Fugaku remained in the hospital room for the rest of the day.
He used the time well.
By the time Takehito returned, Fugaku had sorted most of the immediate mess in his head into something resembling a plan.
The door opened.
Takehito stepped inside.
His face looked ordinary.
Too ordinary.
Fugaku took one look at him and already knew.
"It went badly."
Takehito closed the door behind him.
"You sound pleased."
"Not pleased."
Fugaku leaned back against the bed.
"Vindicated."
His father gave him a flat look and pulled the chair over again.
"Don't enjoy it too much."
"So I was right."
Takehito sat down.
"Annoyingly."
That made Fugaku smile.
"How annoyingly?"
Takehito stared at him for a second.
"Almost word for word."
Fugaku's smile widened slightly.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then Fugaku looked at his father.
"Well."
Takehito already knew what was coming.
Fugaku's expression became more serious.
"I suppose now we have something to talk about."
"But before that, I need to show you something."
Takehito frowned.
"What?"
Fugaku looked at him steadily.
"Just... don't overreact."
That only made his father more suspicious.
"Fugaku."
"I'm serious."
Takehito muttered something under his breath, then gave a short nod.
"Fine."
Fugaku took one last moment to check his surroundings.
His sensory ability was nothing exceptional, but it was more than enough for this.
No unfamiliar chakra nearby.
No one lingering outside the room.
And this was deep inside the Uchiha compound, practically at its heart.
If there was anywhere in Konoha he could reveal this safely, it was here.
Fugaku looked back at his father.
Then his eyes changed.
The familiar red sharpened.
The tomoe twisted.
And in the next instant, a completely different pattern settled into place.
Mangekyō Sharingan.
Takehito froze.
For several seconds, he did not even speak.
Then he slowly stood from the chair.
"Fugaku..."
His voice had changed completely.
Takehito was not ecstatic.
Far from it.
Shock came first.
Then something much more serious settled over his face, deeper than anything Fugaku remembered seeing from him before.
His father's first question was immediate.
"Does anyone else know?"
"No."
"Anyone?"
"No one."
Takehito's eyes stayed fixed on his.
"When?"
"I realized something had changed the moment I woke up tonight. I checked afterward."
Fugaku let the Mangekyō remain visible.
"Sure enough."
Takehito stood and moved closer.
Then his own Sharingan activated.
He inspected Fugaku's eyes from only a short distance away, studying the pattern, the chakra around them, probably looking for anything that suggested illusion, damage, or some abnormal transformation.
Fugaku stayed still.
After a while, Takehito's Sharingan faded.
He returned to the chair and sat down heavily.
Fugaku almost smiled.
That was one way to describe the last three days.
Takehito looked at him again.
"You know what you've awakened?"
"The Mangekyō Sharingan."
A short silence.
Then Takehito nodded once.
"You will tell no one."
Fugaku's expression remained calm.
"Agreed."
"I mean no one, Fugaku."
"Not even inside the clan."
"Especially not casually inside the clan."
Fugaku understood perfectly.
The Mangekyō was too politically dangerous.
Too rare.
Too poorly understood.
And after today's conversation, Takehito had considerably more reason than before to worry about how Konoha might react if it learned that the future Uchiha patriarch had suddenly awakened something associated with Madara himself.
Hidden properly, however...
That was another matter.
Takehito seemed to reach the same conclusion.
The tension in his face slowly changed.
First caution.
Then relief.
Then something Fugaku rarely saw from him.
Pride.
Not much.
Takehito was still Takehito.
But enough.
Fugaku quietly watched the transformation.
"I don't think I've ever seen the old man make this many expressions in one minute."
He wisely kept that thought to himself.
Eventually, Takehito exhaled.
"The Mangekyō does not simply appear for no reason."
"I know."
His father's expression hardened again.
"Do you?"
Fugaku nodded.
"The clan records are incomplete, but the pattern is clear enough. Extreme emotional shock. Trauma. Something severe enough to force the Sharingan beyond its normal limits."
Takehito watched him carefully.
"So what happened to you?"
Fugaku leaned back slightly.
"Probably several things at once."
"Explain."
"First, natural talent."
Takehito stared at him.
Fugaku's mouth twitched.
"You said explain."
"I did not say praise yourself."
"I'm being thorough."
"Continue."
Fugaku did.
"I already had two tomoe. My eyes had been under strain from the training I mentioned earlier."
Conveniently invented strain, but still.
"Then at the warehouse, something hit me spiritually."
Takehito nodded slowly.
"Immediately afterward, I was struck physically."
"The punch."
"And the head impact."
Fugaku continued.
"At the same time, I was disoriented, humiliated, confused, and completely unable to understand what was happening to me."
That part required no acting.
He remembered it perfectly.
"Then I remained unconscious for three days while whatever happened to my spiritual state settled."
Takehito's eyes narrowed.
Fugaku spread one hand slightly.
"So maybe there wasn't one trigger."
"A combination."
"Exactly."
He counted them off.
"Prior strain. Spiritual intrusion. Physical trauma. Emotional shock. Then three days of abnormal chakra circulation."
Fugaku smiled faintly.
"A rather ugly combination."
Takehito said nothing for several seconds.
Then he looked at Fugaku's eyes again.
"It is possible."
Not certain. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
Not comfortable.
But possible.
Fugaku had expected that.
There was enough truth inside the explanation to make it difficult to dismiss.
Takehito had already seen the abnormal chakra fluctuations himself.
He already believed some kind of spiritual interference had occurred.
The physical trauma was documented.
And everyone involved knew Fugaku had suffered his first genuinely humiliating defeat in front of his own men.
For an Uchiha, that was plenty of emotional fuel.
A collection of individually understandable factors producing one absurd result.
Takehito leaned back.
"I have never heard of the Mangekyō awakening this way."
"How many awakenings have you personally observed?"
Takehito gave him a look.
"None."
"Then we're both learning."
His father almost frowned.
Almost.
Fugaku let the Mangekyō fade.
Internally, he felt satisfied.
The explanation was stretched.
But not much.
In fact, barring the buried previous life and the strange spiritual connection that had broken open during the attack, it was basically true.
Something had struck his soul.
His body had been injured.
His emotions had been thrown into chaos.
His spiritual state had transformed over three days.
And somewhere inside that process, the Mangekyō had appeared.
Takehito did not need the part involving Earth. Nobody did.
Fugaku now also realized the Mangekyō gave him something else.
A perfect explanation for why he seemed different all of a sudden, on top of the previous attack.
The Uchiha reputation for personality extremes and volatility was not entirely a stereotype.
There was a real reason behind it.
The Sharingan itself was tied to spiritual power, emotion, and the clan's ancient Ōtsutsuki inheritance expressing itself through mortal bodies.
And the Mangekyō was the strongest normal manifestation of that entire process.
If anything, it would have been stranger if awakening it left Fugaku's temperament completely unchanged.
More intensity.
Sharper reactions.
Different priorities.
A colder or more decisive outlook after extreme trauma.
None of that would look particularly suspicious to Takehito now.
Convenient.
As for the memories of his previous life, Fugaku never had the intention of sharing those.
Not because he distrusted his father.
Quite the opposite.
He trusted Takehito more than anyone else alive.
That was precisely why he did not want to burden him with information that dangerous.
The moment another person knew, control over the secret was no longer entirely Fugaku's.
What if Takehito was captured one day?
What if a Yamanaka searched his memories?
What if Root had some method Fugaku did not know about?
His father was powerful, somewhere around quasi Kage level, but "powerful" was not the same as untouchable.
And he was already nearing the age where experience would increasingly have a harder time compensating for a body that was no longer improving.
There was another problem too.
Belief.
Best case, Takehito might simply think Fugaku had gone insane after the coma.
Worst case, he might wonder whether the person in front of him was really his son at all.
Possession was hardly an absurd fear in a world where souls, mind transfer, sealing, and spiritual techniques genuinely existed.
Yet even here, Fugaku knew of no real precedent for what had happened to him.
A soul from another world buried in another.
A previous life.
Memories of this world existing as fiction somewhere else.
Nothing remotely clean enough to explain without sounding impossible.
So for now, the truth stayed with him.
Takehito could know that Fugaku had changed.
He could know that the Mangekyō had awakened.
He could even know that the warehouse incident had altered him deeply.
That was enough.
The rest was his problem to carry.
Fugaku let the silence settle for a moment.
Then he continued.
"This whole experience made me think about a lot of things differently."
Takehito watched him.
"Myself. The clan. Our history. Where we stand in Konoha now."
Fugaku's expression sharpened slightly.
"And where we'll stand in ten or twenty years if nothing changes."