"A pupil technique…"
Sensing it, Uchiha Sogetsu lowered his gaze to the back of his hand—there, a faint purple sigil had appeared.
"Your body and mind, your chakra, your memories, your senses…" The girl's Mangekyō glowed with cold hate. "I'll take them bit by bit, make you taste the worst pain in this world—the way you treated me back then!"
One second… two… three…
Nothing happened.
The confidence in her face faltered, then twisted. "Why… why can't I control you?"
Under the blood-red moon of the Tsukuyomi space, Sogetsu's voice stayed calm. "Question: knowing you can bend wills, why do you think I came close on purpose?"
"You… were steering my emotions?" She froze. Only now, replaying every moment, did she catch the off-notes—the needles in his words, tone, rhythm—anger fanned until it drowned judgment.
Sogetsu pushed his glasses up, a mild smile at the corner of his mouth. "I'm a psychologist. I don't have their overwhelming force, so I use small tricks. From the start I was scrambling your heart, then letting the Spectator path do its thing—nudges in language, movement, eye contact. Your choices felt like yours. They were tilted."
He flicked a glance toward Tsunade, staggering and blood-eyed in the burning grove. "Release her. Then we talk."
"In your dreams!" the girl snapped. "So you slipped one net. You're still in my Tsukuyomi—the result isn't settled!"
Sogetsu sighed. "I already said the fight is over."
He drew a thin talisman from his inner lining and snapped it.
Sssht—
The charm burned sound, not flame: a filthy, razor-edged keening with too many angles for ears to hold.
"W-what is that?!" The girl clutched her head. Veins knotted under her skin; blood-tears lined her lashes. The shriek bored through the mind like a red-hot wire and stirred.
"You mean this?" Sogetsu let the talisman dangle between two fingers. "Foul Whispers. Think of it as a rant from a very old, very mad… rap master."
Cracks laced the scarlet sky. The Tsukuyomi shattered like a dropped mirror.
Back in the scorched forest—charred trunks, heat shimmer—Sogetsu let the dead talisman fall. "Now can we talk?"
"You know… do you know what it is to stay in darkness forever?" The nameless Uchiha girl's face twisted with pain and hate. "Don't you look at me with pity! You don't understand me at all!"
Sogetsu's pupils deepened like ripples in a still pond.
Hypnosis.
Her Mangekyō stuttered; focus blurred. Sogetsu stepped through the open door of her mind's island and dove into the black sea beyond.
Memory hit in unvarnished flashes:
No parents. No friends.
Orders given by cold Sharingan—"You are a tool."
Battlefields alone, win after win wrung from her eyes.
The final "reward": a seal, stone walls, dark without end.
It wasn't only hatred that ate her. It was solitude that rots.
When he surfaced, his brow was tight.
As Tobirama judged: the Uchiha love too fiercely; when that love dies, hatred replaces it—stronger, blinder, inevitable. She was a page torn clean from that rule.
"I lost," the girl said flatly. "Seal me. Or… kill me."
At kill, a ripple passed through her eyes—surrender wearing the mask of a wish.
Sogetsu took off his glasses. "Nameless Uchiha… do you believe our meeting has meaning?"
His gaze held—not pity, but steadiness that anchors.
Something shook inside her.
"I think people meet by design," Sogetsu said. He stepped close, lifting a stray lock from her cheek with gloved fingers. "Call it fate's nudge, if you like."
AUTHOR'S NOTE — BONUS & EARLY ACCESS
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