Naruto Immersive Replay, The Curse of the Sharingan

Every time she learned a new facial expression management technique, she couldn't wait to perform it at her usual training ground.

What exactly do you want to do?

One day, she finally couldn't take it anymore and drew a line of blood when she held her knife to my throat.

Warm liquid flowed down my neck, but I felt an unprecedented pleasure. "I just want you to look at me more."

These words were like opening some forbidden box. I watched as her pupils contracted sharply, and a rare panic appeared on her usually indifferent face.

She disappeared so quickly that she even knocked over the weapons rack behind her.

306 days.

As I marked the 306th mark on the calendar, the Kaguya clan's forest of bones had spread to the borders of the Ninja Sect. On the battlefield, amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood, I finally reunited with that familiar figure—

She turned her head and saw me.

At that moment, a sound suddenly came into my desolate world. It turned out that my heart was pounding wildly against my ribs, the pain so intense it felt like it was about to burst out of my body.

Her scream pierced the battlefield's clamor. I belatedly turned around and saw Kaguya's bone spikes near my throat. My body moved faster than my mind; my fingertips formed hand seals, gathering lightning powerful enough to destroy an entire forest—

It was the sound of a sharp weapon piercing flesh.

But it wasn't my lightning strike that pierced the enemy; it was Hannya who used his back to shield me from the poisoned bone spur.

As she fell into my arms, black blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, yet she was still smiling, "...You look so stupid when you're distracted..."

The incense in the medical room was suffocating.

I knelt before her bed, counting her faint breaths: thirty-four, sixty-five, one hundred and eight. When the moonlight climbed onto her cheeks for the third time, I finally leaned down and pressed my lips to her pale ones.

Like holding a melting piece of ice in my mouth, I secretly licked the medicine between her lips, and tasted a faint bloody flavor on my tongue. This action made me tremble all over, even more so than when I first used the forbidden technique.

"Well..."

Late on the fourth night, she suddenly started talking in her sleep. I hurriedly sat up, but saw that her eyes were still tightly closed.

The moonlight outside the window suddenly became dazzling, and I realized that my face was covered with cold liquid.

He had broken ribs while cultivating and his dignity had been crushed when his father rejected him, but none of that compared to the pain he felt now when he saw her frowning.

“...Indra?” At dawn on the fifth day, her hoarse voice sounded like a divine decree.

I gripped the corner of the blanket tightly, afraid that if I opened my mouth, I would reveal the rotting desires festering in my chest.

Why did you save me?

She gazed at the cherry blossoms falling in the courtyard, and after a long while, she whispered, "I don't know."

The answer made my throat feel metallic and sweet. I grabbed her hand fiercely and pressed it against my heart, letting her feel the flesh beating for her. "Now do you understand?"

Her pupils dilated slightly, but she did not pull her hand away.

Later we really became "friends". She would eat the burnt rice balls I made, throw water bottles at me while I was practicing, and even allow me to rest my head on her lap while she was reading scrolls.

But whenever I tried to take things further, she would press a kunai against my throat and chuckle, "Indra, friends shouldn't do such things."

She knew perfectly well that I was already a terminally ill prisoner, and that the only cure was her...

The father did it on purpose.

When he arranged for Prajna to teach Asura, the smile hidden beneath his white eyebrows was like the forked tongue of a venomous snake.

I stood in the shadow of the colonnade, watching Asura clumsily make the wrong hand gestures, while Prajna, my Prajna, actually reached out and corrected his fingers.

The moment her fingertips touched Ashura's skin, I tasted the metallic flavor churning in my throat.

"Lower it here." Her voice was as light as a feather, a tenderness she had never shown me before.

Ashura chuckled and scratched his head, sunlight dancing on his hair.

How harmonious it was, as if they were the people of the same world. My nails dug into my palms, but the pain couldn't suppress the thorns growing wildly in my chest.

Those thorny vines pierced through my lungs, and every breath I took was dripping with blood.

The first one to die was the ninja who always sent flowers to Hannya. I buried him in the Tsukuyomi world, so that he would be subjected to the process of being slowly sliced ​​to death by a thousand needles in the eternal illusion.

The second one was the female ninja who kept "bumping into" Hannya. I planted a lightning release seal in her throat, causing her to turn into charred remains while screaming.

With each person I kill, the air around Prajna becomes a little cleaner, yet she drifts further and further away from me.

I saw her holding Ashura's hand, teaching him to form hand seals stroke by stroke. Sunlight filtered through her eyelashes, casting dappled shadows on her cheeks.

She smiled, and that smile eroded my last shred of sanity.

The Japanese-style room on the back hill was my last prison of reason.

The moment the illusion unfolded, a look of terror I had never seen before flashed in her eyes. How ridiculous! The Prajna who could kill a hundred people without batting an eye was now trembling beneath me, looking so beautiful.

I licked away the tears from the corner of her eye, and between our catching breaths, I said in a hoarse voice, "You see, we're so perfectly matched..."

During those three days of madness, I experienced every inch of her trembling.

As she choked back tears and bit my shoulder, I suddenly understood those souls who had fallen into depravity because of lust. It turns out that extreme possession can really make people willing to be forever trapped in this state.

When the illusion was broken, her slap made half of my face go numb.

But more painful than the burning pain on my face was the shattered light in her eyes. The three words "I hate you" were like a katana, precisely piercing my already rotten heart.

"It's right for you to hate me." I gripped her slender waist frantically. "I will marry you, I will..."

“Indra,” she interrupted me, her voice as soft as a sigh, “let’s end this here.”

The kiss that landed between my brows was more cruel than any illusion. I stood frozen in place, watching her leave without looking back.

After that, she avoided me whenever she saw me.

I stood under the maple tree where she taught Ashura, my fingertips tracing the marks carved on the bark—Ashura's childish handwriting.

The kunai spun three times in his palm before suddenly plunging hard into the center of the character '未'.

Blood seeped into cracks along the tree's grain, much like the wounds she had scratched on my back that night.

My father said my Sharingan has evolved.

He couldn't see the butterfly image imprisoned deep within my pupils, a replica of her last look at me, created through illusion.

Gentle yet sorrowful.

Like staring at a dying demon.

The moonlight in the solitary confinement cell was blue.

Like a blade soaked in ice water, it scraped my spine inch by inch.

Every word my father spoke when he sealed the barrier burned my skin: "Three years of reflection for the murders you committed."

I laughed as I stared at the crisscrossing lines on my palm. The splattered blood couldn't even fill the spaces under my fingernails; how could it possibly be called a massacre?

Ashura's voice came from outside the barrier. He was pleading with his father, his foolish and naive tone exactly the same as when he begged Hannya to teach him one more ninjutsu back then.

The name clenched between my teeth, drawing blood. Where is she now? Is she gazing at Ashura with that tender look I long for but cannot have? Has she already washed away the mark I left on her?

Is she thinking of me?

Or is she... relieved to finally be rid of me?

I can't wait any longer.

If she waits any longer, that good-for-nothing Ashura will snatch her away.

What makes that fool so special? His naiveté? His weakness? Or his hands that would never dare to bleed?

Prajna can only be mine.

Even if it means using the most vile forbidden techniques, even if it means bearing an eternal curse, I will make her—

You can never escape me.

As the forbidden patterns spread across my skin, I saw Hannya's face.

She stood in the moonlight and sneered at me, "Indra, you are truly pathetic."

Yes, I am pathetic.

Hate me or despise me, as long as you always have me in your eyes.

The "Reincarnation Pact" is made through blood and soul. For all eternity, they will never be apart.

She struggled, she cursed, she even pierced my shoulder with a kunai.

But so what?

Blood flowed from my wound, yet it coiled around her wrist like a living thing. She watched in horror as the blood trickled into her skin, like vines, like chains, like my unbreakable obsession with her.

“You’re insane…!” she cursed at me, her voice trembling.

I laughed, a ferocious yet satisfied laugh.

“Yes, I’m crazy.” I grabbed the back of her neck and forced her close to my lips. “But you, Prajna—from now on, you will be crazy with me too.”

She cried, and her tears fell onto the back of my hand, burning like lava.

I should have felt sorry for her.

But I actually thought...it was absolutely beautiful.

Her pain, her despair, her hatred—all belong to me.

"Hate me." I kissed away her tears, tasting the salty bitterness on my tongue. "Hate me to the core, hate me to the depths of your soul, hate me so that you can never forget me in every reincarnation."

She closed her eyes and stopped looking at me.

The reincarnation contract has been completed; she can't escape it now.

Many years later, when I found her 37th reincarnation at the end of the underworld, the always indifferent Prajna was weeping among the spider lilies.

The contract mark on her heart was burning hot, and my heart finally found a brief moment of peace.

You see, we have ultimately gained eternity within the curse.

[Uchiha Showa] - From "The Hungry Ghost Path: The Record of Stealing Light"

The stench of blood lingers in the ancestral hall year after year.

I squatted on the beam and watched my parents being sentenced to death. My mother's fingernails peeled off as she struggled, leaving seven bloody scratches on the bluestone bricks.

When the clan elders' kushio (a type of Japanese whip) pierced my father's eyes, I counted the number of times their wrists trembled, which was exactly the same as the number of lashes my father used to give me when he beat me years ago.

Laughter squeezed out of his throat, echoing in the empty ancestral hall.

Scalding liquid suddenly welled up in my eyes. I thought it was tears, but when I raised my hand, I touched thick blood.

The clan elders under the beam looked up in alarm, and the moonlight shone directly into the swirling tomoe in my eyes.

"Bastard!" that's what they called me.

It's ridiculous. They were the ones who used vigilante justice, and now they're the ones trembling with fear.

The paper window of the clan school had a hole in it, just enough for me to see the instructor demonstrating the hand seal sequence.

The autumn dew soaked through my thin clothes, but I stared intently at the angle where the teacher's thumbs were overlapping. I had misremembered this spot yesterday, which caused me to burn half a lock of hair while practicing Fire Release.

"Who's there?"

The fragrance of wisteria blossoms wafted over first, and I huddled in the shadows of the corner, watching the girl in a silk kimono approach with a lantern.

The pearl hairpin in her hair shimmered softly in the moonlight, like a star I could never reach.

The lunchbox made a very soft sound as it was placed on the windowsill.

The first day was salmon rice balls, which I didn't touch; the second day was braised eggplant, which I licked off the sauce.

At dawn on the seventh day, I finally put the empty lunchbox back in its place, with a note inside that looked like scribbles. I had spent the whole night tracing the character "谢" (thank you) from the "Ninja Dictionary".

Later I learned that this was the name of a star. She would always squat by the window during her patrol breaks and use the tip of a kunai to draw characters on the mud to teach me to recognize them.

"This is 'love,' this is 'light'..." Flowers would bloom on the ground where she pointed, while my palms, covered in blisters, could only sprout thorns.

"What's your name?" she suddenly asked me, opening the window and startling the wisteria blossoms that filled the trellis.

I still had the cherry blossom cake she gave me stuffed in my mouth, and the sweet red bean paste choked me.

She hurriedly patted my back, and there was a faint scent of ink on the inside of her wrist—the unique smell of genealogical documents.

Zhili was the only daughter of the Fourth Elder. Her name was outlined in gold powder on the scrolls at the highest point of the ancestral hall.