The wind rushed past his ears, a roaring Matsukaze that drowned out the world. It was the only sound he allowed.
The air pressure popped in his ears—pop-hiss—a physiological rhythm keeping time with his desperate escape.
Konoha was a smudge of light behind him, a warm, pathetic amber glow that was rapidly being overwritten by the crushing dark of the forest. The Green Ring had given way to the wilder, uncontrolled timber of the Fire Country border. The trees here didn't feel sacred; they felt indifferent.
The scent of manicured moss and village incense faded, replaced by the raw, feral smell of rotting timber and wet loam that hadn't seen a gardener in centuries.
Sasuke's feet hit the branches in a rhythm that felt like running away from a fire—thud-spring-thud-spring.
His breath plumed before him in the freezing air, a trail of white ghosts marking his path through the pre-dawn gloom.
The Cursed Mark at the base of his neck pulsed—a cold, rhythmic throb that felt like a second heart pumping ice water into his veins.
The canopy overhead was a solid ceiling of black, blocking out the fading moon and leaving him running through a tunnel of ink where only the Sharingan could find the branches.
He forced his mind to dissect the people he was leaving, cutting the bonds one by one to reduce the drag coefficient on his soul.
Neji and Hinata.
He thought of the Hyūga boy's arrogant precision. He thought of the girl crying in the bathroom. They shouldn't matter. They didn't matter. It didn't matter what happened on that roof. They were just static in the signal.
Anko.
Of course she helps the girl. Of course the one person in the village who might really get what it feels like to be marked, to be bitten by him, didn't help Sasuke. She looked at him with suspicion, not empathy. Of course.
Naruto.
Who was he? Really? A loud idiot? A container for a demon? Why did he smile like that, with so many teeth? Why did he paint the monument?
Sasuke realized, with a jolt that nearly made him miss a step, that he didn't know the name of Naruto's parents.
The memory of that grin was bright and annoying, smelling faintly of ramen broth and cheap paint, a sensory imprint he couldn't scrub from his mind.
The damp moss on the tree trunks was stiffening with the first hard frost of November, slick and treacherous under his sandals.
He had spent months on a team with him. He had slept in the same camps. He had eaten at the same tables. But he didn't know what Naruto did when he was alone. He didn't know what his apartment looked like. He didn't know a single thing about the boy other than his loudness.
Sylvie.
The girl on the bench. The one with the pink ribbon and a notebook, and the eyes behind those thick glasses that sometimes looked like they were dissecting the air itself. Why did she tremble? What was she always writing in those notebooks? Was she weak, or was she just holding back something he didn't care enough to see?
Kakashi.
The man with the stolen eye. The man who spoke of comrades and teamwork but lived alone in a dark apartment and visited a stone more often than living people.
Sasuke gritted his teeth, forcing chakra into his quadriceps. The cellular burn was a welcome distraction.
The taste of copper filled his mouth as he pushed his lungs to the limit, the metallic tang of exertion coating his tongue.
Faster.
He had spent months eating lunch with them. He had bled beside them. He had almost died for them in the Land of Snow.
And they were strangers.
It doesn't matter, the dark voice in his head whispered, sounding painfully like Itachi. You don't need to know their stories. You just need to end yours.
He didn't look back. It was easier to leave a village of ghosts than a village of people.
The apartment was silent, save for the hum of the refrigerator.
Vrrr-click.
The compressor kicked off, plunging the room into a silence so sudden and heavy it made my ears ring.
I glanced at the window; the glass was pitch black, reflecting only my own hollow face against the impenetrable dark of the sky.
I sat at my desk, the only light coming from a small, flickering lamp. My face felt tight and crusted, stained with hours of tears and snot. The small, wire-mesh trash can beside my legs was overflowing with crumpled, wet tissues, a white mountain of pathetic grief.
My tongue felt swollen and tasted of salt and iron, a gross, metallic reminder of the hydration I'd lost to the trash can.
I stared at the notebook in front of me.
The yellow light of the lamp cast long, distorted shadows across the desk, turning the stack of books into a jagged, miniature skyline.
A draft curled around my ankles—the specific, damp chill of a November morning seeping through the floorboards, colder than the night that had preceded it.
I couldn't fix this with math. I couldn't fix this with a seal. The variables had shifted, and the equation had resulted in a zero sum. Sasuke was gone. And despite everything—despite the logic, despite the plot armor, despite the foreknowledge—it hurt.
It hurt like a phantom limb.
I picked up my pen. My hand trembled, but I forced the ink onto the page. It was the only way I could process the data.
Condensation had begun to bead on the windowpane, weeping slowly down the glass as the outside temperature bottomed out before the sunrise.
Scritch-scratch.
The pen tip dug into the paper, the sound aggressively loud against the low-frequency silence of the room.
(都市の鼓動 - Toshi no Kodō)
脈合わず
Myaku awazu
Pulse does not align,
幽霊の如く
Yūrei no gotoku
You walk through streets like a ghost,
何処彷徨う
Izuko samayou
Why do your eyes wander so?
黄金の灯
Kogane no hi
Golden lights call out,
異界の囁き
Ikai no sasayaki
Whispering a different life,
彼こそ欠く者
Kare koso kaku mono
"He is the one we are missing."