mother making his favorite bonito rice balls, his brother sitting on the veranda watching him practice shuriken.

Then he opened his eyes. There was nothing.

Shuo Ye understood, because he was the same.

But he had memories of his past life. He knew he was not an Uchiha Clan native, knew this world was a manga, knew every turn the story would take. He knew that the silent, cold-faced boy before him would one day be consumed by hatred, become a rogue ninja, and walk alone into the deepest darkness.

Sasuke had none of that. Sasuke only had ruins. Only corpses. Only the brother who had slaughtered the entire clan.

Shuo Ye pulled his hand from the river and held it out, waiting for the wind to dry it. The wind refused to cooperate. It only grew colder, blowing his hand deep red.

He stood and glanced in the direction Sasuke had disappeared.

The riverbank was pitch-black. There were no shadows, no footprints, no trace that anyone had just passed through.

Sasuke had disappeared.

Shuo Ye put on his shoes and left as well.

The next morning, at the Ninja Academy classroom.

Shuo Ye arrived ten minutes earlier than usual. There were only two or three people in the classroom. One was wiping the blackboard, while the other two were passing notes.

He walked to the seat by the window and stopped.

It was Sasuke's seat.

The desk was spotless. Nothing had been carved into its surface, no stickers were attached to its corners, and there was only a basic ninjutsu textbook in the drawer. On its cover, Shuo Ye saw the words "Sasuke Uchiha" written in pencil. The marks were so faint that they could only be seen when held to the light.

He took a rice ball from his pocket and put it in Sasuke's desk drawer.

Tuna flavor.

He would not say anything else. The rice ball was here. Whether Sasuke ate it or not was up to him.

Then he returned to his own seat.

After a while, the other students gradually arrived. When Ino entered the classroom, she waved at him, and he nodded. Naruto was among the last to arrive—his orange jacket was crookedly thrown on, and his hair was a mess, as if he had fought with his pillow. As he passed Shuo Ye's desk, he slapped its surface.

"Morning!"

"Keep it down."

"You didn't sleep well. You've got dark circles under your eyes."

"What's it to you?"

Naruto grinned and sat in his seat.

Sasuke was the last one into the classroom. As he entered, sunlight slanted through the window, outlining him in gold. He walked to his desk, bent down to sit, and reached into the drawer for his textbook—then his hand touched the rice ball.

His movement paused for an instant.

Then he took out the textbook and left the rice ball in the drawer. He did not take it, throw it away, or turn around to look.

Shuo Ye pretended to be watching the clouds outside.

The morning class was on projectile weapon theory. Iruka drew a force diagram on the blackboard and had the students copy it. Shuo Ye picked up his pencil and made a few strokes in his notebook—but he was not drawing the trajectory of a shuriken.

He was drawing stairs.

One step after another, with different gaps between each level. He drew a horizontal line between the first and final steps, then wrote three words on it.

"Stop talking."

At lunch break, Shuo Ye did not go to the cherry tree. He found Sasuke in the corridor.

Sasuke stood alone leaning against the windowsill, reading an old ninjutsu scroll. People passed by him, but he did not even lift his eyes. Sunlight streamed in from behind him, making his ears translucent—revealing the tiny blue blood vessels beneath the skin.

Shuo Ye walked over and stopped two meters away from him.

"That rice ball—"

Sasuke turned a page of the scroll. The paper rustled loudly, drowning out Shuo Ye's words.

Shuo Ye did not speak again.

He leaned against the wall opposite Sasuke and took out a rice ball of his own. Tuna. He took a bite. Then the two of them remained on opposite sides of the corridor: one leaning against the windowsill reading a scroll, the other leaning against the wall eating lunch. Between them lay two meters of empty space and a corridor full of sunlight.

Did either of them speak?

No.

Sasuke reached the last page of the scroll. He tied it shut, slipped it into his clothes pocket, turned, and left. As he passed in front of Shuo Ye, his steps paused.

Shuo Ye looked up. Sasuke's gaze was elsewhere—beyond the window, on some point in the training ground. He only paused for a beat before continuing on.

Nothing happened in that gap between those two beats, between those two steps. But when Sasuke reached the entrance, he brushed the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. The gesture was quick, so quick that anyone not watching closely would have missed it.

Shuo Ye took another bite of his rice ball.

Tuna.

He remembered that Ino had stuffed this rice ball into his hand that morning. Ino had said, "I put in a little extra filling today. Try it." Then he had turned around and placed the one with extra filling into Sasuke's drawer. The one he was eating had ordinary filling.

The ordinary filling was tuna too. There was simply a little less of it.

After school, Shuo Ye went to the Naka River. The same bridge, the same pile of rocks that dug into his butt.

Sasuke was not there.

He sat on a rock, took out a notebook and pencil from his bag, and began to write.

He wrote for a long time. He filled one page, then tore it out. He wrote another, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it into the river. The water accepted three paper balls, slowly soaking through them until the ink blurred and the writing could no longer be read.

He was writing what he wanted to say.

He tried seven different openings, and none of them were right. It was not that they were not direct enough—he had written, "You can come to me in the future"—but they were not useful enough. Sasuke did not need comfort, pity, or a helpless clansman. He needed an answer.

An answer as to who should be held responsible for the massacre.

And Shuo Ye knew that answer, but he could not say it.

He could not tell Sasuke, "Your brother was used." He could not tell Sasuke, "The one who truly deserved to die was Danzo." He could not tell Sasuke, "The entire Uchiha Clan had actually intended to stage a coup, and the Hidden Leaf Village higher-ups chose the filthiest solution of all—wiping them out."

He was only eight. An eight-year-old should not know these things.

He put the pencil back in its case.

On the water, the fourth paper ball floated up before sinking again, carried away by the current. The words inside were already illegible.

The last line he had written was: I'll wait for you.

But before the paper ball sank—the river water dissolved the last few words.

On the way home, the moon rose again.

The autumn moon of the Hidden Leaf Village hung among the treetops like a piece of jade washed clean by water. Shuo Ye walked through the empty clan district, the moonlight casting his shadow across the stone road, where it overlapped with the cracks in the ground and then separated again.

He reached his front door and took out his key.

Before the key entered the lock, he heard something behind him.

He turned and saw something on the steps outside the door.

A rice ball.

It was exactly the same as the one he had put in Sasuke's desk drawer that morning. The seaweed wrapping was a little old, as though it had been carried in a pocket. The rice grains had not fallen apart.

A small note was pinned beneath the rice ball.

Three words were written on it in pencil.

"Doesn't taste good."

Shuo Ye picked up the note and turned it over.

There was one more word on the back.

"Thanks."

He crouched on the steps outside the door and stared at that word for a long time. It had been written in pencil, the strokes faint, the final downward stroke crookedly flicked upward. He stared at that stroke for so long that the moon moved from above his head to the edge of the roof.

Then he picked up the rice ball and took a bite. Tuna. It had been sitting all day and was completely cold. It tasted fishy.

"It really is bad."

That was what he said.

Then he sat on the steps and ate the entire rice ball.

Sasuke did not appear. But Shuo Ye knew he was behind the ginkgo tree at the mouth of the alley.

This was the distance between them. It was not zero. But it was no longer infinite.