"Shisui Abura, that boy reported your contribution. The Hokage's office has it on record. By protocol, killing a Jonin, completing the mission, and adding up your previous credits... you're due for a promotion to Chunin at the very least."
"But Danzo found out. The Root has suffered heavy losses lately; they need fresh blood, especially those with potential."
"Killing a Jonin proved your worth. Danzo is very interested in unconventional combat assets. Besides... our Abura clan needs to maintain a good relationship with the Root."
"Danzo has personally requested you. Report to the Root headquarters tomorrow."
Shisui Abura walked out of the clan head's courtyard, the patriarch's words echoing in his mind like a funeral dirge.
He never expected that after over a decade of careful camouflage—ten years of playing the "gray man"—he would still, in the end, fail to escape the gravity of the Root.
Shisui was eighteen. Since his parents died when he was four, he had lived a solitary existence.
He entered the Academy at six, keeping his grades ticulously diocre—never at the top, never a disruptive failure at the bottom.
He was a ghost; sotis, even the instructors would forget he was in the room.
He drifted through graduation at twelve. He had no elite Jonin ntor, only an average Chunin captain. His mission performance was unremarkable, devoid of any defining traits.
For six years, he stagnated as a Genin. If it hadn't been for that one mont of weakness—a split second where he accidentally killed a Sand Village Jonin—the village likely would have forgotten he existed until the day he died.
He had guarded against everything, yet failed at the last hurdle. He regretted it now. He regretted that flicker of soft-heartedness on the battlefield when he struck down that Jonin to save his teammate.
As he stepped out of the gates, a fresh breeze brushed his face, bringing a sudden, sharp clarity.
Truthfully, he should have left long ago. He didn't enjoy killing, and he loathed the missions that went against his every instinct.
He simply wanted the life he chose, and the environnt of the Hidden Leaf was a suffocating cage. He felt constantly watched, perpetually on edge, unable to breathe.
The Abura clan compound was always silent.
It wasn't a peaceful, harmonious silence, but the kind of stillness that felt as if the sound and air had been vacuud out. Insects crawled through the wooden joints of the houses, flowed through the veins of his kin, and bred in unseen shadows. They consud excess noise, excess emotion, and excess vitality.
His ho sat at the very edge of the clan territory—a single-story wooden shack backed by a grove of withered bamboo that never saw the sun.
It was seven hundred paces from the ancestral hall, twelve hundred from the training grounds, and three hundred from his nearest neighbor.
Behind the shack was a lush vegetable patch. The greens were vibrant and ripe, ready for harvest. He had tended this soil for years; now that he was leaving, he wondered who would end up feasting on the fruits of his labor.
"Ti to go," he whispered.
He sealed his valuables into a scroll and took one final look at the shack. He felt no nostalgia.
At the gates of the Hidden Leaf, Shisui produced a forged mission scroll. It was a masterpiece of deception—convincing at a glance, though it wouldn't survive a deep audit.
However, the guard let him through without a word. The man had already succumbed to the subtle pheromones emitted by Shisui's insects—a faint hallucinogen that caused the mind to overlook discrepancies.
"Hey! Shisui! Haha, over here!"
Shisui was just about to turn and vanish into the treeline when a shout erupted behind him. He looked back. It was Kazuya Mori.
Kazuya was wearing a brand-new Chunin flak jacket. Despite his left arm being encased in bandages, he smiled with a radiance that rivaled the midday sun.
"Shisui, I finally found you! Look—my new vest! The Hokage presented it to personally. I'm a Chunin now! I wanted to bring you along to the ceremony, but for so reason, the Hokage didn't ntion your na.
I bet it's because he recognizes your true strength and wants to promote you straight to Special Jonin!"
"Are you two on a team?" the gate guard asked, his face twisting with a hint of confusion as the illusion began to fray.
"We are," Shisui said, grabbing Kazuya by the shoulder. "Ergency mission. Follow out of the village."
Kazuya blinked. "Now? But I don't have my gear."
"Doesn't matter. I have enough for both of us."
Shisui didn't give him a chance to think. He hauled Kazuya toward the exit. Kazuya didn't resist; he allowed himself to be pulled along by Shisui's strength, his trust absolute.
It was a clumsy lie, but Kazuya believed it instantly. He didn't even need the help of the insects.
He had always been like this.
In the five years they had been paired, Kazuya was the protagonist of a hot-blooded shonen manga—sunny, idealistic, and kind.
Shisui was the invisible backdrop. Everyone else ignored him, yet Kazuya always saw him, treating him as his most reliable pillar.
He trusted Shisui unconditionally, and with that trust, he had barreled recklessly into Shisui's carefully constructed isolation.
But with that bond ca the scripts of the world: missions, wars, rits, Danzo, and the elders. Each link was forged into a chain he couldn't break.
Ever since Shisui regained his mories of a previous life, he had felt a profound sense of detachnt from the ninja world.
To him, this world felt unreal. For eighteen years, he had stayed away from people, living a hermit's life—a choice that conveniently fit the "creepy Abura" stereotype.
But the world was real.
Since being dragged into the fray, he realized the people were vivid, the blood was hot, and if you were killed, you stayed dead.
Despite his inner resistance and his refusal to be "assimilated" by this world—even to the point of avoiding killing whenever possible—things had changed.
He didn't know when it happened, but he could now kill without blinking. He had been assimilated after all.
He looked at Kazuya, his "sunny" teammate. One second, Kazuya could plunge a kunai into a man's throat without a second thought.
The next, covered in blood, he would scratch his head and offer a goofy, laughing apology because he had been "too slow" and let the client get a fright.
Kazuya hated killing too, yet he always found a reason why he "had" to do it. Eventually, he learned to toggle between being a cold-blooded killer and a cheerful friend with terrifying ease.
Shisui could never do that.
He knew Kazuya was a "true" shinobi. Shisui was a fraud—he never was a ninja, and he never would be.
Shisui sprinted faster, pulling Kazuya deeper into the forest, further from the village. As the mories of the last five years flashed through his mind, a fresh wave of regret washed over him.
He should never have saved that boy. The "bonds" of the Hidden Leaf were, quite frankly, terrifying.
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