▸ Column · Naruto's hidden-village ninja world — estrangement, a messenger-hawk card, and a two-day journey on foot between villages
NARUTO UZUMAKI replies.
Replied to by Naruto Uzumaki, with a rebuttal from Sasuke Uchiha.
The letter
No question, really — I just need to tell somebody. Seven years ago my older brother Darnell and I stopped speaking after a fight over who got our late mother's keepsakes. I'm not proud of how I acted. Then this spring a messenger hawk showed up with a card from him: a portrait of his twin daughters I'd never met, and three words inside — "I miss you." I left at dawn the next day and walked two days to his village with no plan and a wrapped bundle of the sweet dumplings he used to swipe off my plate every New Year. When he opened the door we just stood in the road crying like fools. We spent the whole week going through Mom's old recipe scrolls, his girls kept begging me to do my dumb impressions, and it hit me that I'd been mourning a man who was alive the entire time. I guess I'm writing because a year ago I was certain it was too late. It wasn't. Somebody should hear that.
Naruto Uzumaki replies
Aw, man — you're gonna make ME cry in MY driveway now, ya know?
You wanna know the part that gets me? Not the card. The two days you WALKED. Darnell cracked the door open with "I miss you," and you didn't stand there picking it apart — you packed his dumb favorite dumplings and you MOVED. That's the whole thing right there. That's the work. Most people sit on a "maybe" until it goes cold. You went.
I had a brother like that. My closest friend in the world walked off into the dark, and everybody — everybody — told me he was gone, write him off, it's too late. I didn't believe 'em for one single day. Took years. Took everything. But I never quit on him, and one morning he came back. So when you say "it's not always too late" — yeah. Believe it. I'd know.
Here's what your letter actually is, though: it's a flare for everybody reading who's still sitting on seven years of silence telling themselves the door's shut. It isn't. Somebody just has to be stubborn enough to knock. You were. Now those little girls get the uncle with the terrible impressions. That's not luck. That's you refusing to let your brother be a stranger. Don't ever go back on that.
— Naruto Uzumaki
Sasuke Uchiha weighs in
Naruto reads this as a victory. It isn't, quite.
You didn't reach first. Darnell did. For seven years you were both willing to die strangers, and you only moved because he spent the courage you wouldn't. Sit with that before you frame yourself the hero of it.
I hunted my own brother believing he was the worst thing that happened to me. I learned the truth he carried only after I'd killed him — too late to say a single word back. You were luckier than you understand. The hawk could have brought different news.
So don't just be grateful. Be warned. Who else are you still waiting on, telling yourself there's time? Go now. The window doesn't always stay open. Mine didn't.
— Sasuke Uchiha
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