Naruto Immersive Replay, The Curse of the Sharingan

A centipede crawled out of a crack in the rock. I pinched its head and tail and tore it in two. The juice stuck to my fingertips. I licked it and found it even more bitter than the spider from yesterday.

The sound of the school bell ringing in the distance signaled the end of the school term.

I lay on the edge of the cliff, watching children my age being picked up by their parents.

A little girl fell down, and her father immediately used medical ninjutsu to heal her knee, while her mother put a piece of candy in her mouth.

(So ​​magic exists in the world!)

(It can relieve pain and make the tongue taste sweet.)

I looked down at my festering sores on my feet. Two days ago, I had stepped into a cursed trap. If I cried too, would someone use magic to save me?

I tried crying.

Only the crows are laughing.

I survived, driven by my animalistic instincts and deep-seated hatred.

When I was almost six years old, I bit through the guard's throat.

The two elite Jonin didn't even have time to form hand seals. They died without understanding why a skinny little girl could unleash such ferocity.

My teeth were lodged in the second ninja's carotid artery, and warm blood flowed into his throat. That was the first full meal I could remember.

The price was permanent damage to my chakra meridians. When I staggered out of the forbidden area, my internal organs felt as if they were being pierced by a thousand needles.

But I still naively thought: Now that I'm so strong, will my father pat me on the head? Will my mother cook me a hot meal?

When I got home, my mother screamed, "Monster!" and threw me to the ground. My forehead hit the edge of the tatami mat, and warm blood blurred my right eye.

That was the first word I learned: monster.

"Why didn't you die outside?" she asked, as if my existence was a mistake made by the gods.

What greeted me was my father's Fire Release technique. The Great Fireball burned half of my hair, and the whip lashed open my newly scabbed old wounds.

I huddled in a corner of the training field, watching my father carry my younger brother past under the eaves. The little boy held three-colored dumplings in his hand, his mouth covered in icing.

“Father…” I called out hoarsely. When he turned to look at me, his eyes were like those of someone looking at a rotting corpse. “Don’t call me father, it’s a curse.”

At that moment, I truly accepted my fate, if the world deemed me a curse.

I wrote a letter in my blood.

If you don't know how to write a character, you'll wear out the dictionary at the clan school; if you can't imitate a handwriting style, you'll bite your finger and practice over and over again.

When that forged "treasonous secret letter" finally appeared on the Grand Elder's desk, I knew—my parents were doomed.

On the day of my execution, I hid on the roof beam of the ancestral hall.

The father was pinned to the ground, his back scorched by fire magic, while the mother knelt beside him, her hair disheveled.

She cried and screamed in her defense, her voice hoarse like a bird being strangled, but no one listened to her.

“Traitors deserve to die.” When the elder’s kunai pierced his father’s throat, blood splattered onto the Uchiha clan crest on the shrine.

I held my breath and watched as my mother was pierced through the chest by lightning. Her eyes were wide open, and in her last moments before dying, she looked towards the place where I was hiding.

—She saw me.

I should have been scared, but my heart was pounding. A twisted sense of exhilaration surged up my spine. I touched a wet liquid on my face, thinking it was tears, but my fingertips touched blood.

My Sharingan awakened in front of my parents' corpses.

A drop of blood fell and landed right on an elder's face. He looked up, and I couldn't help but laugh.

“It’s that bastard!” they cursed, pointing at me.

I remember every single one of their distorted faces.

After my parents died, I became the dirtiest wild child in the village.

To learn martial arts, I served as a punching bag for the elders' children. They would slash my back with shuriken, and I would count the wounds and memorize the way each move was executed.

To get enough to eat, I rummaged through garbage dumps and fought with stray dogs for food. Once, I was so hungry that I even swallowed the leftovers that others had vomited up. The sour and smelly taste made me gag, but at least my stomach felt warm.

At night, I crouched outside the window of the clan school to eavesdrop. The cold wind was biting, and I breathed on my frozen fingers to practice hand seals on the muddy ground with a twig.

"Why isn't that child dead yet?" passersby whispered among themselves.

I smiled at them, my teeth still stained with the blood from yesterday's beating.

—I cannot die.

I want to live, to live more ruthlessly than anyone else, to live stronger than anyone else.

When I was nine years old, I learned what light was for the first time.

It was a cold winter night, and I huddled in a corner outside the clan school, eavesdropping on the lessons inside as usual.

I desperately want to learn ninjutsu, I desperately want to become stronger, even just listening to it would help me hold out a little longer when I'm getting beaten up.

But that day, I was discovered.

"Who's there?"

A soft voice came from behind me. I turned around abruptly and saw a girl in a silk kimono standing in the moonlight. Her eyes were redder than the Uchiha clan crest, but she showed none of the disgust or fear that others had.

She looked at me with...sympathy in her eyes.

I hate pity.

I bared my teeth and growled at her, like a wild beast cornered and ready to pounce and tear her apart, but she just tilted her head slightly and then smiled softly.

Are you cold?

No one ever asks me if I'm cold; they just say, "Even monsters get cold?"

I didn't answer, turned and ran, disappearing into the bushes of the forbidden area, my heart pounding as if it were about to explode.

—Her eyes were like stars.

The next day, I found a bento box under the window of the clan school.

An exquisite wooden box contains steaming hot rice, grilled fish, and a plum.

I stared at it, my throat tightening.

It must be a trap.

I swallowed hard, but ultimately didn't dare touch it.

But the bento box appeared again the next day.

On the third day, the fourth day... until the tenth day, I finally couldn't take it anymore.

"If it's poisonous, it's poisonous..." I grabbed my chopsticks with trembling hands and wolfed the rice down my throat, swallowing it down with tears mixed with the rice.

It's so delicious! I never knew there were such delicious things in the world.

Later I found out that she left it there on purpose.

Her name is Uchiha Chiri.

She is the last star in my life.

Zhili always comes to see me secretly.

She taught me to read, and the first word she taught me was "love".

She held my hand and slowly wrote on the sand; the warmth of her fingertips made me tremble.

“This is ‘love’,” she said softly. “It’s a very important word.”

What is love?

—Is it like this, giving me a bento box?

—Will she smile at me like that?

But I know this is the first time... I've ever wanted to grasp something.

However, fate has never been kind to me.

That day, Chiri's father discovered our secret.

"Stay away from that monster!" he roared, slapping Chiri across the face. "She's cursed! She'll kill you!"

Zhili collapsed to the ground, blood seeping from the corner of her mouth, but she still looked up at him stubbornly.

"She's not a monster!"

My heart skipped a beat.

—This is the first time someone has spoken up for me.

—For the first time, someone...is on my side.

But the next second, I heard him say, "Fine, since you like her so much, then I'll make her... disappear completely!"

That night, I was dragged into the interrogation room.

They branded my back with hot irons, severed my tendons with kunai, and repeatedly asked me, "Did you bewitch Miss Chiri?!"

I gritted my teeth and remained silent.

—I'm not afraid of pain.

—I'm used to it.

When Uchiha Xu found me, I was gnawing on a dead crow.

Rotten flesh was stuck in my throat, and foul-smelling blood dripped down my chin. I curled up like a stray dog ​​in a tree hollow in the forbidden area.

The hawkish elder, Uchiha Xu, stared warily at the man who had suddenly appeared.

"Want to eat your fill?" He looked down at me, holding a box of delicate wagashi (Japanese sweets).

The sweet aroma filled my nostrils, and my stomach cramped as if in spasm.

I know this man is dangerous.

—But I was so hungry.

I lunged at him, snatched the snacks and ate them frantically, not even noticing that he had put a pill in my mouth. It wasn't until a sharp pain exploded in my abdomen and I curled up on the ground vomiting black blood that he slowly squatted down and grabbed my chin.

"From today onwards, you are my adopted daughter."

“I will teach you how to kill, and you…” His fingernails dug into my festering cheek, “to become the sharpest blade of the Uchiha clan.”

My vision was blurred with pain, yet I was still smiling.

Anyway, this body... has long been rotten to the core.

Uchiha Xu's "upbringing" was more deadly than the isolation of the forbidden area.

Before each meal, I was either tortured or poisoned. The training ground floor tiles were soaked with my blood. He broke my fingers and made me reattach them myself. Only when I was on the verge of death did he bestow a little medical ninjutsu upon me.

“Pain is the best teacher.” He smiled, stepping on my fractured shin. “You’ll thank me.”

I am indeed grateful to him.

—Thanks to him for making me strong enough... to finally stand by Chiri's side.

On my sixteenth birthday, I stepped into the ancestral hall wearing a black kimono embroidered with the Uchiha clan crest. The clansmen who had once called me a "bastard" bowed their heads and made way for me, even holding their breath.

—The Showa era was no longer about stray dogs.

That night, the complete Prajna Right Prime totem appeared on my right shoulder. Amidst the burning pain, I stared at the distorted demonic face in the mirror and suddenly understood the true meaning of the curse—

It wasn't the world's disgust, but rather...

When I finally became worthy of Chiri, I was already covered in filth.

On the scroll announcing the mission assigned by the nobles, the name of my partner made my fingertips tremble: it was Uchiha Chiri.

When we met again at the training ground, it was during the rainy season. She was holding a crimson paper umbrella, with tiny raindrops clinging to her eyelashes. When she bowed to me, a small patch of snow-white skin was revealed on the back of her neck.

"Nice to meet you, Showa-senpai."

—She doesn't remember me.

—That stray dog ​​that huddled under the windowsill stealing lunchboxes should have died long ago in my memory.

I lost control during the mission.

When Chiri's arm was slashed by the enemy's kunai, I ripped open the ninja's throat with my bare hands. Warm blood splattered on her face, and my ferocious smile was reflected in her terrified pupils.