NARUTO SHINDEN - PARENT AND CHILD DAY

Chapter 4: Father and daughter, cold flames and boiling fire

The Village Hidden in the Leaves had developed remarkably.

In the highways where the noisy pedestrian traffic didn’t die out, he was trying to remember the scenery of the old days.

Uchiha Sasuke acknowledged that it was difficult.

The reason of that was simple. The time had changed. The townscape had changed. He had been away from the village too long — he could enumerate as many official excuses as he liked.

However, in the first place, he wondered if he had looked at the scenery back in those times of his youth he spent in the village.

As a child, no matter where he shifted his attention to, there was the back of his older brother — Uchiha Itachi — in front of his eyes.

After Itachi left the village, all the things he saw reminded him of his older brother.

The signboards of the park were his brother’s words.

The roadside trees were the silhouette of his brother.

The shadows reflected on the surface of the lakes were his brother’s face.

The stains on the walls were his brother’s stare.

He didn’t look at the scenery. Through those things, he looked at Itachi.

With that, another thing that he couldn’t remember was the truth. Without even knowing Itachi’s true intentions, there was no way that he, who was swayed by revenge, had nostalgic memories he had to be immersed in.

…no.

Sasuke immediately denied his own thoughts.

There was a scent he missed coming from somewhere. The scent of brand new wood.

It tickled the tip of his nose, and he remembered.

That was the scent of the wooden walls used in his Uchiha home.

Triggered by that scent, a scene from the time when his parents were alive suddenly flashed across is mind.

His mother was standing in the kitchen.

With his arms crossed in front of the tea table, his father had his eyes closed.

Then, his younger self, covertly examining his father’s expressions.

“Apparently, even I have some nostalgic memories left” he thought wryly this time.

“That’s right. I wasn’t the only one who looked at Itachi. Also my father looked at no one but Itachi. There was a time when I was frantically trying to make his eyes look at me.”

In his bitter recollection, the brat that had still some innocence had opened his mouth to attract his father’s attention.

“Dad.. .where’s home?!

.. .“Where’s home?”

He tried to think about it, but he wasn’t sure. Had he ever asked something like that? “No” he answered his own question right away. That was a question his current self had.

Cutting off his reverie, Sasuke muttered to himself

«.. .where’s my home?»

After he managed to come back home after a long time, he should have aimed to the house where his wife and daughter were, but for some reason only a vacant land was spreading before his eyes. In a corner, raw construction materials were piled up in a mountain. Apparently, the scent of wood of some time ago was wafting from there, but, anyhow.