Sharingan

Damian had returned.

He carried the salty, fishy smell unique to the docks, and the wood shavings on his shoulders had yet to be brushed off.

The first thing he saw was Roy. The slanted streak of blood across his collar had already dried brown.

"What happened?"

Roy told the story again, more briefly than when he had told Barlow and Mila, because his eldest brother's expression had not changed from beginning to end.

The rocky shore, the pirate ship, more than a dozen men, the awakening of his eyes.

After listening, Damian did not ask about the bodies, the ship, or the spoils.

He crouched down, lifted Roy's arm and turned it over, then pressed along his ribs, checked both sides of his neck, and finally lifted his collar to see whether there were any wounds on his stomach.

"Were you hurt?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

Damian let go and stood up. He was more than half a head taller than Roy as he looked down at him.

"If something like this happens again, don't rush in alone."

His voice was low, but every word was like a nail driven into wood.

"Come home and tell us. The four of us will go together."

Roy looked up at his eldest brother.

"Got it."

Damian gave him another look, then reached out and rubbed hard at the dried blood on Roy's collar. It would not come off.

"Go change your clothes. Don't make Dad worry."

He turned to head inside.

"Can your eyes change back?"

Mila's voice came from the side.

Damian stopped and turned around.

Mila leaned against the wall, her gaze fixed on Roy's face.

"Or will they stay like that forever?"

Roy froze for a moment.

He instinctively raised a hand to touch his eye socket, then closed his eyes.

Everyone watched him.

Roy's eyelids trembled faintly, as though he were feeling for something invisible. His brow furrowed, relaxed, then furrowed again, while his breathing gradually slowed.

Then he opened his eyes.

They were light brown, exactly as they had been before today. The faint dark red deep within his pupils had vanished completely, and the two tomoe were nowhere to be seen.

Mila stared into his eyes for several seconds, then softly let out a breath through her nose.

Damian's gaze lingered on Roy's face for a moment, then swept over Barlow and Mila before returning to Roy.

One of his younger siblings was covered in blood, one had a sea chart and compass tucked against his chest, and one had a short knife hanging from their waist.

Every day, he left early and returned late to unload cargo at the docks. By the time he came home, they had already spent an afternoon training in the woods.

Damian brushed the wood shavings from his shoulder.

"Looks like we'll have to train more from now on."

With that thought, he turned and headed inside.

"Get ready to eat."

Roy followed him, squeezing past Damian through the doorway. "I'm eating more today."

"When don't you eat more?"

"I killed more than ten pirates today. Do you know how much stamina that used up?"

"No. I only know that if you keep eating this much, our Household will be living on air next month."

The brothers' voices drifted out from the kitchen, one arguing while the other scolded him.

Only Barlow and Mila remained outside.

Mila stayed leaning against the wall.

She looked at Barlow, her gaze slowly moving from his face to what he held against his chest: the sea chart, the compass, the money pouch, and those few muskets.

"So you're just pocketing Roy's spoils?"

Barlow patted his collar. "I'll use them where they need to be used."

Mila snorted, roughly meaning: You'd better.

She pushed herself off the wall and followed Barlow into the house.

The workshop door stood open a crack.

Marcus had watched the entire thing.

He turned and sat on a wooden stool, a hand plane in his hand and an unfinished ship plank resting before him. Wood shavings piled around his feet, and the fresh scent of white wax wood mingled with lamp oil.

His gaze passed through the crack in the workshop door toward the kitchen.

The voices of the four children carried over. Damian was scolding Roy for eating too much, Roy was arguing back, Mila was laughing, and Barlow said nothing, though he was surely listening.

Marcus lowered his head and continued planing the wood.

The plane slid forward, curling a thin shaving from its blade into a tube before it fell into the pile by his feet.

No one knew what he was thinking.

Night deepened. One by one, the lights of White Wax Island went out. The sound of the tide came from afar, slower and longer than it had been during the day.

Roy lay in his bed with his eyes closed.

He fell asleep quickly.

Then he dreamed.

It was that street again, that blood-red moon again, that man again.

But this time, the man stood directly before Roy, no more than three steps away.

Dark clothes, a fan emblem on his back, a short sword at his waist. Roy still could not remember his face. His features were perfectly clear before Roy's eyes, yet whenever he tried to imprint them in his mind, they slipped away through his fingers.

Only those eyes were clear.

Then the man spoke. His voice was the same as in the previous two dreams—deep and slow, like a stone sinking into deep water.

"These eyes are called the Sharingan."

He raised a hand and pointed to his own eyes.

"The Uchiha Clan's unique bloodline power. An instinct carved deep into Uchiha blood."

He raised one finger.

"The One-Tomoe Sharingan, the Eye of Insight. It sees through movements, captures trajectories, and predicts the next move. What you saw today was the beginning of the One-Tomoe Sharingan."

He raised a second finger. The single tomoe in his pupils became two, and their rotation accelerated slightly.

"The Two-Tomoe Sharingan, the Eye of Copy. It not only sees, but remembers. An enemy's techniques, taijutsu movements, hand seals for ninjutsu—see them once, and they are etched into your eyes. If your body can keep up, you can reproduce them exactly."

He raised a third finger. Three tomoe connected into a ring within his pupils, rotating steadily.

"The Three-Tomoe Sharingan, the Eye of Hypnosis. The instant you meet an enemy's gaze, his eyes become your entrance. You can make him see what does not exist, make him obey your commands, make him spend his whole life inside an illusion without ever realizing it."

The man lowered his hand.

"This is the Sharingan."

He paused.

"This is the Uchiha Clan."

Roy opened his mouth in the dream, wanting to ask something. But before he could make a sound, the man's figure began to fade, like ink dropped into water, dissolving bit by bit from the edges.

The last thing to disappear was those eyes. Three tomoe slowly turned within scarlet pupils until the whole man dissolved into the blood-colored moonlight.

Roy abruptly opened his eyes.

He lay there for a long time.

Then he pulled his hand from beneath the blanket and raised it before his eyes. Moonlight shone across the back of his hand and over the brown bloodstains that had not yet washed clean.

He slowly clenched his fist.

"Sharingan."

He softly spoke the word.