Just as you were about to take a second bite, Madara stepped forward and practically snatched the bowl from your hands.
“It’s gone cold.” He explained stiffly, a flame of Chakra igniting at his fingertips as he carefully warmed the bottom of the bowl.
You watched his focused profile, the firelight playing across his faintly furrowed brow.
Formidable Chakra control turned out to be useless for such delicate work.
Under the excessive heat, the dumplings quickly melted into a paste, blending into the red bean soup until it became a bowl of shapeless purple mush.
“Pfft—” You couldn’t help but laugh.
The tips of Madara’s ears reddened at a visible speed.
“What are you laughing at?” His tone was fierce, but his flushed ears robbed it of all menace.
Your gaze softened, drifting toward the moonlight outside the window.
“It reminded me of teaching Asuku how to make miso soup when we were kids.
He mistook the sugar for salt.”
Madara’s body went visibly rigid for a moment.
Turning back, you looked straight into his slightly widened Sharingan.
“The way you burn food…” You paused, the smile at the corner of your mouth deepening.
“It’s very human.”
Madara’s pupils contracted slightly, then he turned his face away, black hair falling to conceal his expression.
“…Sorry.”
“Why apologize?” you asked gently.
“I’m glad you thought of me.”
His Sharingan fixed on you.
“The dumplings…
weren’t leftovers from the kitchen.” He finally admitted it, every word seeming to be squeezed out from between his teeth.
“I made them.”
“I knew it.
I could tell from the scorch marks on your sleeves and the flour on your collar.”
Madara’s brow knitted even tighter, clearly displeased at being found out so easily.
But you had already picked up your spoon again, scooping up some of the paste-like red bean soup and putting it into your mouth without hesitation.
“Still sweet.” You smiled.
“A little bitter, but warm.”
Madara watched you, the sharpness in his eyes gradually dissolving.
He walked silently to the table and sat down, facing you across the bowl of ruined red bean soup.
“By the way, why did you suddenly think of making red bean dumplings?” You took another spoonful of the thick, sweet soup.
Madara’s gaze fell on the lacquered box.
“…I heard you’d be busy recently.” His tone had returned to its usual coldness.
“So this is a consolation gift from the young clan head?” you asked teasingly, wanting to see his reaction.
Sure enough, Madara’s brow furrowed again, irritation flashing through his Sharingan.
“Fine, don’t eat them, then.” He made to rise.
You quickly reached out and pressed down on his wrist.
“I was joking.”
Madara froze, looking down at your hand covering his wrist.
He didn’t pull away.
In the end, Madara slowly sat back down.
“…Next time I’ll remember to go to Renshin.” He murmured it like a promise.
“Then I’ll look forward to next time’s ‘kitchen leftovers.'”
Madara gave a soft snort, but you could clearly see the corner of his tightly pressed lips tilt up in an almost imperceptible arc.
He: «”So Hannya’s reincarnation has become entangled with its own reincarnation.”»
The first time Indra saw Hannya was at the winter gathering in the year he turned sixteen.
The lanterns of the Ninshu Sect gilded the falling snow.
Stepping over the fresh powder, he crossed the corridor and heard his father Hagoromo’s rare, delighted voice from within a room: “…At last, found.
The blood of our Ootsuki must never be allowed to drift outside.”
Through the crack of the door, he saw an unfamiliar woman kneeling below his father.
She wore a red samurai’s robe unlike any kunoichi’s, a long blade and a short one at her waist.
Her long black hair was loosely pinned with a white jade hairpin, baring the faint scar at the nape of her neck.
“Indra, come in.” Hagoromo had noticed the figure at the door.
“Meet your sister, Hannya.”
The moment the woman turned her face, Indra’s breath caught.
They were eyes unlike any he had ever seen: the right was a typical black pupil, but the left was a strange grey-white, as though veiled in a mist that would never clear.
“So this is young master Indra?” Her voice was like a blade dipped in ice water.
“Shorter than I imagined.”
Indra’s Chakra seethed through his meridians, but his father’s laughter only grew louder.
“Hannya is three years your senior, so calling her sister is only proper.
She’s just returned—you youngsters should get to know each other.”
“I have no interest in amusing children.” Hannya raised her teacup, her grey-white pupils regarding him through the rising steam.
“Especially spoiled prodigies.”
Snowflakes drifted in through the door crack and settled on Indra’s eyelashes.
He clenched his fists, noticing that the left hand holding her cup was missing the tip of its little finger.
That night’s gathering became the two most unbearable hours of Indra’s memory.
Hannya’s sharp questioning of every proposal felt like deliberate provocation, and when she suggested cutting the training budget for the younger ninja, Indra finally slapped the table.
“Cut training?
“Basic drills meant to compensate for insufficient Chakra with taijutsu should have been abolished long ago.” Hannya cut him off, an eerie red light flashing through her grey-white pupils.
“Young master Indra—haven’t you noticed that over the past three years, seven in ten of the Ootsuki who died to a White Fang short blade were pierced through the back of the neck?”
The hall fell silent.
Only then did Indra realize that the shorter blade at her waist was the White Fang model distinctive to the Kaguya clan.
“I’m tired.” Hannya rose abruptly, and as she bowed to take her leave of Hagoromo, Indra made out the shape of the scar on the back of her neck—the mark of a blade driven clean through.
The moonlight bleached the corridor white.
Indra, against his better judgment, followed her, only to be stopped at a corner by a wakizashi suddenly laid across his throat.
Hannya’s blade tip pressed precisely against his artery.
“The genius little brother has a habit of tailing people?”
“Your eyes.” Indra stared into her mismatched pupils.
“They weren’t born that way.”
A flash of steel, and a few severed strands of black hair fell past his cheek.
Hannya’s blade sang back into its sheath, clear as cracking ice.
“Next time, it’ll be your throat.”
Deep in the night, three days later, Indra came across Hannya practicing at the training ground.
Under the moonlight her movements were so fast they nearly left afterimages.
In the instant the twelve kunai flew at different targets at once, she spun and drew—every clash of metal ringing together into one long, clear note.
“Missing the little finger of your left hand slows your hand seals.” Indra stepped out from behind a tree.
“But you make up for it with your swordsmanship.”
Hannya’s katana pressed against his chest in the same instant.
“Observing me?”
Indra’s Sharingan revolved slowly.
“The sight in your right eye is failing.
That grey-white—it’s the backlash of a pupil technique, isn’t it?”
The blade edge bit through the fabric over his chest, and Hannya’s voice turned dangerous.
“Smart children die the fastest.”
“Fight me.” Indra’s fighting spirit kindled.
“No ninjutsu.
Pure taijutsu.”
…
“You lost.” Hannya’s grey-white pupils gleamed like pearl in the moonlight.
Indra coughed up a mouthful of blood, yet smiled in excitement.
“Your swordsmanship…
isn’t the style of the Ninshu Sect.”
Hannya tore a strip from her sleeve and pressed it over his wound.
“Shut up now, unless you want everyone to know that the genius boy can’t even beat a woman.”
The snow melted silently around them.
Indra suddenly seized her maimed left hand.
“Why did you come to the Ninshu Sect?”
Hannya’s hands paused for a second in their work of stitching his wound.
“Lord Hagoromo promised me a look at the forbidden scrolls.”
“You’re lying.” Indra’s Sharingan caught the faint contraction of her pupils.
“Your right eye just now—”
A blade of wind grazed his ear, and Hannya had already retreated three zhang away.
Her voice drifted back on the night wind.
“Pry into my memories again, and I’ll gouge out those pretty eyes of yours.”
The following spring equinox, Indra met Hannya again on the battlefield against the Kaguya tribe.
She wore her warrior’s robe, yet still stubbornly wielded that pair of long and short blades.
When the enemy’s ninjutsu came head-on, it was Hannya’s blade that split the killing blow.
“Left!” Her warning let Indra dodge the ambush in time—but a heartbeat later, an arrow struck Hannya in the back.
In the roaring Chakra storm, he saw Hannya fall, her bloodied fingers still forming seals.
“Idiot…
get out of here…” Hannya’s grey-white pupils mirrored the Kaguya ninja closing in behind him.
“The future…
must not end here.”
Indra’s Susanoo manifested for the first time.
As the skeletal giant’s hand cradled Hannya protectively, he heard her murmur before consciousness left her: “…the moon…
red eyes…”
The herb-scented air of the Ninshu Sect infirmary was dizzying.
Indra kept watch at Hannya’s unconscious bedside for three days and found that the grey in her right eye was spreading toward the pupil.
Late on the fourth night, Hannya suddenly seized his wrist.
“Run!”
“It’s me.” Indra gripped her icy fingers in return.
Her pupils contracted sharply, and her right eye wept tears of blood.
When Indra’s thumb brushed the corner of her eye, he was shocked to find they weren’t tears at all—but tiny crystals of ice.
“I saw it…” Hannya’s voice was soft as a sigh.
“The moon turning into a bloody eye…
everyone caught in an illusion…
don’t trust…”
Before she could finish, she sank back into unconsciousness.
When Indra undid her blood-stained inner robe to change her dressings, his breath caught in his throat.
Her back was covered in old scars, and around the newest wound, sealing formulas were faintly surfacing.
“Is this… This story is hosted at g.com.
a variant of the Reverse Four Symbols Seal?” Indra’s fingertips hovered above the wound.
“You carved a seal into your own body?
Why?”
Moonlight slanted through the window lattice onto Hannya’s maimed left hand.
Indra suddenly realized: that severed finger had a cut far too clean.
She had cut it off herself.
He pressed his ear close to Hannya’s pale lips and caught a few indistinct syllables: “…Yomotsu…
Hirasaka…”
Where the moonlight cannot reach, sin has grown rank and wild.
I will not set foot in it, not one step— this dream should be shattered into pieces.
——Warring States, Madara’s Arc: Part Two
Senju Tobirama sat alone on the wooden stairs leading to the second floor, gazing up at the nearly full moon.
The night wind stirred his snow-white hair, the strands seeming to glow faintly in the moonlight.
His brows were tightly knit, complex emotions flickering in his ruby-red eyes.
The lights in the meeting hall had long been extinguished, and most of the clan had drifted into sleep, but Tobirama felt no drowsiness at all.
In a few days came the formal negotiations with the Uchiha clan—a decision that had left him unable to rest.
His long fingers unconsciously traced the kunai at his waist, the cold touch of the metal steadying him.
“Tobirama, still not asleep?” A gentle but weary voice came from behind.
Tobirama didn’t turn.
He knew it was his elder brother.
Footsteps drew closer, and Hashirama’s tall frame loomed in the moonlight, his face graver than usual, deep exhaustion written between his brows.
“I can’t sleep.” Tobirama answered briefly, his gaze still fixed on the moon.
“The negotiations are in a few days.”
Hashirama fell silent for a moment, then slowly lowered himself onto the step beside his brother.
The wooden stairs gave a faint creak, unnaturally loud in the quiet night.
He followed Tobirama’s gaze into the sky, the moonlight casting layered shadows across his rugged features.
“Waging war forever is no solution.” Hashirama’s voice was low and hoarse, as though restraining some powerful emotion.
“Kawarama is dead.
Itama is held captive by the Uchiha.
So many of the Senju’s children have died meaningless deaths.
Round and round it goes, and the hatred never ends.”
Tobirama looked at his brother sideways.
Under the moonlight, Hashirama wore an expression heavier than any he had ever seen.
The big brother who always wore a cheerful smile now carried an unspeakable grief in his eyes.
Tobirama was startled.
He had never imagined that his optimistic brother harbored such profound thoughts.
“Brother…” Tobirama hesitated, then finally voiced his doubt.
“Our enemy is the Uchiha.
They are evil by nature, willing to twist everything for the sake of what they call love.
To make peace with them is to ask a tiger for its skin.”
“That’s not true!” Hashirama cut him off, rare agitation in his voice.
“The Uchiha’s young clan head is Madara.
He’s a good brother, honest and kind.
I’ve crossed blades with him many times—I know his character.”
Tobirama frowned, displeasure flashing through his red eyes.
“Kind?
Brother, that may only be Uchiha Madara’s outer shell.
On the battlefield, you must never underestimate any enemy!”
His tone turned harsh, plainly lecturing.
“You always trust people too easily.
One day it will cost you dearly.”
Hashirama’s fists tightened at his sides, knuckles whitening.
He took a deep breath, as if forcing down his own anger.
“Enough!
I know what I’m doing.
This is a chance for the Senju and the Uchiha.
If it can reduce the death toll, then even paying the price of submission isn’t out of the question.”
“Brother!” Tobirama shot to his feet, disbelief written all over his face.
“You actually said ‘submission’?
Since when does the Senju clan bow to the Uchiha?” His voice trembled with fury.
Hashirama rose slowly, his tall silhouette throwing a long shadow in the moonlight.
His gaze was steady, resolute—no trace of his usual hesitation.
“If submission can buy peace, I’ll gladly bear that name.
I’m tired of watching children die on the battlefield.
Tired of burying my own clansmen with my own hands.”
“You’re too naive!” Tobirama snapped.
“The Uchiha are utterly untrustworthy!
Their Sharingan is the very emblem of deceit and scheming.
The moment we show weakness, they’ll only slaughter our people more wantonly!”