Notes: I owe readers of Fifth Life, Story of the Year, and Second Life a huge apology for falling off the face of the earth. I can only say that I don't exercise much control over my muse, and it is my fault for not writing when it was there – even though I had no free time then. But I'm leaving those stories here, for as long as there is a chance that I will return to them.

This is not a chapter in the strictest sense, but a prologue, where the notes may be longer than usual. The chapters that follow are more like episodic snapshots, not necessarily in chronological order. The narrator's age will be given at the top.

Words kept in Japanese: the suffixes, and (hypocritically for me), the words for Father (Chichi-ue) and Mother (Haha-ue)

Notes before reading:

What if the characters in Naruto!verse lived in an AU similar to feudal Japan? Note: "Similar" does not mean "the same as." I have borrowed elements from it, but mostly the setting is based on Konoha and my imagination.

What if the Uchiha Clan had been loyal and Itachi was the one with radical, if justified, ideas? This is not so far-fetched, given that this was what most of us believed before the recent revelations in canon.

What if the Inuzuka moved into the Uchiha compound? And why would they?

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All clans have pride, even the small ones. My clan had only three members then, mostly Haha-ue and I, but she taught it to me, the difference between pride and arrogance: how to walk with dignity and treat others with dignity, even though sometimes they didn't seem deserving of respect. How to eke out a living on your own, and live poorly but with integrity rather than steal or settle for becoming a parasite. There was only one situation, according to Haha-ue, in which it was all right to put pride aside for a time, but never to wholly cast it away.

Pride, I think, was the reason we took so long to change the location of our home. That winter, Haha-ue had only me, five years old and so reticent that strangers thought I was either slow or mute – and she was growing heavy with an unborn child. The war had taken Chichi-ue, three months ago. There were many like us, once self-sufficient clans, who were compelled to trade their knowledge and services for shelter when the money ran low. There was no shame in honorable survival. Walk with pride, Haha-ue told me, and I knew she was proud of me – that I had learned to hold myself the way she wanted. Even so, I knew that she was setting down clan pride for now, for only one reason: the baby. As we waited in the room, the silken borders of the tatami making me a little faint, I wondered – would she have done this for me? Would I have done this for my brother or my baby?

The answer resonated at my temples, thrumming through my veins with each steady thump of my heart. Yes. Of course. A million times over.

Fugaku-sama was the one who had to approve of us, and he did so with as few words as possible. But Mikoto-sama, his wife, was the first one outside of my clan to smile at me and say to Haha-ue not, "Does she talk?" but, "You have a fine-looking daughter, Tsume. One day she will become a great beauty and break so many hearts."

Haha-ue had bowed and said words of thanks. I also bowed and followed Haha-ue out at a sedate pace. Mikoto-sama, I decided, was silly and sentimental, if kind. Why had she complimented my face? I had nothing to do with how it looked; all my features were there and arranged just so because of nothing I had done. And why should I break hearts? What purpose could that serve?

Regardless of my confusion, Haha-ue and I and the baby were safe. We had a roof over our heads. Even I had a job, as the mistress of the hounds. We had landlords and employers, the Uchiha. And we kept our pride small and alive.

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