Me and Shisui have been inseparable since we first met.
The memory is blurry, but it was during a party. My seventh birthday party.
I could barely memorize the faces of all the relatives I was introduced to that night. But I tried my best; afterall I was the prodigy.
I remember seeing another small figure. For some reason she stood out to me.
She was wearing an elegant, dark blue kimono. Her hair was up in a small pony tail. Her face seemed way too mature for someone her age; she was what? Twelve?
But there was a mischievous twinkle in her dark eyes whenever she spotted a plate of sweets or a bottle of soda.
She came over with her mother and introduced herself. Shisui Uchiha.
She gave me a restrained smile, as if trying not to show her teeth in a huge grin. I smiled back.
The second time I saw her was a year later.
She was sitting by the Nakano river; which would soon become our safe haven.
It was then that I realised that she looked different than most Uchiha girls I have seen.
For one, her hair was a dark shade of brown and so... unruly.
The shape of her eyes and the tilt in her eyelashes were rare.
She was also holding a headband in her hands.
So she was a genin too.
"You know, its rude to stare" she turned to me with a smirk on her face.
I looked down, feeling blood rush to my cheeks.
"Sorry..." I muttered.
She chuckled and said "so what are you doing here... squirt"
"My name is Itachi" 'and I am not a squirt...' I thought.
She grinned and I had to resist the urge to look away from how bright her teeth shined.
"Name's Shisui! Nice to meet you...squirt"
"Nice to meet you too Shisui-nee" 'and I am not a squirt'
"Yah what's with the formality? Just Shisui will do" she said as she stood up "wanna go get some namagashi?"
Our friendship started from there.
Whenever I was free, I would find myself drawn to that spot.
And I would find her either training with her weapons or simply resting.
And she would let me join.
It was as if that spot belonged solely to us.
Things changed one day.
It was after his death.
After spending some days at the hospital and even in my traumatised state, I found myself drawn to the river.
I plopped down beside the river and watched it rush past.
It took me some time to realise that somebody was standing right next to me.
And when I did, I promptly threw my kunai at them.
Thankfully, it was Shisui, and she simply caught the kunai in between her mid and index finger, a inch from her face.
She looked down at me with concern.
I looked away and muttered "sorry"
She continued staring at me and after a beat she said "you're bleeding"
I touched my cheek and felt wetness. Blood had started leaking from my eyes. The sharingan.
I sighed.
She knelt down quietly at my side. She took out her handkerchief and soaked it in water from her bottle. Then she gently dabbed at my face, cleaning away the blood.
And I didn't feel like stopping her.
That incident cemented our friendship.
One day, she came out of nowhere and asked me "hey squirt, you wanna help me in my jounin exams?"
I looked up at her, impressed.
Jounin exams already?
"But how?" I asked.
"Whoever is taking the jounin exams needs to have a capable genin with them, and I thought of you" she replied "so, what do you say?"
After the completion of the jounin exams, my respect for her increased some more. Her skills in tracking, genjutsu, and ninjutsu were far above my own, or any typical chunin's.
She was a prodigy in her own right.
Two years went by like that, with her visiting my family more often and us forming a stronger bond.
A time came when we didn't need to exchange words to understand each other.
Like that time I saw her ready to infiltrate Himeko baachan's shop to steal the bowl of freshly baked sweets, and she looked at me with wide eyes and a sly grin, and I sighed but stayed quiet.
Of course I wouldn't forget how Himeko baachan chased us with a broom in one hand and her sharingan swirling and we had to run for our lives. Quite literally.
Suddenly she became an ANBU and I was promoted to chunin and our meetings decreased.
But we would always find each other near the Nakano; it was an unspoken agreement.
I found her once, lying beside the banks of the river, in full ANBU gear.
"You know that mask isn't really hiding your identity if you are here...Neko?"
"Everybody already knows who I am, with or without the mask"
That was true.
The name Shushin no Shisui was spoken in awe and fear all over Konoha and especially the other villages.
I felt oddly proud when I heard it.
"Then why are you wearing the mask?"
She sighed "Getting used to it... it gets suffocating inside" and removed her mask.
I sat down quietly beside her and hummed.
Sometime along the way, we had caught the habit of checking for scars.
We would spend hours searching and memorizing scars on each other's body.
If we found old scars, we would reminisce about their cause. If we found a new scar, we would enquire.
Sometimes we would get answers from the other but sometimes...the other wouldn't answer.
Like that scar I found on her forehead. I spent weeks wondering how it got there despite her always wearing her mask or headband.
Or that scar on the inside of her left thigh, long and clean and deep, as if somebody had taken their time to make it.
One day, I again found her in her ANBU gear, near the Nakano.
This time, her hands and a good portion of her armour, were covered in dry blood.
My heart almost leapt out of my chest until I realised that the blood wasn't hers.
I hurried over to her and paused a little as my fingers brushed the surface of her mask. When she didn't resist, I took it off.
Her face was blank, giving away no emotion.
"What happened..." I asked.
I didn't get a reply. Well that was expected.
I picked her up in my arms and rushed to her house.
I placed her on a stool on the bathroom floor and started taking her armor off.
Then I took my time to scrub away the blood and grime on her hands, legs and face.
Then I took out a bottle of dry shampoo and scrubbed clean her short hair.
We both had gotten used to the close proximity.
Then I got up and handed her a pair of fresh clothes and told her to wash up properly.
She nodded.
While I waited outside, my ears were on alert and whenever the sounds in the bathroom stopped for too long, I was ready to break through the door.
But she emerged pretty quickly, and sat down beside me on the cot.
On second thought, she rested her head on my lap and curled up like a child just after a nightmare.
I didn't know what had happened, but if it got Shisui traumatised, then it was bad.
After what seemed like an eternity, the first word she spoke was "killed..."
Killed? That... was normal considering her status. She had accepted that killing for the safety of the village was justified. To a certain extent.
"I killed... killed a... a" she paused as her voice choked. I pulled her up and hugged her close.
"I killed a... baby... a baby" she whimpered "a new life... which didn't even... it wasn't even the child's fault... the baby hadn't even lived long enough to make a mistake!" She started sobbing.
"When I... looked at the baby, he... I don't even know if it was a girl or boy... it smiled at me, smiled" she started babbling "and then I... just kill...but I had to otherwise some other person would find it and kill it any way and make wrong use of its.."
I hugged her tighter, feeling my eyes well up.
I felt the agony in each word she uttered.
And for a instant, after a long time, I was scared.
Scared that Shisui will never be the same.
I didn't ask her the obvious question of 'then why did you kill the baby?' because I knew why she did it.
The child was probably the bearer of a powerful kekkai genkai; one which posed a threat to the village.
For the village.
Always for the village.
Of course it took me a while to make Shisui understand that she would do no harm to Sasuke by just being near him.
It took time, but eventually, she went back to normal.
Though everytime she spotted a mother or a couple walking with their toddler lovingly in their arms, she would recoil and distance herself ever so slightly.
She left ANBU soon after and went back to being a jounin.
And I was invited to join ANBU.
She frowned when she heard about it. And told me to be careful and not let others dictate my choices.
Soon after, her jounin friends organised a party for no particular reason and a few special people like me and Kakashi were invited too.
But this party was a little different; we were supposed to come in pairs and we were supposed to dance. Something called the 'ballroom dance'.
When I saw two of the jounin's demostrating, the first thought which came was 'its just...swaying'; but I kept the thought to myself.
I took a glance at Kakashi, who was talking to a woman.
My eyebrows immediately shot up.
Kakashi never took interest in talking to people.
Unless they were his comrades.
And this woman looked like a chunin, based on her way too relaxed stance.
And she didn't look very special.
Long brown hair pulled up in a pony, large chocolate brown eyes, a prominent, horizontal scar across her nose.
Sure, she looked cute.
She had a sweet smile and a gentle vibe to her.
Suddenly a name flashed across my eyes. Iruka Umino.
She was the new chunin teacher at the academy.
Before I could think more, one of the jounin's started explaining the rules.
As we danced, we were to switch our partners after a certain interval.
I and Shisui paired up.
And she, as usual, was nervous.
I couldn't blame her.
Despite how graceful she was, she just couldn't dance. She was bad at it. Quite bad.
I chuckled quietly and straightened her back a little, pushed down her tense shoulders, and took her hand in mine and interwined our fingers.
And then we 'swayed'.
Our fingers fit together perfectly. The palm of my hand pressed against her waist, her hand clutching my shoulder, our bodies pressed together; it all felt right.
But when suddenly I had to change my partner, and another kunoichi landed in my arms, I began to feel uneasy.
The kunoichi knew the moves well but things were off; her waist didn't pinch at the right place, her hands were too small.
As we continued to dance, I began to worry about her.
'She doesn't know these jounin much. Is she comfortable with them? Only I know the way her body moves, I know the way her thoughts-'
Before I knew it, she was back in my arms.
She had a grin on her face.
So she had gotten back some of her confidence.
I twirled her and pulled her in a hug, her back pressed against my chest.
That's when I realised that we would look a little weird, considering that she was a inch taller than me.
But I couldn't care less.
She turned her head to look me in the eye.
"I love you" she said. The sincerity in her voice and the seriousness in her face told me that the confession was real.
For a moment I was quiet.
I never bothered to give a name to the relationship I and Shisui shared.
It wasn't the one couple's shared, no.
But it wasn't limited to your typical fondness between cousins either.
Whatever kind of love we shared, it was different; special.
So, I whispered back without hesitation "I love you too"
I pressed a kiss on the nape of neck and sighed in contentment.
I tuned out the rest of the world.
Only this moment mattered.
My arms around her body, the warmth of her body seeping into mine, our hearts beating in unison;
It was perfect.
Little did I know, that soon, both our lives would be destroyed beyond repair.
Even after I was so close to death, after I made sure that no one could tell Sasuke the truth, I could only think of one thing as darkness consumed me: would I see Shisui in the afterlife?
I am, at present, reminiscing.
Sitting on a endless stretch of green grass, a cloudless blue sky above.
So this is how afterlife looks like.
But there is still a hollow feeling inside.
I want to see Shisui... just once...
"Yah! What are you doing sitting there like a statue! I am here... SQUIRT!"