40: Right and Wrong

“I’m home.”

“Itachi?” Mikoto emerged from the back room, surprised to hear her son’s voice. He was in the entryway, crouching to unlace his sandals—still in full ANBU gear.

“You’re back early today.” She studied him. Itachi rarely came home before evening, let alone midday. “Have you eaten?”

“I’m not hungry, Mother.” His voice was low. Flat.

Something was off. His shoulders sat wrong—not the quiet composure she was used to, but something heavier. Duller.

“Is everything alright?”

He didn’t answer. “Is Father home?”

“In his room, reading.” She glanced toward the closed door down the hall, then back at Itachi. “Did you need him for something?”

Reading.

“…No. Never mind. I’ll be in my room.”

……

The moon was the color of blood.

It hung in a pitch-black sky, vivid and wet, as though the red might drip from its surface at any moment. Below it, the earth burned. Crimson flames surged across the ground in every direction, tongues of fire twisting upward into the dark, and the heat hit Itachi like a wall—searing, suffocating. He gritted his teeth against it.

There was no way out. Fire stretched to every horizon, an ocean of it, and the air itself seemed to combust. It was as if he’d been cast into some crimson hell—thrashing, enduring, with no release. The only things visible through the inferno were the burning earth below and that impossible moon above.

He stared up at it.

Three black tomoe materialized across the moon’s surface, reflected in its blood-red glow like the pattern of a massive, lidless eye.

Itachi shot upright on the tatami.

His breath came in ragged bursts. He stared at his own hands, trembling, and realized his entire body was drenched. His undershirt clung to his skin, and the futon beneath him had soaked through with sweat—as if the fire had been real, as if his body had genuinely endured that heat.

He sat there for a long moment, letting his pulse slow.

Then he stood, gathered clean clothes, and walked to the bathroom.

“Itachi? Is that you in there?”

Mikoto’s voice came through the door at the sound of running water.

“Mother—could you change my bedding? I got it wet. Sorry.”

“Oh—sure.”

He emerged a few minutes later in a plain black shirt, hair still damp, and found Mikoto in the kitchen wrapping strips of dried meat into a cloth bundle.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I made jerky today.” She tied the bundle and smiled. “I’m going to bring some to Shin.”

“Shin?”

“Sasuke’s classmate—the one who walked him home. You’ve met him.”

Itachi knew perfectly well who Shin Takami was. What he didn’t understand was why his mother was bringing the boy food.

“Our families were close, once. Shin’s father and your father were best friends.” Mikoto’s smile softened. “It’s been a long time.”

Were they?

Itachi had no knowledge of this. He knew Shin was an orphan—parents dead, raised by Tsume Inuzuka’s family. But the idea that Fugaku had ever had a best friend… he’d never heard that. Never thought to ask.

How little do I actually know about my father?

“You should ask him yourself,” Mikoto said lightly, rising to carry the bundle to the counter.

Itachi hesitated. Then he turned and walked toward Fugaku’s room.

He knocked once at the door. A voice from within: “Come in.”

He slid the door open and stepped inside.

Fugaku sat cross-legged on the tatami, a thick book held open in both hands, reading with the kind of stillness that made it seem like he hadn’t registered Itachi’s entrance at all.

Itachi crossed the room and lowered himself to his knees opposite his father, leaving a respectful distance between them.

He really is reading.

The village and the Uchiha have come to this—and you’re sitting here with a book.

He kept the thought behind his teeth.

The room was very quiet. The only sound was the dry whisper of pages turning. Neither spoke. Itachi knelt motionless, hands flat on his thighs.

His eyes found the title on the book’s thick cover: The Annals of Konoha.

He’d read it. Every shinobi in the Leaf had. It was required reading at the Academy—a comprehensive history of the village from its founding to the present day: the wars fought, the policies enacted, the leaders who shaped the nation.

“You remember this book,” Fugaku said without looking up.

Itachi nodded.

“The first volume tells the story of the Senju and the Uchiha. The First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, and our ancestor Madara Uchiha—founding the Hidden Leaf together.”

Madara Uchiha…

Something in Itachi’s expression shifted. A shadow crossed his face—there and gone—and his jaw tightened.

Fugaku didn’t notice. His eyes remained on the page, and he began to recite—the words printed on the book’s frontispiece, words Itachi also knew. He’d first read them at five years old and understood nothing.

“Once, there were those who despised one another…“

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Their corpses rotted in the fields. Their blood stained the souls of heroes.“

“Bonds were severed by the blade.“

“And true hearts wept in the darkness…“

Even now, the meaning remained half-shrouded. Itachi could feel it—a shape in fog—but couldn’t quite grasp it whole.

“A great deal was left out of this book,” Fugaku said. “The ancestors did much. What later generations see is only cold, edited text. Simple words rewritten by someone else’s hand.”

Silence.

“You once taught me,” Itachi said, steadying himself, “that a shinobi’s worth isn’t determined by how they live—but by what they accomplish before they die.” He paused. “What the ancestors contributed can’t be contained in a single book. And they wouldn’t have cared how any book chose to record them.”

He looked up. “Would you care how a book recorded you, Father?”

A thin, sardonic smile crossed Fugaku’s face. Not an answer.

“What did you come here for?”

“You… and Shin Takami’s father,” Itachi said after a moment’s hesitation.

Fugaku went still. He closed the book slowly and set it down, then looked at Itachi with an expression that revealed nothing.

“You want to know?”

Itachi hesitated, then nodded. He didn’t meet Fugaku’s eyes—just knelt there, gaze lowered to the floorboards.

In all things, Itachi was proper. Measured. He carried himself with the gravity of someone far older than thirteen, and he never dropped the courtesy, no matter the person, no matter the circumstance.

“Do you know who Tsukasa Takami was?” Fugaku asked.

Itachi nodded.

“During the Third Shinobi World War, he served as deputy commander on the Land of Water front. He was instrumental in defeating the enemy there. Later, a misjudgment on a mission caused severe losses for the village—he resigned out of guilt, and was subsequently killed during the Nine-Tails attack.” Itachi recited the facts as he knew them, then looked up. “He was Shin’s father?”

Fugaku’s face wore that sardonic look again.