The silence in the wake of his statements stretched, thin and brittle. Renjiro watched Miwa's face, seeing not the dawning comprehension he'd expected, but a kind of system overload.
Her eyes, usually so sharp and discerning, had glazed over, fixed on a point somewhere past his shoulder. The horrific demonstration of his regeneration, the casual admission of farming Sharingan, the claim of a trauma-free Mangekyō—it was too much data, too violently opposed to every foundational truth of their clan. He could see the gears of her logic grinding, seizing, unable to find purchase.
He didn't give her time to reboot. The momentum of confession was upon him, a desperate need to vomit out the whole rotten truth before his courage failed.
"After I was blinded," he pressed on, his voice a relentless, low monotone in the quiet room, "I tried to fix it. That's when I discovered the full extent of the regeneration. I grew a new pair of Sharingan. Then, during the process… Hiro died."
He swallowed, the name still a barb in his throat. "The grief… it hit the new eyes, fresh and blank. It imprinted a new pattern. So now I have two. Two separate Mangekyō patterns." He held up two fingers, a grotesquely simple gesture for such a catastrophic concept.
He frowned, thinking aloud, his gaze turning inward. "I'm not even sure I can still use the abilities of the first one. Those eyes were destroyed. But… if the pattern is a soul imprint, and I have stored samples of that original ocular tissue… perhaps I could recombine them. Recreate the first pattern. If I could have both patterns active, or merge them…"
He looked back at her, a flicker of that cold, strategic ambition breaking through the confessional tone.
"That could be the path. Two Mangekyō, from one source. That might be enough to force the evolution to the..."
He finally paused, expecting questions, demands for clarification, perhaps even awe at the brutal ingenuity of it. Instead, he was met with utter stillness.
Miwa hadn't moved. She was still staring into the middle distance, her breathing shallow. The profound dissociation in her expression was more unnerving than any outburst.
"Aunt Miwa?" he called, a thread of genuine concern cutting through his clinical narrative. He leaned forward slightly, waving his newly regenerated finger in front of her unfocused eyes.
"Miwa?"
Slowly, as if pulling herself from deep water, she blinked. Her eyes refocused, but not on his demonstration, not on his face. They searched his, scanning his features with an intensity that was entirely new—a diagnostic, almost fearful scrutiny. When she spoke, her voice was hollow, stripped of its usual warmth or sharpness.
"Renjiro… are you okay?"
The question threw him. It was so utterly off-script. He leaned back, his brow furrowing in genuine confusion. "Am I okay? What are you talking about? I'm explaining what happened. I'm telling you the truth."
"That's what I'm afraid of," she whispered, more to herself than to him. She took a deep, shuddering breath, visibly gathering the scattered pieces of her intellect. The maternal concern was shoved aside, replaced by the ruthless logic of a kunoichi dissecting an impossible mission report.
"Let's… walk through this," she said, her voice gaining strength, becoming analytical. "The Uzumaki regeneration. Extreme, unprecedented. I can… I can force myself to accept that. Biology is vast and strange. It could, theoretically, explain regrowing ocular tissue, even Sharingan. A horrific miracle, but a mechanical one."
She held up a finger. "But you claim you used these regenerated eyes, stacked them together like… like some kind of chakra puzzle, and triggered a Mangekyō. That already strains belief. The Mangekyō isn't a chemical reaction, Renjiro. It's not achieved by quantity. It's a qualitative transformation of the soul, manifested in the eyes."
She leaned forward now, her gaze locking onto his, pinning him in place. "But let's say, for argument's sake, I grant you that too. That your method somehow tricked the soul into that transformation." She held up a second finger, her expression turning grim.
"That brings us to the impossible wall. You claim you have two Mangekyō patterns. That Hiro's death gave you a second, different one."
She shook her head slowly, the motion final. "No. That is not a strain on belief. That is a fracture in reality. One person cannot have two different Mangekyō patterns. It is not a matter of difficulty. It is a matter of metaphysical impossibility."
Frustration, hot and sharp, flared in Renjiro's chest. He stood up abruptly, pacing a short, tight line on the tatami.
"Why?!" he demanded, whirling to face her. "Why is that the line? Look at me! Everything about me is abnormal! My chakra, my bloodline, this—" he gestured violently at his own body, "Why is this the one thing you find impossible to accept?"
Miwa didn't flinch at his outburst. Instead, she sighed, a sound of profound exhaustion and pity. "You're not listening, Renjiro. You're arguing mechanics when I'm talking about spirit." She settled back, her posture rigid with forced calm.
"You know the saying. 'The eye is a window to the soul.'"
Renjiro gave a curt, irritated nod. Of course, he knew it. It was a platitude on Earth and here.
"For the Uchiha," Miwa continued, her voice dropping into a lecturing rhythm, the kind used to teach clan history to children, "that is not a metaphor. It is a literal, chakra-based truth. Our dōjutsu, especially the Mangekyō, is a physical manifestation of the soul's nature. Its shape, its abilities, its very pattern—they are an imprint of a singular, unique psyche. A fingerprint of the spirit at its moment of greatest cataclysm. One soul. One imprint. One pattern."
She let that absolute statement hang in the air, its finality as cold as stone. "Therefore," she said, each word precise and heavy, "for one living person to possess two fundamentally different Mangekyō patterns is a probability of zero. It contradicts the core principle of what the eyes are."
Renjiro opened his mouth to argue again, to shout about exceptions and his own inherent weirdness, but Miwa held up a hand, silencing him. Her eyes, now filled with a dawning, terrible understanding, held him captive.
"There is only one logical conclusion that reconciles your abilities with the laws of our bloodline," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, yet it seemed to suck all the air from the room. "If you truly, genuinely possess two distinct Mangekyō patterns… then the 'window' is looking into two different rooms."
She leaned forward, the distance between them feeling suddenly cavernous and intimate all at once. Her gaze was a scalpel, dissecting him.
"It means there are not one, but two souls within you."
The words landed with the force of a silent explosion. The early morning light streaming through the window seemed to dim. The quiet house felt like a tomb.
All of Renjiro's arguments, his frustrations, his secret history—they crumbled before the sheer, elegant horror of her deduction.
Miwa searched his face, looking for any sign of deception, of recognition, of the other presence she now feared resided within her nephew. The protective concern was gone, replaced by the grim resolve of someone facing a spiritual infection. When she spoke again, her question was a blade poised at the heart of his identity, demanding a truth he himself wasn't sure of.
"So, Renjiro," she asked, the words cleaving the silence. "Which is it? Are you lying to me… or are you possessed?"
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