Chapter 6 – The Morning Without a Name
"Regret is not a punishment. It's a mirror — showing us what we could have been."
The dawn was cold.
Sasuke woke to the sound of rain dripping through the cracks in the roof.The fire had long died out, leaving only a faint warmth on the stones. His body ached, his thoughts were heavy — blurred by exhaustion and fragments of a night that refused to fade.
He sat up slowly.
The first thing he saw was the light.The second… was Karin.
She was asleep beside him, wrapped in her cloak, her red hair spread like blood over the old tatami. One shoulder lay bare under the fabric, pale against the dull morning light.
Sasuke froze.
For a moment, his mind refused to move. Then, like shards of glass, the memories returned — the rain, the silence, the trembling hands, the kiss that had lasted too long.
He looked away.
It wasn't desire that filled him. It was weight.The kind that presses on the chest until you can't breathe.
Karin stirred in her sleep, unaware. Her breathing was calm, almost peaceful — as if for her, the night had been a fragile reprieve. For him, it was a wound reopening.
He stood.
Every step he took sounded louder than it should have. The floor creaked like a protest. He found his shirt, his sword, his bag — the routine of a man running from the noise inside his own head.
He looked back once.
She was still there, fragile, human.He wanted to say something — to apologize, to explain — but no words would come. Words were meaningless here.
He left the inn.
Outside, the rain had turned to mist.Each breath felt heavy, each drop like a reminder.
He walked until the building disappeared behind him, swallowed by fog and distance.
By midday, he stopped near a ruined bridge.The river beneath it was swollen, wild. He watched the current tear away branches, stones, fragments of what once stood still.
He saw himself in it —a man carried away by everything he tried to escape.
His reflection trembled in the water.
Karin's face.Then Sakura's.
He remembered her voice in the rain, pleading: "You don't have to do this alone."He had walked away, thinking solitude was redemption.But now… he wondered if his loneliness only birthed new sins.
What would Sakura think if she knew?Would her eyes break the way they once did, that night under the rain?
He clenched his fist.
The wind rose, scattering the mist like ghosts dispersing. He closed his eyes and whispered to no one:
"I'm still the same."
And the river carried the words away.