There was none of the joy or excitement he had imagined, only endless bitterness and heaviness. This kekkei genkai, hailed as the symbol of the Uchiha's power and curse, now seemed to him a bloodstained gift bought with his father's life.
He raised a slightly trembling hand and gently touched the corner of his eye, feeling the strange flow of chakra, cold and searing at once.
"Father..." he murmured, his voice as hoarse as a worn-out bellows. "Was this... your final lesson to me?"
Under the bleak moonlight, his single-tomoe Sharingan gleamed with cold sorrow, like a lonely star weeping blood in the night sky.
The next day, Shinji did not go to school. He changed into clean shinobi clan attire and headed straight for the Hokage Office Building.
His expression had regained its calm, becoming even more composed than before, but beneath that stillness lay something like a deep sea roiling with hidden currents. Deep in his eyes, the newly awakened tomoe was no longer deliberately concealed. It flickered in and out of sight as it spun, adding a sharp edge and an icy distance to his otherwise delicate features.
After his arrival was announced, he entered the office that represented Konoha's highest authority.
Third Hokage Hiruzen Sarutobi sat behind his broad desk, his face blurred by the wisps of smoke rising from his pipe. As he watched Shinji enter, his eyes held a complicated mixture of regret, understanding, and a trace of barely perceptible weariness. The detailed report of Uchiha Yamakaze's death in battle lay quietly on his desk.
"Lord Hokage." Shinji bowed respectfully, his voice far too steady for a nine-year-old boy who had just lost his father.
"Shinji..." Hiruzen Sarutobi drew deeply on his pipe and slowly exhaled. "You have my condolences. Your father was a