Endurance means letting go and holding firm

Konoha Military Police Force.

As he watched the ANBU sent by Hiruzen Sarutobi leave, Uchiha Fugaku kept his expression unchanged, but beneath the desk, his fists were already clenched tight.

Only after the ANBU had left completely did his brows knit together. He read the intelligence scroll over and over, trying to force himself to calm down, but his heart refused to settle.

Sure, that wayward son of mine never listens, loves causing trouble, and acts on every whim. I even used to beat him all the time when he was little. But who the hell do you think you are, Danzo?!

Although the intelligence Hiruzen Sarutobi had sent was far from detailed, offering little beyond the time and location of the attack on Sasuke, with almost nothing about what had actually happened, it at least informed him that an attack had taken place.

But this was Konoha. Who else could have attacked Sasuke? Aside from Danzo, Sarutobi, or spies from other villages, there were no other possibilities. And everyone in Konoha who knew the score shared one understanding: when you didn't know who was responsible for something bad, there was a ninety-eight percent chance Danzo had done it.

There was another rule much like that one: when you came across a jutsu and didn't know who had created it, there was a ninety-eight percent chance it had been the Second Hokage.

In a sense, those two really did belong to the same lineage.

Of course, that didn't mean Danzo was the Second Hokage's sole true successor. The same trait had skipped a generation on Sarutobi's side, too: if you found a dirty novel and didn't know who had written it, it had to be Jiraiya.

Naturally, Fugaku was in no mood to concern himself with dirty novels right now. When Minato had still been around, their families had been close, and the two of them would occasionally discuss the masterpieces written by Minato's teacher in private.

Now, never mind Minato being gone-his own son was almost fucking gone, too!

Damn you, Danzo!

The fact that Hiruzen Sarutobi had been vague yet still sent him the intelligence already pointed to a serious problem. The attack on Sasuke could not have been minor.

And from what he knew of how Danzo operated, Sasuke's condition had to be grim. The Third Hokage might well be rushing someone out to bring Tsunade back with one hand while preparing for Fugaku to flip the table with the other...

The familiar expressions of his clansmen flashed through his mind. Fugaku let out a long sigh and unclenched his fingers. But the moment he pictured Sasuke, his eyes turned red.

So what if Danzo has played me?! I'll just flip the whole fucking table!

The three tomoe in his eyes spun rapidly, but before they could link together, Fugaku's reason returned, and his eyes reverted.

No, that old man the Third Hokage is far too shrewd. Why would he send me the intelligence directly under these circumstances? Could he have anticipated this reaction, while Sasuke is actually fine?

After all, Hiruzen Sarutobi also said he'd found two good teachers to protect Sasuke... Did he not expect me to think this way, or is he really trying to be sincere?

At that thought, Fugaku felt something was still off. Could the Third Hokage have anticipated my anticipation? Does he think I'm too indecisive, that after a lifetime of restraint, I won't lash out so easily?

That still doesn't quite fit...

And so, after the two halves of his brain fought each other for well over half an hour, Fugaku finally snapped out of it. Why was he still standing around instead of hurrying home to check on Sasuke?!

He sprang to his feet and rushed to leave, only to collide head-on with someone as soon as he opened the door.

"Who the hell-are you fucking bli... Ahem, Dad. No, honored Father, good afternoon. Lovely sunshine today..."

Uchiha Fugaku: "..."

Turning to glance at the sun that was about to set, Fugaku's mouth twitched. Sure enough, the same old recipe, the same familiar flavor.

"You little br... Ahem, Sasuke, you're not dead?"

Sasuke gave Itachi beside him a strange look and shook his head. Why was that the first thing both of them said when they saw him?

Did he really look that much like some unlucky bastard Danzo would scheme to death?

But when his gaze swept over Fugaku's desk, Sasuke raised an eyebrow. The repeatedly crumpled paper, the messy desktop-even the passive enhancements granted by his Sharingan and Purple Demon Eye let him tell from the dust on the floor that someone had just been pacing back and forth in the room.

Every sign pointed to Fugaku having been deeply unsettled just moments ago. Normally, he was so absurdly composed that he hardly seemed like an Uchiha at all. Now this was more like it.

Emotional instability-that was something they had a universally acknowledged reputation for.

As everyone knew, the Uchiha's defining trait was their extreme emotionality. Extreme love gave rise to extreme hatred, and their violent emotional swings made them walking powder kegs, pure agents of instability.

Any Uchiha worth naming who possessed a three-tomoe Sharingan or better, especially one with a Mangekyo, was bound to be exceptionally obsessive in some aspect of their psyche.

Sasuke had always felt that Uchiha Fugaku truly lived up to his position as the Uchiha's leader. That awkward personality of his was just so Uchiha.

Previously, after Sasuke discovered that his shinobi world, much like the Douluo world Tang San inhabited, was a world that blended and rationalized settings from animation, comics, and games, and confirmed from various clues that his father-by-default, Uchiha Fugaku, possessed a Mangekyo, one question had refused to leave his mind.

Compared with Obito and Itachi, who slaughtered their own kin and disowned every family bond, wasn't Uchiha Fugaku a little too normal?

It was only during a discussion with Tang San and Xiao Yan that Sasuke suddenly understood.

Before, he had been too close to the situation to see clearly. Perhaps the Uchiha bloodline or his surroundings had made him a little unhinged, too. Only when he stepped outside this world's perspective did he realize it.

If Fugaku hadn't possessed a Mangekyo, that would have been one thing. But with a Mangekyo, how the hell was he normal?!

A man who possessed a Mangekyo yet refused to use his abilities, whether he was being swept along by his subordinates or facing a crisis, who kept cowering in miserable restraint right up until his death, practically suffocating himself with it, and ultimately failed to fulfill his wishes, lost all his ideals, and allowed everything he cherished to be destroyed-what was he, if not a psychologically twisted lunatic?

No normal person, however cowardly, could cower as much as Fugaku did. In fact, his indecisiveness and extreme restraint, pushed to the point of pathological obsession, fit his identity as an Uchiha with a Mangekyo perfectly.

Endure, endure some more, then keep enduring!

Until he endured himself to death.

Now that's a true shinobi.jpg

That kind of endurance...

The problem was, he hadn't even held out.

Glancing once more at the chaotic footprints on the floor, Sasuke's mouth twitched.

Fugaku wasn't merely enduring things. He was also notoriously indecisive. Hesitation meant defeat; decisiveness meant throwing his life away. He wouldn't make a decision when he should, then insisted on making one when he shouldn't.

He was also utterly lacking in communication. The Uchiha were a clan of almost universally proud people. Whether it was Madara wanting to shoulder the entire world alone, Itachi taking the whole clan upon himself, or Shisui, Uchiha Sasuke, Obito, and even Uchiha Hikari, Young Obito, and Sasuke as he was now, they expressed it differently, but not one of them lacked pride in their bones.

Yet Fugaku's most glaring problem was, in fact, his endurance.

The problem was, he hadn't held out.

Endurance meant letting go and holding firm.

But Fugaku had neither let go nor held firm. What the fuck had all that enduring even accomplished?!

"Father."

"Clan leader."

Just as Sasuke finished his initial explanation and was casting a sidelong look at Fugaku, that useless clan leader, pondering how to start messing with his head, Shisui and Itachi arrived one after the other.