Mikoto did not know how she made it back.
Scarlet posters screamed from both sides of the street, "Blood debts must be repaid! Annihilate Suna!" The air was steeped in a mix of iron rust from ninja tool shops and the bitterness of apothecaries' herbs.
The villagers' whispers pricked her ears like needles:
"That one's from the Uchiha."
"Heard the sensory barrier picked up a Yin Release fluctuation near their compound yesterday. Hokage-sama forced it down."
"Tch, shifting the disaster east, right? Only fools buy that. Still, that little Uchiha girl climbed high, got into Tsunade's squad. Tsk, tsk, must have used her tricks."
Mikoto's steps nailed to the ground.
The sting in her fingertips spread, but a stronger emotion surged up, anger.
She remembered the suffocating council meeting her grandfather Setsuna had told her about.
Hiruzen's face, outwardly gentle, in truth cold and calculating.
To appease public fury and redirect focus, he had taken a vague report, "The source of the psychic shock might have brushed the edge of the Uchiha district," and twisted it into a shadow of suspicion stamped onto every Uchiha.
Grandfather Setsuna had sat below, the suppressed fire in his Sharingan so cold it could have burned through the roof.
But in the end, he had to swallow that toxin wrapped in sugar, the so-called favor of an entry ticket into the Hokage's inner circle.
For the Uchiha. For a slim chance to squeeze into the core.
And the cold stares and suspicion from the other clans became the interest on that favor.
But why?
Her joining Team Eight was clearly political compensation, Hokage's balm and calculation rolled into one.
Why should she bear baseless slander and gossip?
Just because she was Uchiha?
Because the rabble and scheming clans needed a target for their fear?
Because Hiruzen needed a scapegoat?
Anger, like magma, blasted aside the sour ache and disappointment in her chest.
Even the grievance stoked moments ago at the Hokage Building, sparked by Kushina's oblivious third wheel stunt, sizzled and burned in the fire.
The brave get to enjoy the world first.
The thought cleaved through Mikoto's tangled mind like ice-tempered lightning.
Breathing a little hard, she leaned against the cold wall and closed her eyes.
Back came the image, clear as day, of that red-haired loner in a faded, washed-out shirt, standing like a solitary wolf at the back of the classroom.
How many girls had snuck glances at his face back then?
But besides Kushina, who had the guts to go near?
Even a second glance left you frozen by those glacier eyes.
She remembered her own faint yearning then, and a small, guarded pride, yet she had not dared step closer.
And the result, cowardice is a sin.
Then came Uzumaki Kushina.
A clueless, reckless girl from outside the village. On sheer, shameless courage alone, like an irrational wildfire, she crashed straight through Ryo's keep out ice wall. How many times had she snatched his food and been barked at, "Beat it," "You're noisy"?
Anyone else would have frozen to death.
But Kushina?
The more she got knocked back, the braver she returned. With that shameless, stubborn, fear-nothing energy, she became the one closest to that lone wolf. In the end, she even took that cold, hard heart.
And Uchiha Mikoto?
Clutching laughable restraint and a noble girl's pride, she watched, late to the race, overtaken in the end.
A fierce, choking frustration and unwillingness battered around her chest.
Why? What did Uchiha Mikoto lack?
Beauty? Brains? The poise of a highborn Uchiha lady?
She had noticed that boy named Ryo even earlier than Kushina.
Why did the prize go to that simple, smiling Blood-Red Chili Pepper?
"Hmph… Kushina…" Mikoto opened her eyes. Deep within them flashed, for an instant, a glint of jealousy that even she found frightening, then it drowned a heartbeat later in helplessness and complicated feeling.
After all, Kushina was her best friend.
This stifled breath, she could only swallow it with blood.
Hard to accept. That was Uchiha Mikoto's greatest hard-to-accept.
But the more she choked on it, the clearer her circumstances became, a catalyst instead of a cure. As the granddaughter of the Uchiha Grand Elder, her very existence had never been her own to command.
There was only one road, political marriage, a bargaining chip to secure the clan's interests.
Look at the men in the clan. Not much skill, eyes growing out of their foreheads. They prattled all day about the so-called glory of the Sharingan and how glorious the ancestors were, drowning in yesterday's fumes.
Compared to him, the monster who split the earth with a few sheath strikes, who carved through Kumo spies like chopping melons, whose psychic shock swept half of Konoha.
Nausea rolled through Mikoto's gut. That clogged frustration curdled into disgust.
Especially that sticky fly she could not shake, Uchiha Fugaku.
"Mikoto, you are back?"
A graceless face thrust in, false concern and oily smiles blocking her path back to herself.
Uchiha Fugaku.
Here we go again.
Inwardly, Mikoto flipped the Sharingan like a Hyūga's blank Byakugan glare.
This pest. Flaunting his status as deputy clan head and being five or six years older, he had actually asked Grandfather Setsuna for her hand.
Couldn't he take a long, hard look in a puddle at least, at that visage that shamed the Uchiha name?
Generations of Uchiha, handsome men and lovely women, how did he end up such a failed half-breed anomaly?
Looking unfortunate is not your fault. Being unfortunate and narcissistic and trying to lay hands on me, that is your original sin.
"Fugaku-nii, hello."
Mikoto lowered her lids. The flawless noble-lady mask slid over every real emotion.
Her voice was cool, polite yet distant, shutting out all approach. No expression on that exquisite face. A slight dip of the chin, and she moved to pass.
Uchiha Fugaku seemed oblivious to the silent go away, or maybe he had long grown used to her reserve.
He kept half a step at her side-rear, eyes gleaming with what mattered most to him.
"You have worked hard. Oh, how did the team assignment go today? Did the Hokage make good on the promise?"
On assignment day, he had parked himself on the route Mikoto had to take home.
Comfort and concern did not matter. He had one goal, did Mikoto squeeze into Team Eight, the symbol of the Hokage's inner power core. It decided whether Elder Setsuna's concessions in the council had been worth it, and whether the Uchiha could use this chance to merge deeper into the core.
Clan. Clan. In these Uchiha men's eyes, beyond those paltry calculations and face, was there anything else?
Mikoto stopped dead. A hot, foul fire shot straight to her crown.
Both are straight-laced men. Ryo was cool and distant, few words, yet he had the strength and presence to hold up the sky, and he doted on Kushina.
But Uchiha Fugaku here, bared his intent to use her as a tool, an infiltration piece to question for intel.
The politeness and tolerance she had maintained for her grandfather's sake and his title snapped.
"Tsunade-sama will return to Konoha in a few days." Mikoto spun around. The gentleness was gone from her voice. In its place were impatience and tamped-down fury.
"When she does, Tsunade-sama will personally lead our squad. Deputy Clan Head, you may report back with peace of mind." She addressed his station directly, eyes cold as steel.
Fugaku flinched beneath the sudden sharpness of her tone and the chill in her gaze. His caring smile froze.
He finally, belatedly, sensed that something was wrong with Mikoto's mood, but had no idea why the fire. Instinctively he started to explain, "Mikoto, that is not what I meant. I was just worried about you, "
"Mikoto, you, "
"Fugaku." An elderly, hoarse voice cut him off, iron authority brooking no argument.
Uchiha Setsuna had somehow appeared at the main gate not far away. His clouded Sharingan skimmed over Fugaku, gaze indifferent, as if at a roadside stone.
"You may go. I have matters to discuss with Mikoto."
Fugaku's face flipped from blank to embarrassed, then flushed with a trace of slighted anger, but before the iron-blooded Elder, he did not dare to protest.
He forced his temper down, squeezed out a respectful fake smile.
"Yes, Elder Setsuna. I will take my leave."
He bowed stiffly. When he turned, his hurried steps were uneven. His back was all fluster and shame.
Watching his hasty retreat, the foul fire in Mikoto's chest did not fully die. Instead, a deeper fatigue and helplessness welled up.
This was the man she was meant to face in the future, a deputy clan head who could be waved off by the Grand Elder and did not dare talk back.
"Grandfather." Mikoto followed Setsuna into the compound, through the winding corridors. Their footsteps sounded unnaturally clear in the empty, silent courtyard. They reached Setsuna's private tatami room, and the paper door slid shut without a sound.
He did not ask about assignments right away. He gestured for her to sit.
"The assignments are as you wished, Grandfather." Mikoto spoke first, her tone unreadable.
"Team Eight. Tsunade-sama is the jōnin leader. Ryo, Kushina, and me."
She deliberately pressed weight onto Kushina, tangled threads of secret struggle and the complicated feelings of submitting to her grandfather's marriage plans knotting together.
Uchiha Setsuna stood with his back to her, looking out at the winter daphne tree in the courtyard, the emblem of the Uchiha flame.
At her report, he only made a faint, almost inaudible sound.
After a pause, his rasp returned, this time hammer-solid, the cadence of command.
"Mikoto, from now on, you must find a way to draw close to that Ryo, of the Kamiyama line."
He turned sharply. His clouded yet piercing Sharingan locked onto her face, no longer a grandfather to a granddaughter, but a clan lord to a precious tool to be used to the utmost.
"You must make it so he sees only you. At any cost. Hold him in your hands."
Setsuna's tone burned with fervent ambition.
"He is Tsunade's disciple, monstrous potential, bearing the makings of a Hokage."
His voice rose with excitement.
"If you can secure him, you could one day be the Hokage's wife. If you sit firmly in that place, then we Uchiha can step on the Senju and reach the summit, become Konoha's true masters. Then we will see who dares make us take the blame again."
His withered fingers trembled with force, sketching a blueprint that could drive the entire Uchiha into a frenzy.
Hokage's wife?
Mikoto's body went rigid, fingertips like ice.
She had long guessed she would be used for marriage, but "draw close to Ryo," "Hokage's wife" seared across her heart like red-hot brands.
Ryo, that cold, powerful boy, become his wife, control him?
The thought itself carried a forbidden, breathtaking allure.
All the more when his figure, his strength, and those intimate moments with Kushina had just been roiling through her mind.
A sudden, indescribable thrill, part theft and part shiver, shot electric down her spine.
And right on its heels came a stronger wave, the guilty pleasure of stealing and the weight of sin tangling together.
(To be continued.)