94. Tragedy Is the Fate of the Uchiha

In the Hokage’s office, Sarutobi Hiruzen sat staring at Orochimaru, the piles of official documents set aside on either hand, his expression grave.

“Leaving the village without a word and dumping such a mess behind you, Orochimaru, you do know how to make life easy for yourself.”

The complaint in his tone was obvious. Orochimaru merely smiled, unbothered.

“Old man, this wasn’t my doing.”

Hiruzen’s gaze sharpened. “Human experiments on the Uchiha? You expect me to believe that wasn’t your doing?”

“If a pair of fools says it, so be it. But for you to repeat the same line, old man... that disappoints me a little.”

Orochimaru licked his lips and chuckled.

“Without certainty, I would not lightly operate on the Uchiha. After all... I still have no intention of leaving the village. Especially not by force.”

The words were veiled, but Hiruzen understood at once.

You may not believe in my morals, but you should trust my methods. If I do not wish to leave the village, then I will not give others the chance to set me up in the dark.

Hiruzen let out a long sigh inwardly. His feelings were tangled, and though he looked at his disciple before him, he said nothing in denial.

“And besides,” Orochimaru continued, “shouldn’t you be paying closer attention to Danzo?”

A thin, cold smile touched his mouth.

“I had only just left for less than a day, and Danzo already knew about it. The surgery room was inside the Uchiha compound. Is it that the Uchiha’s Sharingan are too worthless, or is Danzo paying far too much attention to the Uchiha?”

It was indeed a question worth asking, but Hiruzen was not here to discuss that. He fixed his gaze on Orochimaru.

“What happened to Uchiha Shinsuke’s eyes?”

Orochimaru raised an eyebrow, pulled a chair over from the side, and sat down. Then he turned his attention toward the shadows in the Hokage’s office.

Seeing this, Hiruzen gave the shadows a slight shake of the head as well.

A rustle of cloth.

The ANBU ninja hidden there understood at once, poured Orochimaru a cup of tea, and silently withdrew from the office.

Orochimaru took a sip.

“Old man, I assume you’ve read Second’s research on the Sharingan.”

Hiruzen said nothing.

It was not only he who had read it. Mitokado Homura, Utatane Koharu, Danzo... even Uchiha Kagami had seen that material.

For the Uchiha clan, it was a well-known truth that the stronger the emotional turmoil, the greater the ocular power of the Sharingan.

And for the Uchiha, the emotion that had the greatest impact was not love, but hatred—hatred that ran deep into the marrow.

After all, love is accumulated in the countless small moments of daily life, while hatred is compressed into a single instant of one’s existence.

The awakening of the Sharingan, the awakening of the Mangekyo Sharingan... the lives of the Uchiha strong seemed like tragedies, as though the joys amassed in the first half of life were only there to make the moment of tearing all the more violent.

And those Uchiha who underwent great upheavals in life almost always found their personalities sliding toward the extreme.

In other words, the Uchiha were bombs fueled by happiness. The more complete and content their lives appeared, the more one had to watch for the force of the explosion when it came.

Even if Hiruzen himself bore no prejudice against the Uchiha, he could not help but guard against them in his heart.

Or rather, prejudice existed because it was born of reality. The two Hokage advisers, Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu, merely made no effort to hide it.

Compared with ordinary Uchiha, Shisui was instead an outlier within the clan.

“Second’s talent was indeed admirable. I regret that I never had the chance to work beside such an outstanding shinobi.”

Rarely, there was a trace of wistfulness in Orochimaru’s tone. Soon, however, he gathered his emotions and smiled.

“Still, Second’s research into the Uchiha remained limited, and carried a somewhat unnecessary romanticism.”

Hiruzen frowned. “What are you trying to say?”

He was not angered by any questioning of his teacher, for the one doing it was his disciple—his finest disciple.

“Emotions, love... such descriptions are too sentimental. To rely on something so vague to explain things... is rather lacking in rigor.”

Orochimaru lifted a finger and tapped his own brow.

“Second’s line of reasoning was not wrong, but he overlooked one thing: matter comes first. The Uchiha’s awakening causes irreversible changes to the brain, to the nerves...”

“And those changes are the very reason most of them drift toward the extreme.”

“What I said before was not wrong. The Uchiha, especially the strong among them, have something wrong with their heads.”

“......”

After a brief silence, the Third Hokage picked up the pipe on the desk and took a deep drag.

Smoke curled upward, drifting through the air, yet it could not conceal the shock in his eyes.

Though Orochimaru was speaking only in theory, without producing the rigorous proof that Tobirama had once provided, Hiruzen almost immediately believed him.

Because this was, in essence, an extension of Second’s theory—and because it also explained the abnormalities in Shisui’s line.

A long time ago, Hiruzen had noticed that both Kagami, his former comrade, and now Shisui, possessed a devotion to the village and a love for it that felt somehow unnatural, almost to the point of seeming performed.

To explain it as an illness... perhaps that was the only reasonable interpretation. Though emotionally, Hiruzen did not want to accept it.

Exhaling a long stream of smoke, Hiruzen slowly said, “You mean to say the Uchiha have tumors in their brains, or some kind of mental disorder...”

He knew a little about such illnesses. They were common among shinobi who had been interrogated by the intelligence division: their brains suffered irreversible damage and distortion.

“Old man, not mental illness, and their brains have not suffered any damage either...”

Orochimaru paused.

“If anything, it should be called a psychiatric condition. Something has gone wrong with the mind’s cognition, emotion, will, and behavior.”

Hiruzen took another drag and waited for the rest.

“For example, Jiraiya...”

Orochimaru glanced at the door, and an odd smile suddenly appeared on his face.

“He’s lewd. Abnormally so.”

“......”

Hiruzen’s face remained blank, speechless.

“But you and I both know that Jiraiya’s lechery did not develop overnight.”

Orochimaru said this with utter seriousness.

“It accumulated bit by bit—when he was peeping into the women’s bath, when he stole Tsunade’s clothes, when he ogled everything around him with those lecherous eyes...”

Hiruzen: (·_·)

To be honest, it was a little embarrassing, but as the saying goes, if the upper beam is crooked, the lower beams will twist as well. He had nothing particularly good to say about Jiraiya either.

“But if you compress all those years, all that accumulation, into a single instant...”

Orochimaru’s expression turned solemn, making it clear that he was not joking, but speaking of a serious scientific matter.

“From a proper gentleman to a lecherous rogue, the change in the Uchiha occurs at the instant their eyes awaken. Whatever emotion they feel at the moment of awakening, that is the emotion they will come to crave.”

“Just like Jiraiya now: his lewdness is no longer merely a matter of personal will. His body, his brain... all of it has already been branded with such thoughts...”

Creak.

The door to the Hokage’s office opened, and Jiraiya stormed in, furious.

“That was excellent. Don’t say it again.”