章節 2: Cursed Encounter

The conversation that followed that question shaped the next two years of his life.

He stepped out of the house with a shallow idea of curses, cursed techniques, the three great clans, his family, and his place in it. It also gave him an idea of why his maid was so scared of him walking in.

His mother died while giving birth to him, and his father, a mediocre sorcerer by the clan head's standard and rather spiteful man, named him Jiki on the spot, for his birth brought about about her death.  His next 4 years before his awakening were spent being taken care of by his maid, Aiko.

The black-haired teen had practically raised him from birth like her own child and feared for the choices that would be laid before him as a direct descendant of Michizane Sugawara and a member of the Gojo clan.

The Clan head's clear lack of interest in him after his decision dropped his standings in the clan by a fair amount. But he had no interest in being part of such a life again. This world was as close to having peace as he ever imagined compared to his last.

He saw no reason to stand at the forefront anymore. His elder cousin, bearing the weight of the clan's once-in-a-century dojutsu and the burdens that came with it, brought memories of his own time as clan heir.

Memories he would rather have left forgotten on that broken world.  He spent the next two years in his clan's library and learned so much about this new world. He had assumed The Elemental Nations and this earth were similar, but after a glance at the world map, the wars fought, the histories told, and the alliances formed, he was certain now that he was nowhere near the elemental nations.

The easy access to technology that he had, even in his apparent isolationist clan, was more than even the top heads in the hidden villages ever received. He spent his days on mundane things, trying to live a life he never had the opportunity to live. From paintings in the morning with Aiko, to working on his writing and calligraphy alone in the library among clan mates that had little to no love for him.

Yet, he didn't care for it. Any other child would've craved the attention of family, perhaps that was the old bastard's plan when he set all this into motion. But not Itachi. He didn't deserve the love of a new family. Not after he slaughtered his last for the sake of peace. Not after what he had done in the Anbu in the guise of orders from commanders.  No, Itachi saw no reason to get close to this new family, and the distance most of them kept suited him and made it all the better.

The only light in his dark world of apathy, angst, and horrible memories was Aiko. Where most clan members had shut him out and moved on with their lives, Aiko stuck even closer to him. His first painting was of her smile as she helped bathe him. And like all things Itachi had tried his hand at, it was as perfect as it could be.

The dark of her hair was wrapped in a bun under a white cloth, the strands that escaped at the sides and moved with the soft early morning breeze. Her hands were covered in foam as she washed his white locks while whispering sweet nothings to him.

The radiant glow of a woman that was happy and loved what she did, bright smiles she only showed to him when they were together.  After his first work, she took it and with tears in her eyes, hugged him so tight she would've broken his spine if she kept it up any longer.

The next day, he woke up with an aisle, canvas with ultra-smooth, fine, and coarse brushes lining the aisles, and a beautiful number of colors on the side, courtesy of the clan head himself.  He was confused, and for the first time in a long time, he was forced to reassess the old man's opinion of him.

Didn't he despise him for wanting to live a mundane life? For the death of his daughter? It took him his second painting, which was of the bronze figures he saw in the mansion, to disappear the following morning from his aisle, only to reappear once more on the doors of that forbidding house for him to realize his mistake.

He had automatically assumed the Clan head was much like the Uchiha clan elders, who would try to shape and mold the younger ones into what they wanted. Who cared more about bloodlines, cursed ability, status, and martial prowess than what other skills a child would have to offer.? He knew most clans were like that considering his forays into the clan library, but it just occurred to him that he never even gave his clan leader a chance.

The slip-up was a show of his humanity. In as much as the Uchiha clan elders and Konoha tried to make him perfect, he wasn't. He was as human as everyone else. The thought brought a smile to his face. A smile that was covered in a bright flash a second later by what appeared to be his maid with what he learned was a camera.

She gave him an even brighter smile than he believed he could ever possess before skipping out of his workshop.  Days later, he started hearing the whispers once more. The accursed words that brought so much suffering to his past life. Genius, prodigy. The side glances that he got from his clan members changed from apathy to interest.

How many five-year-old children could recreate the beautiful images and finely detailed artworks he produced so easily? At the end of the day, he was able to get past it as despite the similarities in the words, the context differed.

Here nobody was praising his genius for finding the perfect angle to slit a man's jugular and carotid in a single stroke. He was not called a prodigy here for learning how to modify and draw explosive tags on the spot. No. He was praised for the mundane art of painting.

His art was usually visceral. Images burnt into his brain. A curse and blessing of the Sharingan, a past life filled with enough horror to break lesser men.  He was given a small building in the compound and to the side of his building to display his art, from paintings of the bloodstained beautiful grasses of Kusagakure, to the withering heavy snow and eternal winters of Yukigakure.

He painted island villages from the Elemental Nations, where the sun, for some reason, rose once in two years. To the liminal and fluid nature of the various summoning realms.

The unending skies and immutable mountains of the home of the hawks. To the everlasting darkness of the home of the crows and the albino red eyed matriarch that perched on a dead tree.

If he was going to bring back anything from his cursed origins, it was going to be the beauty of the places he saw during his years of wandering with the Akatsuki.  His years of mundanity and bliss ended with a simple question that led to a future he could not have calculated or considered.

A fickle chance, Fate, Horrid Luck?  At the age of six, after a long day of working on his calligraphy, he looked up at his maid, Aiko-chan, and made a request that would change the course of his life.

Born of the memories of jumping from cafe to cafe with Sasuke as children during festivals. "I want to go to a cafe," he whispered in his soft voice. Aiko-san looked at him for a second before giving a soft smile and acquiescing. "I'll see what can be done, young master."

A week later, he woke up, followed his regular routine, and when it was time to be dressed, instead of his regular yukatas, hakama, and haori, he was dressed in a baggy black long-sleeved shirt and white shorts that stopped before his knees, while his hair was tied into a bun at the back with only a few stubborn strands escaping it.

His feet were clad in black slides as he stared at his maid with uncertainty. She noted his surprise with a smile and announced to him, "The clan head has agreed to your request"

He gave a soft nod as he followed her from their house to the main gates of their compound. A compound he had spent the last two years in.

They were met by a man in a black suit and a soft frown as he gestured at them into a matching black car. Seated inside as the car drove past the isolated clan compound and into the city, he realized the reason for his change of clothes.  Not a single person was dressed formally like the rest of the clan, and dressing like that would've drawn attention in a way that some part of him that spent decades in the shadows wince.

As they stepped out and walked into a cafe, his head was on a swivel. Looking at everything and anything. It was one thing to see the pictures, and it was another thing to live it. Tokyo was easily five times more populated than any hidden village he knew about. And this was just a single city in a country that housed tens of them. His sightseeing was cut short as he started to notice them. Most of them were little malformed-looking creatures stuck on some specific humans.

He saw a bigger one that stayed on a building. Twice as big as a horse, skin an uncanny blue, four arms that sank into the stone like a hot knife through butter, and a multitude of eyes that lined its back and seemed focused on HIM.

It watched them walk into the cafe, without moving from the spot. Aiko-san didn't seem to notice the creature, blissfully unaware as she pointed at everything that was on display. From boy bands on billboards to clothes and more.

The strange and quiet man dressed in black gave it a side glance before leading them into the cafe. It was at their fifth location that it all changed.

They stayed in a queue for minutes waiting to be served, a type of strange variation of dango that Aiko-chan promised was heavenly. Their driver and escort had his head on a swivel with a heavy frown on his face since their fourth stop and excused himself after a short conversation with Aiko. It was this overload of this new experience that had him lower his guard and let something slip past.

It started off as a spike of what he knew to be cursed energy from close by, before a blue blurred figure was a step away from him. Then someone clothed in black with wide and terrified eyes stepped in front of him and pushed him to the side before disappearing in a blur.

It took him a second to realize what happened. For his immense intellect to parse through the details of what felt like a split second.

For the first time in this new life, he felt something. Something that broke his facade of apathy, as he noted the thick texture of freshly spilled blood that soaked his white hair and splashed on his right cheek. He stared at the broken and unmoving form that lay crumpled and bleeding at the side of a building.

At the Polaroid picture that slipped out of the cloth to sink in the blood split. A picture bearing a white haired boy with a soft smile.

Itachi had been angry in his past life. Angry at the situation that forced him to slaughter his clan. Angry that he was forced to work with some of the most horrible people he knew, all for the sake of his village. Angry at the path he forced his little ototo on.

But he had never known hate.

Yet the moment he felt it, he knew it for what it was.  There was something about the purity of it. Where mind, body, and soul focused on one emotion. Aligned and in sync.

Where you knew at that point in time, nothing could stop you from ending something.  Even Kami would come down begging on folded knees, and you would still accomplish what you wanted to do.

The world could crumble and be damned. All thirty million souls in the city could be snuffed out as a result, and you would feel nothing other than the desire to complete a purpose.

He Knew hate for the first time in two lifetimes. It was almost like a dam had broken in him. He felt that hate flow through him, it called out like an old friend.

Following long-forgotten pathways before leading up to his eyes, the clarity of vision that came with the feeling burnt the image of the crumpled form in black and white into his spinning pupil as it split and multiplied from one to three, before folding on itself into another shape, in a rapid procession that most would've missed.

He looked at the curse staring at him with its multiple eyes, an arm stretched out to grab him, and its skin splitting vertically in the middle of its face to reveal a carnivorous maw. Heedless of the shouting and the movements of the masses by this intrusion into thier worldview.

This break in the pattern of their scripted lives. He said a single word that left his throat raw. A word, a sentence, a promise, an order, a command that he expected the world to rollover to accomplish.

With blood trailing down his left eye, he said  "Die" 