"You do realize Kamiyama Ryo is Uzumaki Kushina's lover, right? You want me to cut in as the third party? What does that make me? Kushina is my best friend!"
Her eyes rimmed red, both hands clutching the front of her kimono, her body trembling.
The guilt toward her friend she had forced down, and the fear of her own ambition, surged back up. In Uchiha Setsuna's clouded old eyes flashed the look of someone unsurprised, mocking and impatient, as if at a child who did not understand the world.
He stepped closer. His voice dropped to a hiss, cold as a snake's tongue slipping into the ear: "Friend? Best friend? Hah." A contemptuous snort rumbled from his nose.
"Mikoto, put away that pointless sympathy. Use the mind I have honed in you and see reality." A glint shot through the murk of his eyes. "That best friend of yours, Uzumaki Kushina," he enunciated each word like a blade, "she is the future Nine-Tails jinchūriki in waiting. That is her essence."
"What?!" Mikoto's pupils shrank. It felt like a bucket of ice water dumped over her head. The shock wrenched a soundless cry from her.
Konoha's jinchūriki? That carefree, big-hearted Kushina she knew, a vessel for the Nine-Tailed Fox?
Watching his granddaughter blanch, Setsuna spoke with cruel certainty:
"This is top secret, but an iron rule the leadership accepts. The Nine-Tails jinchūriki is the village's greatest weapon and deterrent. And that means she is a caged canary. She will never be free. Her existence is to seal the Nine-Tails. When the next jinchūriki is of age, the beast is transferred to the new container. And her? Hah. Best case, she fades away in some hidden corner. Worst, she dies on some dark operating table, or gets drained as a sacrifice."
Setsuna's words stabbed like poisoned ice awls into Mikoto's heart.
"See it now? The Konoha leadership will never allow someone like her to marry, much less to conceive."
His tone hammered at the core obstacle, cold with worldly certainty. "Childbirth by a jinchūriki could bring disaster on Konoha. She and Ryo were never destined to end well. That is a fixed reality."
"And," he pivoted, deliberately coaxing, "as a jinchūriki, she can never leave the village's cage. You, better than anyone, should know what that means."
Mikoto felt the strength drain out of her. She staggered half a step back, her spine striking the cold paper lattice with a dull thud.
Jinchūriki, caged, operating table, destined tragedy, no freedom.
The words whirled and sliced through her mind.
Her earlier worry that Ryo might leave after graduation, the small, childish fear of losing him, felt laughably naïve.
Kushina's future was dyed in primordial black.
Her laughter and sweetness with Ryo now looked like poison flowers blooming on the edge of an abyss, brief and fatal.
Setsuna's tone softened at just the right moment, the practiced whisper of a schemer certain of his investment, a devil's murmur threading Mikoto's turmoil:
"And Ryo? You have seen his power, his potential with your own eyes. A terror that swept half of Konoha. He will surely leave the cage that holds the jinchūriki and soar like an eagle. Under Tsunade's lead, he is destined for the bloodiest battlefields."
A cold arc tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Mikoto, that is your opportunity."
"Now, think carefully about the road I have paved for you since childhood." He pinned her with a look, savoring his long game. "Kushina will be locked in the village as the new Nine-Tails jinchūriki. And I had you work your way close to her, into her circle. Did you truly think it was just to keep up appearances between Uchiha and Uzumaki? Childish."
"Look now, you are about to be a formal teammate of Kamiyama Ryo." He stepped in, energized. "Field hospital and front lines, those will become the perfect stage to apply what you have learned."
"Remember? I hired the finest bridal tutors for you since you were small, spent blood and breath honing your strategy, bearing, and speech. I taught you how to read faces, steer emotions, grasp a man's weaknesses. I even allowed you to use those means to help your best friend Kushina get closer to Ryo. You thought it was some girlish game of friendship?"
His voice lowered, thick with wicked allure.
"No. Every so-called strategy you taught Kushina, every contact with Ryo under the banner of helping her, each was practice. Each sharpened the blade named bridal training forged for you. Each was rehearsal for the final moment, when fate itself clears the obstacle named Kushina, so you can slip in seamlessly and take the opening."
"Picture it. When Ryo is out bleeding on the field, you are the one by his side with tactical support and solace. When he is loneliest and most dejected, you, the comrade who understands him best, whom he trusts most, are there to listen, to stay."
Fervor lit Setsuna's eyes.
"With my granddaughter's wit, and these years of hammer-and-anvil bridal training, that powerful man will fall wholly into your hand. That is the road to lift Uchiha's glory to Konoha's peak."
"In the future, you will stand upon this land and look down upon the Hokage's shadow."
"Mikoto, remember this. Power is a woman's tonic, and it is a great tonic."
"Grandfather would never harm you."
Hokage's wife.
The words became a real crown, cold and heavy, yet dazzling to the point of vertigo.
Power is a woman's tonic. A great tonic. Setsuna's words dropped into the dead water of her heart like stones. Wicked ripples spread outward, no longer merely furtive delight, but poison mixed with honey, steeped in the reek of betrayal and the greed to possess.
Thump. Thump.
Mikoto could hear her own heart pounding, dense drumbeats against fragile ribs.
A scalding torrent named ambition smashed the dikes named friendship and guilt in an instant.
Hokage's wife. Uchiha's glory. Master of the village to come. One beneath ten thousand above.
The words gathered into an irresistible flood, grinding Kushina's face, stamped now with doomed tragedy, beneath its weight.
The brutal essence of that bridal training flared in her mind.
It had never been about the romance of first love strategies. It was power politics at its coldest.
She was a weapon, honed to breach the target man.
Setsuna's aim was always sharp and cold, use her as the tether to bind a boundless talent with Hokage's potential, Ryo, and drag Uchiha back to Konoha's core, washing away decades of exclusion.
The insight, feigned gentleness, and mastery of hearts she had learned were blades serving this bargain.
Duty? Belonging?
Absurdity yawned before her.
Her value, in the end, was a stepping stone for the clan's return to power, a more ornate chess piece.
To be taught love only to steal more efficiently, to take.
Kushina's naïve, proud face and Ryo's indulgent downward gaze ripped back and forth in her mind. Her best friend's unreserved trust and the surging betrayal within her twined like two venomous snakes, tearing her spirit ragged.
Her nails bit deeper into her palm. Sharp pain tamped the turmoil.
She lowered her lashes. The dark fringe cast deep shadows across her pale cheeks, hiding the storm and leaving only heavy fatigue and a helpless struggle.
"…I will think about it."
The five words scraped out between her teeth, draining her strength.
Was it surrender, delay, or the reflex buffer of someone torn by pressure and temptation?
Setsuna caught it, the wavering spark deep in her eyes, guttering then flaring again, now tinged with a new certainty in her capability.
A subtle satisfaction flickered in his murky gaze. Enough.
The seed had been planted. Press further and he would spoil it.
His old eyes eased, like a wily fox catching the scent of prey stepping into a snare.
"Good, good, Mikoto." He reined in his force and resumed the solemn elder's tone, even with a faint, nearly soothing note. "Grandfather will not force you. Think it over."
"As for Fugaku?" Setsuna snorted.
"In time, I will see him kept away from you. I, Uchiha Setsuna, do not need a weak grandson-in-law. He is unworthy."
He gave Mikoto a long, loaded look, then turned and strode down the corridor, leaving the weight of choice on the shoulders of a girl whose heart was a snarl, and whose ambition now burned bright.
His figure vanished past the door. The air held only a musty scent, rotted wood mixed with naked ambition.
A few days later, news of Tsunade's return spread through Konoha.
Morning mist clung low. The Uchiha compound remained deathly still.
Heavy wooden fences sliced the grey light into bars, like a cage's ribs.
Mikoto drew a deep breath. The cold stung her lungs. Setsuna's poison hummed through her veins. The mantra of bridal training echoed like a spell. The specter of Hokage's wife burned against her eyelids.
She straightened her back. The first step toward Konoha's power center had to be clean.
Creak—
A familiar face squeezed out of the shadow by the gate.
Fugaku rolled his sleeves and forced what he thought was a tender smile. "Mikoto, shall we—"
Before he finished, Mikoto swept past in long, decisive strides.
Her fingers clenched and opened inside her sleeve, steady, no tremor.
She stamped to a halt, pivoted. Sunlight lit half her face at last.
Her step paused for only a heartbeat.
No hesitation. No preface.
Just as Fugaku arranged his habitual smile and opened his mouth for the same tired lines, Mikoto slipped in like a cold wind, closing to a single pace before him.
Too close, close enough that Fugaku could see the permafrost compacted deep in her dark pupils.
Instinct prickled. Something was wrong. His smile froze. His Adam's apple bobbed.
Mikoto spoke in a tone deliberately calibrated, a noblewoman's cool clarity bestowed by her bridal training, her pace even and crisp, not a ripple in her voice, yet striking like a judge's anvil:
"Fugaku-kun."
She even shifted to the most distant honorific.
"Thank you for your past regard and feelings. But—"
She lifted her face and met his startled eyes. Each word precise to coldness, like a wintry gust nailing him in place: "You are a good man."
Fugaku's expression locked, a plaster mask flash-frozen on his face.
"We," Mikoto paused deliberately. Her gaze swept over his face as if appraising a trivial, flawed item. "Are completely incompatible."
The words fell like ice.
She did not wait for any response.
Before his expression could fully collapse into shock and humiliation, she turned on her heel. Her black ponytail drew an arc in the air without a hint of reluctance, slicing past his slack mouth.
Something snapped in that instant, restraint, endurance, the disgust for clan-arranged marriage.
The sheer pleasure of rejection roared up like lava, searing her insides.
That furtive unwillingness born from Kushina was swallowed by the flame of exhilaration.
This, too, was in the curriculum, when a target's value is insufficient, the most dignified, yet most lethal farewell.
She could almost hear Fugaku's shocked gasp behind her.
Her steps quickened. Wooden clogs tapped the stone, tak, tak, tak, crisp beats shattering ten years of forced gentleness.
The shadow of the Uchiha estate reeled back. The leaden lump in her gut peeled away.
The street to the Hokage Building unfurled ahead. At its end stood the eagle fated to fly, and the light fated not to belong only to her best friend. She strode away without looking back.
Wind teased the wisps over her brow.
Her pace was steady and swift along the gravel-strewn path. She left the gates without a backward glance, leaving Uchiha Fugaku frozen in place, ears ringing with that cold, knife-edged "You are a good man," and the lingering trace of her sharper, prouder aura.
Sunlight slanted across his vacant face.
"Didn't she call me Fugaku-nii just the other day…?"
His baffled mutter drifted after her, as if through a thick wall of water.
At the corner of Mikoto's lips, the curve of satisfaction widened, silently.
(To be continued.)
Check out my new fic: Naruto: Reborn as a Daimyo
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