The shot was taken.
I sucked in a rattling breath, my tiny lungs burning with the effort. My entire being, a ridiculous fusion of adult spite and infant physiology, focused on one singular, monumental task: forming a word. I puckered my lips, pushed air past vocal cords that were used to little more than gurgling, and forced out the sound.
"To-wa."
It was pathetic. A wet, garbled mess of a word. It sounded less like 'Tiger' and more like I was trying to yodel after being underwater for ten minutes. To any normal person, it would have been dismissed as meaningless baby babble.
But Shisui was not a normal person. He was a prodigy. A genius. A shinobi trained to notice the details others missed.
His hand, which had been a blur of motion just a second before, froze mid-air. The fluid grace vanished. He became a statue, every muscle locked tight. For a full three seconds, he didn't move. He didn't even seem to breathe. Then, with a slowness that was utterly terrifying, he turned his head and looked at me.
His eyes. Reader-san, I've seen those eyes on a screen a hundred times, but I'm telling you now, the anime does not do them justice. They weren't just the eyes of an eight-year-old boy. They were ancient, perceptive, and right now, they were wide with a specific brand of shock that screamed, 'My brain has encountered a critical error and needs to be rebooted.'
He stared at me, his gaze so intense it felt like a physical weight. I could see the gears turning behind his eyes, his brilliant mind racing, trying to process the impossible. Coincidence? A random sound that just happened to sound like the word for the seal I just formed? The statistical probability is… low. Very low.
I stared back, trying to project an aura of profound, mystical baby wisdom and not, you know, the frantic internal monologue of a guy who just gambled his entire future on a single, poorly pronounced word.
Slowly, deliberately, Shisui lowered his hands. He took a quiet step closer to the crib, his movements silent and measured. He was approaching me like one might approach a newly discovered, potentially explosive tag. He knelt down, bringing himself level with me. His face was a mask of unnerving calm, but his knuckles were white where he gripped the wooden bars of my crib.
He raised his right hand again. His fingers moved, not with the lazy grace of practice, but with a sharp, precise deliberation. He formed a new seal. Ram. Hitsuji.
He held it there. He didn't speak. He didn't have to. The challenge was clear. The test was issued. Prove it. Prove you're not a fluke.
My tiny heart hammered against my ribs. This was it. The point of no return. I had to play this perfectly. I couldn't be too good—that would be monstrous. But I couldn't fail—that would be disastrous. I needed to be a prodigy, not a demon.
I let my baby-gaze drift down to his hand. I gurgled. I even drooled a little for good measure. It's all about the performance, you see. I was method acting my way through infancy.
Then, I looked back up, meeting his intense stare. I took another rattling breath.
"Hee-su-ji."
The word came out clearer this time. Less garbled. Utterly unmistakable.
The reaction was instantaneous. Shisui flinched back as if he'd been physically struck. The calm mask shattered, and for a fleeting moment, all I saw was a terrified eight-year-old boy. He scrambled to his feet, his eyes darting around the room as if expecting enemy shinobi to burst through the walls. He looked at the door, his posture screaming with the instinct to run, to tell someone, an adult, the Hokage, anyone.
But he stopped himself. The prodigy took over again. The shinobi who understood the value—and the danger—of a secret. His breathing was ragged, but he forced it under control. He pressed a hand against the wall to steady himself.
My mother's infidelity was a clan secret, a matter of shame. This? This was a village-level secret. A world-level secret. A baby who could not only speak, but could identify hand seals? In the Uchiha clan, a place where genius was coveted and power was everything, I wasn't just an anomaly. I was a weapon. A prize. A target.
Shisui knew that. In that single, horrifying moment of understanding, the weight on his shoulders multiplied tenfold. The clan, the village, the coup he was already trying to stop... all of it was now secondary to the new, impossible secret lying in a crib and currently trying to chew on its own foot.
He walked back to my crib, his steps heavy with a burden no child should ever have to carry. The look in his eyes had changed completely. The brotherly affection, the weary duty—it was all gone. Replaced by something far more complex. It was a cocktail of fear, awe, and a grim, terrifying resolve.
He was no longer looking at his baby brother. He was looking at his life's most dangerous mission.
He reached a hand through the bars, not to pat my head or soothe me, but to rest his fingers on my forehead, as if checking for a fever, for some logical, physical explanation for the insanity he had just witnessed. His hand was trembling.
He leaned in close, his voice a ghost of a whisper, a question not meant for me, but for the universe itself.
"What are you?"