"The most outrageous one was Uchiha Fugaku! He wasn't remotely fit to be a father! He wasn't even fit to be called a decent human being!"
Countless people voiced their outrage.
"How utterly irresponsible! What normal person throws a four-year-old child onto a battlefield where people live and die? That's sheer madness!"
"Other children were playing and acting spoiled, while he was looking at corpses! Other children were enjoying their families' love, while his father was exploiting and pressuring him!"
"No wonder Itachi later became so guarded, cold, and obsessive, even resorting to extremes."
"His family and this cruel world had clearly warped him beyond recognition from childhood!"
"Itachi was a monster, but the roots of his twisted nature were planted when he was little."
He had faced death at four, witnessed a teammate's horrific death while still young, and endured the coldness of his own family.
His father pushed him to grow up, to become strong, to shoulder responsibility,
yet never once asked whether he was tired, hurting, or afraid.
Konoha's pressure, his clan's obsession, his father's expectations, the trauma of war.
Countless mountains weighed down on a single child, one atop another.
Young Itachi had already broken down countless times in corners where no one could see him, and had wanted to die just as often.
Inside the Hokage Office, the oppressive atmosphere made it hard to breathe.
After watching Uchiha Itachi's past-going to war at four, breaking down and jumping off a cliff as a child, and being driven to the brink by his family's coldness-Jiraiya couldn't help letting out a soft sigh. He shook his head, his face full of disapproval.
"Fugaku was far too irresponsible."
What kind of father threw a child barely a few years old into mountains of corpses and seas of blood,