This Gift Was Too Heavy: A Best Friend's Fall and the Bloodstained Sharingan

Konoha Hospital was in complete chaos.

Doctors swarmed around Naruto, run ragged by the Nine-Tails' chakra burns that had left barely any unscorched skin on his body.

Hyuga Hiashi and Might Guy both wore long faces as they stood outside the ward, waiting anxiously.

Hinata had cried until her eyes were swollen like walnuts.

The emergency room light stayed on from dusk until night had completely fallen outside.

At last, the doors opened, and the doctors and nurses filed out one after another.

Guy rushed forward and grabbed one of them. "How's Naruto?!"

The doctor shook his head with a regretful expression.

Guy's chakra exploded with a hum, startling the doctor into taking two steps back. "What are you losing your mind for?! He's not dead!"

Guy froze on the spot. "Then why were you shaking your head?!"

"His life was saved, but his eye is gone. His right eyeball was pierced straight through by a kunai, so we had to remove it."

"How could that be? Naruto...!"

Guy's face looked worse than if he had been crying. As a taijutsu practitioner, he knew better than anyone how great the difference was between having two eyes and having only one.

Losing an eye meant impaired balance and a reduced field of vision. If Naruto wanted to keep climbing higher, the hardships ahead would be far greater than before.

As Guy grieved for his student, an image of someone wearing a forehead protector suddenly surfaced in his mind.

It seemed... maybe... perhaps there really was someone just like Naruto, and that guy had even joined the ANBU...

The image of Kakashi, always covering half his face, flickered before Guy's eyes.

He quickly shook his head. No, no. Kakashi was only covering it, not blind.

"My student!"

Hiashi's temples throbbed as he listened. He grabbed Guy and roared, "Shut your mouth! This is a hospital! Naruto needs rest!"

Guy awkwardly covered his mouth as he watched Naruto being pushed out of the operating room.

Naruto was still unconscious, completely unaware of anything.

After leaving Naruto at the hospital, Itachi turned and left immediately.

An uneasy feeling had been gnawing at him, as though something terrible was about to happen.

The moment Naruto was settled, he used Body Flicker and sped toward a cliff.

When he arrived, there was indeed a lone figure standing before the waterfall with his back to him, looking utterly solitary.

Shisui Uchiha.

"Aren't you still on a mission?"

Without turning around, Shisui asked with a smile.

"I couldn't shake this feeling, so..."

Itachi's brows had already twisted into a tight knot.

"I see?"

Shisui turned around with a smile. His right eye socket was already empty, a dark hollow.

"Shisui?!"

"It was Root's doing. I had planned to use the Mangekyō Sharingan to suppress this coup, but it seems that won't be possible now."

Shisui smiled weakly at Itachi.

"We can talk about that later. Treat your injury first."

Itachi cut him off.

Shisui ignored that and continued, "Once Konoha starts fighting itself, the other nations will surely seize the chance to strike. When that happens, another great war will break out."

"I originally planned to use Kotoamatsukami to stop the coup, but Danzo stole my right eye. He never trusted me. He wants to protect this village using his own methods."

"I doubt he'll spare my left eye either. Before he gets here, keep this for me."

As he spoke, Shisui gouged out his left eye and held it out to Itachi.

Itachi's face turned ashen as he stared at the eye being offered to him.

"You're the only friend I have left whom I can entrust with this. Protect the village, and protect the Uchiha Clan's honor."

Shisui wore a smile as he comforted Itachi.

But he had no idea that Itachi had already gone down a dark path.

The words "Uchiha Clan's honor" passed by Itachi's ears without leaving a trace. Only one sentence burned itself into his mind: protect the village.

"I'll take the eye. What are you planning to do next?"

Itachi asked.

Shisui smiled. "What I'm giving you is more than this eye. There's another power as well—the Mangekyō Sharingan."

"If I offer up my life, perhaps the situation can still change. I've already left behind my final letter."

As he spoke, he backed toward the edge of the cliff.

"Wait, Shisui!"

Itachi's expression changed instantly. Shisui meant no less to him than his younger brother Sasuke.

"Don't stop me, Itachi! I only have a few days left anyway. Consider it a gift I'm leaving you."

As soon as he finished speaking, Shisui leaned backward and plunged headfirst off the cliff.

"Shisui!!"

Itachi shouted and reached out to grab him, but Shisui's words surged through his mind, and his hand unconsciously pulled back.

As he watched Shisui fall, blood streamed from his eyes. The three tomoe spun madly before twisting into the shape of a pinwheel.

Itachi stared in the direction where Shisui had vanished and muttered, "I wanted to build the Uchiha Clan together with you... Without you standing beside me, what meaning does the Uchiha Clan even have?"

Until the day he died, Shisui never imagined that he held as much weight in Itachi's heart as Kakashi did in Obito's.

He had placed the burden of peaceful coexistence between the Uchiha Clan and the village entirely on Itachi, never expecting that Itachi had already become so extreme that he believed the Uchiha Clan did not deserve to live at all.

For the village's peace, and for Shisui's wish.

Itachi clenched his teeth, and the final blade in his heart came crashing down.

Shisui could never have guessed that the genius he had believed in most would ultimately embark on a path of uprooting the Uchiha Clan entirely.

By the time Itachi returned to the Uchiha Clan Grounds, the gathering had long since dispersed.

He crouched atop a utility pole, looking down at the dim Uchiha streets below. He muttered to himself, "Rest easy, Shisui. I'll walk the path you left behind. I believe in the road I chose, and I will not retreat a single step."

"Only then will the village have a future, and so will my brother... and the Uchiha Clan..."

"For all of that, I'm willing to rot in the darkness alongside these eyes."

His Mangekyō Sharingan locked tightly onto the clan grounds below, looking indescribably terrifying.