It was late at night.
Mount Momoyama had fallen silent, with only the low roar of the waterfall echoing in the distance.
The light in Sasuke's room had long since gone out.
But he had not gone to sleep.
The day's sword-swinging practice had left him more agitated than he had ever felt.
A thousand times.
Repeating the same movement.
Sweat had soaked his clothes, and his arms ached so badly he could barely lift them.
His master had said this was to find the sword's "soul."
How ridiculous.
A sword was a sword, a tool for killing.
Could a soul make his blade faster? Could it make his Chidori more powerful?
No.
This was nothing but a waste of time.
On the road to revenge, every second spent standing still was a betrayal of his dead family.
Sasuke sat cross-legged in the middle of the dark room, the moonlight streaming through the window bathing him in a cold, clear glow.
He held out his right hand and opened his palm.
A leaf he had just plucked from a tree in the yard lay quietly in his palm.
He slowly closed his eyes and mustered what little chakra he had in his body.
As though lifted by an invisible hand, the leaf wobbled up from his palm.
Spinning, rising, falling.
This precise control over chakra let him feel the presence of power more than swinging a sword a thousand times did.
This was how to grow stronger.
Not sweating in the yard like a fool, doing something useless.
Suddenly.
Sasuke's ear twitched.
He stopped releasing chakra, and the leaf drifted down.
There was a sound.
It was neither the wind rustling through leaves nor the chirping of insects.
It was a sort of... deliberately muffled shuffling across the floor.
Very soft, very slow.
But it could not escape his system-enhanced hearing.
Then he heard another sound.
"Gulp."
It was the sound of someone swallowing.
The sound came from right outside his door.
Sasuke's brow furrowed at once.
Was it his master?
Had he come to check whether he was slacking off?
An inexplicable anger rose from deep inside him.
He restrained him with all those lofty principles during the day, and now he wanted to watch him like a prisoner at night?
Sasuke stood up and walked soundlessly to the door.
Without the slightest hesitation, he abruptly slid the paper door open.
"Mas..."
The rest of "Master" caught in his throat.
Outside the door.
In the cold, clear moonlight, what he saw was not the stern old man leaning on a cane.
Instead, it was a blond head.
Zenitsu Agatsuma.
He was standing on tiptoe, one ear almost pressed against the door, his face still wearing a furtive eavesdropper's expression.
His cheeks were still red and swollen, and the corner of his mouth still bore a bruise from earlier that day.
In his hands, he carefully cradled two... rice balls.
Their eyes met.
The air seemed to freeze at that moment.
Within a tenth of a second, Zenitsu's expression changed from the nervousness of eavesdropping to the terror of being caught red-handed.
His pupils widened, and his mouth formed an "O."
"Eek!"
A scream so brief its pitch warped squeezed out of Zenitsu's throat.
Like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, he leaped backward, no longer able to hold on to what was in his hands.
"Plop, plop."
The two rice balls fell onto the hallway floor, rolled over twice, and picked up some dust.
"I... I-I-I..."
Looking at Sasuke's face, which seemed especially cold in the moonlight, Zenitsu was so frightened that he could not speak coherently, and tears instantly welled up.
"I didn't mean to! I was just passing by! Yes, passing by! I didn't see anything! I didn't hear anything! Please spare me!"
He rattled it all off at top speed, then, without even stopping to pick up the fallen rice balls, turned and scrambled into the dark yard without looking back.
Soon, he had vanished.
All he left behind was a string of stifled sobs fading into the distance.
Sasuke stood in the doorway without moving.
He looked in the direction Zenitsu had disappeared, then lowered his gaze to the two misshapen rice balls by his feet, clearly made by a beginner, one of them even half fallen apart.
He had been too upset to eat anything at dinner.
So he had come to bring him food?
Why?
Sasuke could not understand.
During their sparring that afternoon, he had mercilessly knocked him to the ground again and again.
He should hate him, or at least avoid him like the plague.
Why would he still sneak over late at night to bring him food?
What on earth was going through the head of this coward who did nothing but cry?
Sasuke stood in the doorway for a long, long time.
The night breeze blew past, carrying a hint of chill.
He slowly bent down and reached out.
He picked up the two rice balls, still faintly warm and dusted with dirt.
Before you continue