Chapter 4: In Which My Babysitter is a Paranoid Child Soldier and Education is Hell
"What are you?"
The question hung in the air, heavy and sharp. It was the sound of an eight-year-old's entire worldview being ripped to shreds. My response, I knew, was critical. I couldn't answer with words, obviously. That would probably give the poor kid a fatal aneurysm, and my primary goal here was to keep him alive.
So, I did the only thing I could. I looked him dead in the eye, summoned every ounce of non-verbal communication my pudgy, useless body could manage, and tried to convey a single, complex message: I'm on your side, you magnificent, death-flag-riddled bastard.
Then I reached out my tiny, starfish-like hand and booped him on the nose.
It was a stupid move. A desperate, infantile gamble. But it was the most human thing I could think of.
Shisui froze, his hand still on my forehead. His eyes, which had been swirling with fear and suspicion, blinked. The tension in his shoulders lessened by a fraction. The boop, it seemed, had short-circuited his shinobi training. You can't exactly perceive a nose-boop as a threat. It's not in the Academy curriculum.
He slowly pulled his hand back, his expression unreadable. He didn't run. He didn't scream. He just stood there for a long moment, the prodigy, the genius, processing this new, impossible variable. Then he did something that told me everything I needed to know. He reached over, pulled the blanket up to my chin, and turned to leave the room. Before he closed the door, he looked back at me one last time in the dim light.
"This is a secret," he said, his voice no longer a whisper, but a quiet, firm command. "Our secret."
And just like that, I wasn't just his brother anymore. I was his mission. His burden. His secret weapon. My gamble had paid off. I had my teacher.
I had also, I would soon learn, acquired the most terrifying, paranoid, and intense babysitter in the history of the elemental nations.
My education began the very next day. And it was hell.
Shisui's method for dealing with his newly discovered super-genius baby brother was to treat me like a high-value asset that needed to be brought up to speed as quickly and secretly as possible. My life became a covert-ops training program disguised as a nursery.
Our mother, Natsuki, would leave for the market, and the transformation was immediate. The moment the front door clicked shut, Shisui would be at my crib-side. The warm, dutiful brother would vanish, replaced by Drill Sergeant Uchiha.
"Lesson one," he'd say, his voice flat, holding up a wooden block with a symbol carved into it. "This is 'Ka'. Fire. The element of our clan. The source of our power and our pride."
Yeah, I know, kid, I wanted to say. I could teach you a few things about it. Ever heard of Amaterasu? It's great for when you want to set something on fire and keep it on fire for, oh, about a week.
But I couldn't. So I just gurgled and pointed.
My days were relentless. Mornings were language arts. Shisui, with the patience of a saint and the intensity of a torturer, would drill me on hiragana, katakana, and basic kanji, using flashcards he'd made himself. He'd disguise it as a game if our mother was nearby, but the look in his eyes said, 'Memorize this or we are both going to die.'
Afternoons were physical conditioning. This mostly consisted of what Shisui called "chakra control exercises." To me, it was "humiliating baby yoga." He'd place a single leaf on my forehead and instruct me, through gestures and simple words, to channel my chakra to make it stick.
Reader-san, have you ever tried to consciously control a metaphysical energy network while you still have the motor skills of a drunken potato? The leaf would fall off. I'd try again. It would fall off. I'd focus so hard I'd accidentally fill my diaper. It was a vicious cycle.
"Focus, Raikou," Shisui would murmur, his brow furrowed in concentration. "Feel the energy. It is a part of you. Command it."
I'm trying, you little tyrant! My chakra coils are the size of angel-hair pasta and I haven't even had solid food yet! Cut me some slack!
The worst part was the paranoia. Shisui was meticulous. Any training materials—the flashcards, the blocks, the leaves—vanished without a trace before our mother returned. He taught me a specific hand signal—a closed fist over the heart—that meant "abort mission, act like a dumb baby."
One time, we were in the middle of a particularly intense leaf-sticking session when we heard the front gate creak. Shisui's head snapped up. He made the signal. Instantly, I went from a frowning, concentrating prodigy to a gurgling, drooling idiot. I flopped onto my back and started chewing on my toes, which I'm pretty sure is peak dumb-baby behavior.
Shisui, in the span of a single second, had gathered the leaves, tossed them into the fireplace, and was sitting calmly in a chair reading a scroll when Natsuki walked in. The casualness was terrifying. He was eight years old and already a master of espionage.
"Oh, you two are being so quiet," she said with a warm smile.
Shisui looked up from his scroll. "Raikou was just sleeping."
I let out a perfectly timed baby-fart to sell the story. I was a method actor, after all.
My progress, despite the absurdity of it all, was rapid. By age two, I had a vocabulary Shisui and I could use, a series of simple words and gestures that formed our own secret language. I could read basic sentences. And I could finally, finally, stick that stupid leaf to my forehead for a full ten seconds.
I had him. My plan was working. But as I grew more aware, I started noticing things. I saw the exhaustion behind Shisui's eyes. I saw how his smiles never quite reached them when he came home from missions with his genin team. I saw the tension in his shoulders whenever a member of the Konoha Military Police Force—our clan's police force—stopped by to talk.
He was my warden, my teacher, my protector. But who, I began to wonder, was protecting him?