▸ Column · The shinobi world of Naruto — a deceased village shinobi's estate, divided unevenly between two brothers
ITACHI UCHIHA replies.
Replied to by Itachi Uchiha, with a rebuttal from Sasuke Uchiha.
The letter
My father — a shinobi of our village — passed four months ago, and when his testament was finally read aloud, my older brother Garrett was left the family house and both of Father's holdings, near enough to keep him comfortable for life. I was left Father's blade and a box of old mission scrolls an appraiser valued at almost nothing. Mother says this is because Garrett "sacrificed" by staying in the village to escort Father to the medical-nin during his treatments. I understand that. But I returned from assignment six times in two years and refused missions twice to be at his side after his surgeries, and no one ever called that a debt against me. Worse, Garrett has said nothing — one message, "hope you're holding up," then silence. I can't tell if he's ashamed, satisfied, or simply unwilling to speak to me. I don't need what was left to him. I just can't square the idea that Father, in writing, measured us unequally, and I don't know if confronting Garrett or Mother will mend anything or only burn down what little family I have left.
Itachi Uchiha replies
Four months is not long enough to have stopped bleeding, so let me say first: the grief you feel is not pettiness about money. It is the proof that he mattered to you. Do not let anyone shame you out of it.
But I must tell you something I learned at a terrible price. A document is not a heart. I was seen, by everyone — by my own foolish little brother most of all — as the worst kind of monster, and the truth of what I had done was the exact opposite of how it read. So when you look at that testament and call it a verdict on who was loved, I beg you to hold it loosely. Your father's love does not live in a clerk's ledger. It lives in six returns from the field, and his hand reaching for yours after surgery. You already hold the part that was never written down.
Now — the silence between you and Garrett. Here is my one true regret, plainly. I let my silence toward Sasuke run on past love and into stubbornness, and he hated me for years he never needed to. Go to your brother. Not for the house. For the truth, before the quiet hardens into something neither of you chose.
— Itachi Uchiha
Sasuke Uchiha weighs in
My brother will send you to Garrett. Garrett isn't the problem. The text was a coward's, but chasing it won't give you what you're missing.
Look at who handed you the story. Your mother decided love could be counted in chemo escorts and wrote your father's grief into a ledger. That accounting is the lie — the one you're about to organize your whole grief around.
I built my life on a false story about my brother and learned the cost too late. You don't have that excuse. You flew back six times. You already know what you were to him. Don't let her arithmetic overwrite a thing you lived.
— Sasuke Uchiha
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