Itachi carefully took his shoes off in the entryway. His mission that day would seriously change his life. He wouldn’t be taking his shoes off here anymore. The peaceful times would also end that day.
That’s fine … He was prepared to bear the weight of the crime.
“Itachi.” Sasuke stopped Itachi as he was about to step up into the house with an almost innocent cry, as if to keep him here in this house, in this clan.
Itachi decided to stay just a little longer in this peaceful place. Once he took that step forward, he would never be able to come back here. He moved his feet back into the entryway, and turned toward his brother.
“Help me with my shuriken today, please …”
A request he would never be able to grant again. If he was honest with himself, all he wanted to do was help Sasuke forever and ever. He had prayed for the day when his little brother would become a full-fledged ninja, and they would go on missions together. That, too, was a wish that could no longer be granted.
Struggling for a reply, he managed to give voice to a polite lie. “I’m busy … Why don’t you ask Father?”
“But you’re better at shuriken. Even I can tell that.” His brother pouted, arms crossed behind his back, head hanging slightly.
Now that Itachi thought about it, he had used being busy as a pretext to distance himself from his brother. He wished he had spent more time with him, but what was done was done.
“Why do you always treat me like I’m such a pest?”
No … That’s what he wanted to say. But that was a word he definitely could not give voice to, because soon, his little brother would hate him for the rest of his life.
Still silent, Itachi beckoned with his hand. Not suspicious in the slightest, Sasuke trotted over. As if to check that force, Itachi jabbed him in the forehead with his index and middle fingers.
“Sorry, Sasuke. Maybe next time.”
“Ow!”
His little brother pursed his lips and puffed out his cheeks, and Itachi saw that his forehead was just a bit red. When he was little, it had hurt Sasuke so much when Itachi poked him; his little brother was growing up, a fact that almost pained him.
If he stayed there like that, he wouldn’t be able to get up again. Steeling himself, Itachi took a step with heavy feet. And then, without looking at his little brother, he said, “I don’t have time for this.”
“You always say ‘Sorry, Sasuke,’ and jab me in the forehead. And you never have time. It’s always the same story.”
Itachi left his grumpy brother, and opened the front door. Sorry, Sasuke, he apologized from the bottom of his heart, the moment he crossed the threshold.
The cliff where I promised Shisui …
Six hours had already passed with him sitting on the edge in contemplation. No matter how he chased his thoughts off, the ideas that appeared one after another would not go away. Moments from the twelve years of his life flickered into existence and disappeared, disappeared and flickered again.
Memories of his boyhood when all he wanted was to get stronger. Days fighting as a ninja, troubled by the conflict between his comrades and his brethren. And the many bonds that dragged him into the darkness.
Beyond good and evil, beyond emotion, his memories became confused and washed away his thoughts like a muddy stream. Itachi could only give himself over to the torrent. It was too late for regret now. Still, it wasn’t as though his feelings were crystal clear, either.
The karma Itachi would be burdened with was not something simple that could easily be reasoned away. It was something that went beyond preparation, worry, hesitation, determination, all of it. Which was why Itachi himself couldn’t predict what kind of person he would be once that day was over. The only thing he knew for certain was that this day, “today,” would indeed end, and that when it did, everyone in the clan other than his little brother would be dead.
Almost like how everyone knew that the day of their own death would come at some point.
“Haah …” Itachi took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Through his slightly open eyelids, light the color of sunset shone into a field of view blanketed by long eyelashes.
It was almost time. The preparations had already all been made. Once Itachi moved, Madara would also move.
There was no one other than the people of the clan in the compound that day. It was a clever bit of work from Danzo and the Foundation. And dressed as that work was in the disguise of chance, no one noticed Danzo’s trickery.
And it wasn’t just one trick.
First, the early return of the Military Police Force. Starting that evening, contractors were coming in to build the new facilities for the headquarters, so an order was issued by the village for the police to go home early. Naturally, this was a fake order devised by Danzo. But dead men tell no tales. If everyone involved were dead, then there would be no one to say a fake order had been issued. And for the police, who had a coup d’état the next day to consider, getting to go home early was a nice turn of events.
And the final trick …
That was to make his brother return home late. That day, a teacher at the academy would be training with him in shuriken. This teacher was a fake, a member of the Foundation. In a disguise so clever Sasuke, who was not yet even a genin, would never be able to see through it, the Foundation ninja would deceive him.
The table was set so that all Itachi had to do was head toward the compound.
“All right, I’m going,” Itachi announced to empty space, as he stood up. He saw a vision of Shisui before him.
It would all end that day. The fate of the Uchiha clan, and Itachi’s peaceful life …
Itachi held his breath, and listened to the bright voices from across the hall. The room illuminated by the flickering glow was the dining room. The voices were those of two women. He knew one of them very well. The other was her mother.
He kicked the garbage can at his feet, and deliberately made some noise.
“What was that?” the voice he knew asked the mother.
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll go look, all right?” Tension crept into her voice as she announced this to her mother, and then her aura slowly approached Itachi.
So that she wouldn’t sense him, he ran down the hallway, and hid in the room next door. And then, once he judged that her aura had passed by him, he slipped into the dining room, and before the mother had a chance to shout upon noticing him, he knocked her out with the sharingan. Once he had soundlessly put her to sleep, he waited silently for the aura to return.
“Mom, it was just the garbage—” Having gotten this far, Uchiha Izumi stopped herself. “Itachi?” Glancing over at her mother on the floor, Izumi stared dumbfounded, not understanding what was going on. “Wh-why …”
He couldn’t stand to listen to Izumi’s voice any further. He concentrated his chakra in his eye. The Mangekyo sharingan.
“Tsukuyomi.”
Izumi froze in place.
Itachi focused his thoughts on his own genjutsu. Tsukuyomi allowed him to completely control time, space, and matter. It was a power he had gained when he activated the Mangekyo sharingan. The time that passed within this genjutsu was one one-hundredth of one one-thousandth of one one-millionth of that of the real world.