The walk from the cemetery to the Uchiha district was a journey through a world that felt both too sharp and utterly insubstantial. The golden dawn light, which had seemed so solemn and cleansing moments before, now felt like a harsh interrogation lamp, exposing the shadowy corners of his own mind.
The image of Hiro's grave, the scent of Riku's incense, the weight of Aiko's guilt—they swirled together with the cold, seductive logic of the Edo Tensei. The temptation hadn't faded; it had crystallised into a hard, shameful knot in Renjiro's stomach.
'How could I even entertain violating him that way? Dragging his soul back, stitching it into some poor bastard's corpse… for what? For my own comfort? To absolve my guilt?'
The thought was a moral abyss, and peering into it terrified him more than any battlefield. It was the grief talking, yes, but it was a grief twisted by power, by the knowledge that such forbidden things were possible.
He feared that hollowed-out feeling Riku had warned him about. He feared that if he didn't anchor himself to something real, to a human connection, he would become the kind of man who saw solutions in desecration. He refused to let the loss of his friend become the genesis of a monster.
He found himself standing before a familiar, modest house in a quieter lane of the Uchiha compound.
Renjiro knocked, the sound firm against the wooden door. The early morning silence stretched. A flicker of doubt.
'Is she still asleep?'
After the emotional marathon of yesterday, it would be understandable. He was about to turn away, to retreat back into his own turbulent thoughts, when he heard the soft shuff of footsteps inside.
The door slid open. Miwa stood there, dressed in simple, comfortable training clothes, her dark hair slightly dishevelled. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on her brow. Surprise flashed across her face, quickly replaced by a warm, welcoming concern. She'd been in the middle of her morning kata, a discipline she'd maintained for decades.
"Renjiro," she said, stepping back without a word of question. "Come in."
He entered the familiar, sparsely decorated interior a balm to his frayed nerves. The tatami mats were clean, a single scroll lay open on a low table, and the air smelled faintly of green tea and polish. He noted her attire, the slight breathlessness.
'She's keeping her training routine,' he thought, and the observation sparked a related one about himself.
'I need to return to mine. I've been too long in the field, reacting. I need structure.'
"I didn't expect you so soon," Miwa said, closing the door and regarding him with those perceptive eyes. "After yesterday… I thought you might need more time to yourself."
"Drowning in it won't help," Renjiro replied, his voice sounding rough to his own ears.
"Focusing on… other conversations. Necessary ones. It's a better use of the time."
She nodded, understanding the unspoken plea. "Tea?"
"No. Thank you. I just… want to focus."
"Give me a moment," she said, and disappeared into a back room. He heard the soft sounds of her changing. When she returned, she wore a clean, dark yukata.
She moved to the center of the room, sat on the floor with her legs folded neatly beneath her, and gestured for him to sit opposite her. The casual hospitality was gone, replaced by a focused, serious energy.
She looked him directly in the eye, her expression open but intent. "So," she said, the single word settling heavily in the quiet room.
"Tell me what happened."
Renjiro sat, mirroring her posture. He was silent for a long moment. After all, he was about to shatter her understanding of their world. Finally, he spoke, his voice low and measured.
"I know you're expecting a story, Aunt Miwa. A moment of trauma. A loss so profound it sears the soul and mutates the eyes. That's the catechism, isn't it? The price of the Mangekyō."
He paused, seeing the confirmation in her eyes. "You won't get that story from me. Because that's not how I awakened it."
Miwa's brows drew together in pure confusion. "What are you talking about? The Mangekyō doesn't just… appear. It's a response. A catastrophic emotional—"
He raised a hand, cutting her off. "To save time, and a great deal of circular explanation," he said, his tone shifting into something chillingly pragmatic, "it's better if I show you."
Before she could process his meaning, his right hand moved to his weapon pouch. In one fluid, practised motion, he drew a standard kunai. The morning light glinted off its polished steel edge.
Without a flicker of hesitation, without a change in his expression, he laid the blade against the base of his left index finger. And sliced.
"Shick."
The sound was clean, sharp, and horrifically final. The kunai sheared through flesh, tendon, and bone with surgical precision. His severed finger dropped to the tatami mat with a soft, wet thud.
Blood, bright and shocking red, welled from the stump and began to patter onto the pale straw matting in a steady, rhythmic drip.
Miwa's reaction was instantaneous and violent. She jerked backwards as if physically struck, her eyes widening in sheer, uncomprehending horror. "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING!?" she shrieked, her voice tearing through the calm of the morning.
"It's fine," Renjiro said, his voice unnervingly calm, almost bored. He held up his bleeding hand, palm out, stopping her advance.
"Watch."
He closed his eyes, focusing. The bleeding slowed, then stopped as if a valve had been turned. Then, a visible aura of chakra, deep crimson shot through with threads of vibrant blue-green, enveloped his hand. The air hummed with concentrated vitality.
Miwa froze. Her horrified gaze was locked on the stump.
Under the shimmering cloak of energy, the impossible began. The clean, bloody slice began to bulge.
New tissue, pink and raw, swelled from the wound. It elongated, forming the rough shape of a knuckle, then a joint, then the tip. Nerves spun like gossamer threads, skin flowed over the new structure like liquid wax hardening in fast-forward.
In less than a minute, where there had been a bleeding stump, there was a whole, perfect, and slightly paler index finger. Renjiro flexed it, the movement smooth and unhindered.
If he completely focused, his healing would be faster, but it was easier said than done when you have someone trying to kill you in a fight.
He then calmly wiped the kunai clean on his pant leg and picked up the severed finger from the floor, handling it with a detached curiosity before setting it aside on a scrap of cloth.
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the frantic pounding of Miwa's heart in her own ears. She stared, first at the new finger, then at the old one lying on the cloth, then back at Renjiro's placid face. Her mind refused to bridge the gap between what she knew to be true and what she had just witnessed.
Renjiro turned his now-whole hand over, examining it as if checking a craftsman's work.
"Now," he said, his voice cutting through her stunned silence as the kunai had cut through his flesh.
"Imagine that—but with Sharingan."
The words hung in the air, monstrous in their implication. Miwa's breath caught.
"I can regrow them," he stated, the clinical tone making it somehow worse. "A fully formed, three-tomoe Sharingan, from an empty socket. It takes time and chakra, but it can be done. And I discovered that by taking two of these… regenerated eyes, I could force the evolution. No profound trauma required. No soul-searing loss. Just… biology, and fuinjutsu, and the obscene healing power I inherited."
Miwa finally found her voice, but it was a thin, strained thing. "How?" she breathed, the word encompassing the impossibility of it all. "How is such a thing possible? No Uchiha, no one, has ever…"
"The Uzumaki regenerative capability," Renjiro answered flatly, gesturing with his newly-grown finger.
"Chakra seinōu, to be specific."
When it recognises the loss of a Sharingan—a unique, chakra-dense organ—it doesn't just heal the socket. It rebuilds the organ. From scratch. It made acquiring the Mangekyō… absurdly easy."
He let that sink in, watching the horror and dawning understanding war in her eyes. Then he delivered the final, carefully crafted hook, the half-truth that would explain the existence of his original Mangekyō without revealing the cataclysm of his past life.
"The process was easy," he repeated, holding her gaze with his spinning, cursed eyes. "At least… for my first Mangekyō."
Miwa's brows narrowed, her initial shock hardening into something sharper, more suspicious. The implication was clear, and it terrified her. If the first was easy, what did that mean? What was the second? And what did 'easy' truly mean in this context?
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