This place was... hell!
Uchiha Itachi kept his head lowered as the people around him openly pointed, whispered, and even cursed him aloud.
Their words were like poisoned icicles, stabbing one after another into a heart that had long since gone numb, but had not lost all feeling.
Sunlight fell on him, yet he felt no warmth, only a cold that seeped into his bones.
For the first time, he began to doubt, clearly and directly, the path he had once believed in without question and sacrificed everything for.
These were...
The people of the village I sacrificed everything to protect, even bearing the sin of murdering my own family and clan?
The faces of his clansmen lying in pools of blood surfaced uncontrollably in Itachi's mind.
His stern father, who occasionally gave him a gentle smile; his kind, considerate mother; the uncles, aunts, and children, some familiar, some strangers...
Their eyes had held confusion, fear, despair, and curses.
And now, the eyes of these Konoha villagers held disgust, fear, contempt, and loathing...
They gradually overlapped with the faces of certain hard-line clansmen in his memories.
Protect? What had he protected?
Could it be... that he really had been wrong? So utterly, so absurdly wrong?
Just as this unprecedentedly cold reception left Itachi's convictions teetering, two figures blocked his path.
They were two boys who looked thirteen or fourteen, dressed in ordinary clothes but carrying themselves like street punks, their faces wearing a mixture of excitement, provocation, and a kind of sick frenzy.
They stood on either side, blocking the way of Itachi and his ANBU escort.
"Hey, hey! You're that Uchiha Itachi, aren't you!"
The boy on the left, his hair a garish reddish purple, shouted with a crooked sneer and an exaggerated tone.
The ANBU hesitated and stopped,