Five years old.
Itachi could not have cared less about birthdays and all that. The annual event was at best nothing more than a milestone. Whether it was spent largely adrift or packed with a variety of experiences, a year was still a year. Just because the number indicating his age had increased by one didn’t mean that anything changed.
What was important was daily training. That steadily moving forward one step at a time was important, was how Itachi felt, but that year, something truly significant had changed and shaken his heart. That something was before his eyes at that moment.
“So?” Mikoto asked, lying back on the floor.
But he didn’t respond and instead sat, legs tucked underneath him, staring at the creature laying before his knees.
The tiny newborn baby seemed to be intently focused on understanding his situation, while his still unseeing eyes wandered around empty space.
Itachi gently touched the baby’s cheek.
At the sudden stimulus, the infant twitched with surprise. Shocked by this reaction, Itachi pulled his hand away, while his mother giggled as she watched.
“Sasuke.” The child’s name. His own little brother.
Uchiha Sasuke …
Itachi gently touched the baby’s cheek one more time. “Sasuke …”
The moment he gave voice to his brother’s name for the first time, something warm exploded in his heart. Different from the love he felt for his mother and father, a special, indescribable emotion. In the end, five-year-old Itachi couldn’t really put into words just what it was. But faced with this ephemeral life, a creature who seemed like he would shatter if Itachi even touched him, something like a masculine sense of responsibility did indeed come to life inside him, the feeling that he had to protect this tiny life.
“Take care of your baby brother, hm?” his mother said, and Itachi nodded fiercely, hand still on Sasuke’s cheek.
Itachi had trained nonstop since the day his father had taken him to the battlefield. Just one more year until his long-awaited start at the academy. His sole objective was to hone his skills so that he could be a ninja among ninja.
Why a ninja among ninja? To rid the world of fighting, of course. Itachi simply refused to accept his father’s conception of a ninja as someone who lived in the midst of killing.
Were the ninja arts and chakra really only for fighting? Itachi was sure they were not.
If you had the greater strength, you could step in between people fighting to stop them. If you were a ninja more powerful than the ninja at war, if no ninja—however skilled—stood a chance against you, then everyone would listen to and obey your commands.
Itachi wanted to be that kind of ninja. He believed that if he was more powerful, more capable than anyone else, he would be able to stop even enormous fights like the last Great War. He had a goal, so his devotions were not difficult.
A grove near his house was his training ground. Wooden targets were hung on the cedar trees in the cluster surrounding him. Each was about the size of a human head, with two black circles drawn on it.
Itachi stood alone in the deserted wood, kunai tucked between his fingers. Four in each hand, the eight kunai were his weapons of choice.
“Haah …” He closed his eyes and slowly pushed the air out of his lungs from the bottom of his stomach.
As he crouched down, he kicked at the ground as hard as he could. His body danced into the air and flipped upside down. He held his arms to his chest, and then shot them out to both sides, and eight flashes of light scattered in eight directions.
Thk! Thk! Thk! The sound echoed all around Itachi as he landed.
The sharp blades had pierced the centers of the targets on the cedar trees.
“Nice work.” A voice came suddenly from behind him.
Itachi swallowed his breath and looked back to see a boy with black hair standing there. He was clearly older than Itachi. As proof of that, the silver of a Konoha forehead protector shone on the boy’s forehead.
“How old’re you?” the boy asked.
Itachi didn’t know his name, but he had seen this boy before. Another ninja of his Uchiha clan.
“Five.”
“That kind of mastery of kunai at your age. You’re really something, huh?” The boy stretched out a hand. “Uchiha Shisui.”
“I’m—”
“I know. Itachi. Military Police Chief Fugaku’s kid.”
Itachi was confused by how friendly Shisui sounded. It probably showed on his face, since Shisui shrugged and opened his eyes wide.
“I heard you were a strange kid and you don’t really talk to anyone. You really are stubborn, huh?”
“If you don’t need anything …”
“Well, I wouldn’t say that.” The smiling Shisui disappeared.
Itachi’s eyes chased after his aura.
The sky.
As he danced up into the air like Itachi had moments earlier, both of Shisui’s arms flew out, and eight flashes of light shot through the air.
“Whoa!” Itachi opened his eyes wide in amazement.
“How was that?” Shisui grinned as he landed. “I’m not too shabby with the kunai either, right?”
New kunai stabbed into the surface of the targets on the cedar trees, immediately to one side of the kunai Itachi had plunged into them earlier. Naturally, these were the ones Shisui had thrown.
“I’ve been watching you training here every day for a while now.” He slowly approached Itachi, holding out his hand once more. “Let’s be friends.”
Shisui’s voice was warm; his demeanor naturally pulled Itachi in. Accepting the invitation, Itachi extended his right hand. Warmth wrapped itself around his palm.
“Nice meeting you, Itachi.”