"Once upon a time, in the not-so-far-off past, two great and powerful men put their differences aside to create the first shinobi village. They solved the war problem, and that was all well and good, but other problems (such as hunger and sickness) didn't magically disappear. As they tried to find a solution, many families starved. Such was the case for the boy in this story.
"Yasashī came from one of the poorest Uchiha families. He was a four-year-old boy who liked to pick berries, catch beetles, and help his big brother fish at the lake. Everyone who knew him loved him, and that is why he's still missed today.
"One morning, long before the sun came up, this little boy decided to go to the lake and catch fish to feed his family. He saw his brother do it so many times that he felt safe. Although Yasashī managed to catch a fish large enough to feed his whole household, the fish was stronger than he was and pulled him into the water. Since this all happened in the dead of morning, that time of day when only the insomniacs remained awake, nobody heard him scream.
"He drowned, dear child. It wasn't until hours later that anyone noticed his tiny body floating around the river, moving in circles because the fish was still on the lure."
…
It was a quiet day: a sleepy spring Saturday morning with old fog leaving its residue across the whole world as a damp mist. Remnants floated over the water: temporarily turning one of Mikoto's favorite places to sneak out for some peace and quiet into a remote, alien world. She relished such moments.
"Is that a red bean bun?"
Mikoto turned her head around and grinned in delight as soon as her older brother became visible. "I brought some for you, too, nii-san," she chirped happily. "One for you, one for me…"
"And an extra," Yori pointed out. "You're a big girl, Mi-chan. If you don't know how to count–"
"Hush." Mikoto cuffed Yori's shoulder and threw the third bun into the lake. It hit the water with a heavy plop and sank, quickly eaten by the hungry fish. "The third one's for the lake boy, genius! It's tradition!"
That's how the story went in her family. A boy died and kids under a certain age needed to pacify his angry spirit by offering him food. Failure to do so could be deadly, as it would irk the ghost and leave him hungry…and the dead could be so very creative when it came to whetting their appetites.
Mikoto could have sworn she saw the ghost before: a tiny little figure curled up as a shady ball at the edge of the dock in the earliest hours of morning. As soon as she came close, though, everything vanished, all as though he'd never been there at all.
Yori swore he never saw anything and wanted to call his kid sister on her tall tales. Right now, all he did was roll his eyes at Mikoto before taking a seat beside her. His bare feet touched the cool water and a couple of minnows swam toward his toes within seconds. "Don't tell me you still believe in ghosts. You're such a baby."
"Kaede-nee believes in them and she's a year older than you. I don't see you giving her any lip for believing in ghosts and spirits."
"Kaede's weird," Yori responded frankly. "You don't want to be like Kaede, do you?"
Sure, Kaede believed. Most of the little kids did, too, but ugh. It was beginning to become a pain. So many of them were too scared to go anywhere near the water because their parents (or someone else) told them about the ghost. Yori had no interest in ghosts or bogeymen. Those things didn't exist in his world. There wasn't any point in viewing the world as a place with monsters; people were perfectly capable of being horrible enough on their own.
"No. No, I don't. I just…" Mikoto leaned her head on the older boy's shoulder and sighed. "It kind of makes the place that much more special, doesn't it? Thinking there's a spirit out here?"
Yori glanced down at her, noting all the wonder and enchantment in his sister's big black eyes. A cute ruddiness spread into her cheeks. Not too long ago, she took her nii-san at his word for just about everything under the sun. So gullible, she was. So easy to dupe with silly stories.
His response to all of this was to push her into the water.
…
"Can you imagine what it must have been like to be Yasashī in his final moments? I heard the fish was strong enough to pop the poor kid's arms out of socket. He never stood a chance, even if he did know how to swim.
"The fish weighed at least three times more than he did and it wanted to go all the way to the bottom of the lake. It dragged him down and as he tried to scream for help, all he got instead was more and more water in his lungs.
"I'm starting to understand why he'd hate us all. We're a negligent, self-righteous lot who only make a lot of noise after the fact: not when it actually counts."
…
Sanjo sat on the dock with a fishing pole, trying to keep his little sister's interest. Sengen wasn't terribly enthused. Her attention was more toward the jar of umeboshi, which she kept popping into her mouth. "Hideo. Hey. Knock it off, would you? You're scaring away the fish."
But his little brother wasn't paying him much heed. Hideo and Sengen both would be five soon, meaning the twins would surpass the age of the dead kid in the lake. "Will he scare off the Lake Boy, too, nii-san?" Sengen asked.
Every time he looked at his sister for too long, he could still see the long-term damage Kaede caused her and it made him angry all over again. Sengen needed a thick pair of glasses to see and would probably always be a weak child. Their parents were even thinking about keeping her out of Academy because they couldn't, in good conscience, foresee a future with their little girl becoming a shinobi. Not with the sheer amount of health problems Sengen had.
"Who told you about that?" Whoever it was, Sanjo wanted to throttle them. "You're not old enough to hear that kind of talk, Sengen."
Hideo continued to stomp around in the water, determined to catch an entire cup full of minnows. So long as he didn't go out too deep into the water, Sanjo wasn't going to intervene. He knew how to swim. He'd pulled a few attempted suicides out of the rivers around the village a few times already as part of his job. At least he could leave the corpses to Yashiro.
"I wanna," Sengen informed him. "And Kaede-san–"
"Kaede's dangerous. A ghost's not," Sanjo growled. "You can talk to as many ghosts as you want, kiddo. But you need to stay the hell away from Kaede. You hear me?"
Sengen shrugged. He supposed that was as good an answer as any.
"Hideo." The little boy stared up at his big brother and beamed. "Get out of the water. We're going home." The boy obeyed, scampering back to dry land. He dripped and his shoes squelched with every self-satisfactory step. "You're gross. You know that?" Hideo didn't care. He darted back to their family's small home. "So gross."
Sengen tugged on her big brother's shirt and expectantly held out her arms so he could carry her. Considering her legs were in braces and she tired easily, he wouldn't begrudge her.
"Promise me you won't come out here by yourself. I don't want you falling in the water when I'm not there to pull you out."
"Because of the Lake Boy?"
"Sure. Why not?" She'd already heard the story. There wasn't any more damage he could do by telling her a bit more. "Coming out here and goofing off like Hideo did pisses him off. He can't do that kind of fun shit anymore. Yasashī–"
"That's his name?"
"Hn. Yeah. Yasashī won't do anything if you come out here with a parent or an older sibling because we scare him off; but you're weak and little, Sengen. If you're at the lake by yourself, he'll grab you by the ankles and drag you down to a watery grave."
He felt his sister's tiny arms wrap tightly around him. "But I won't let him, alright? So long as you have Sanjo nii-san, nothing's gonna happen to you."
…
"I heard your learned how to summon Danzō-sama's Baku." Kaede flicked the butt of her cigarette against the dock and watched ashes touch the water. "I'm sure you're pleased with yourself."
Mikuro said nothing. He just continued to sit downwind of his teammate's smoke and took another bite of his pork bun. Kaede brought the entire bamboo steamer outside so her team could enjoy a late spring lunch together. She'd hoped for more conversation, but it worried her. She'd never seen Mikuro behave so strangely.
While he'd never exactly been a social butterfly, Mikuro wasn't an introvert by nature. Since he mastered that pact, he'd turned nearly reclusive. They only ever saw him on missions anymore. Even then, he was so quiet that it worried her. This wasn't the same boy she used to fancy.
"I wonder if any other yokai can make pacts with humans and become something we can summon." She'd always taken fascination with such stories. "Even a tired old god nobody worships anymore would be nice."
The dark glance Mikuro gave her wasn't welcome. 'Whatever happened to you, I'm worried for you. Can't you see that?' Kaede wanted to reach out and hug him, but she knew him well enough to know that wouldn't be appreciated. Especially not with Neyuki right there.
"My clan has spirit stories, too," she insisted. Fireflies flickered in the air: letting off a fleeting glow in the twilight. "A boy drowned in this lake and he stayed there for hours before anyone noticed. It wasn't that his family didn't care about him or anything like that. No, not at all…
"It happened because he didn't know how to swim and a big fish pulled him into the water. I heard the fish was larger than a grown man and that even a boy twice as old as he was couldn't reel it in. Poor little Yasashī never stood a chance, is what I'm trying to get at. He was helpless against the water and the fish and that's why he died out here."
Mikuro turned to face the Uchiha girl, giving her a somber, concerned expression. The story didn't scare him. He grew up hearing stuff like this from the other kids in his clan. The Shimura Clan very much believed in spirits and ghosts. It just…it carried a different, blood-chilling sort of weight when he heard it in Kaede's words. It was almost as though she reveled in it.
"He's jealous of the living and the only way to keep him from attacking you is to feed him. The whole reason he came out here in the first place was because he was hungry and he still is. Give him a red bean bun or a dumpling and he'll go away…and you'll be safe."
"Is that why you packed extra in the steamer?" Neyuki inquired. "Four buns. There's only three of us."
For the life of him, Mikuro couldn't understand why the hell his Inuzuka teammate found Kaede's fascination with the occult cute and endearing. It was unsettling. Disturbing, even. Kaede placed the bun on the edge of the dock and went back to smoking.
"You aren't gonna put it in?" Now Neyuki was confused. "I thought you wanted him to leave."
"There's one thing I want more," the Uchiha insisted. "I want to see him, at least once. I've been doing this for years, wondering how long it would be before I caught a glimpse of him." Then came a chuckle. "You hear that, Yasashī-kun? I'm not afraid of you. I'm daring you to show yourself!"
Mikuro stood up and gestured for Neyuki to fall behind. "I'll leave you to it, then."
"Aww! Come on Mikuro-kun! We rarely see you anymore! You're–"
His brow furrowed. A quick huff of air left his lips and he shook his head. "I'm starting to think there's something seriously wrong with you, Kaede. That kid probably has surviving family members. I bet you anything they don't appreciate you making a mockery of his death for your own morbid entertainment."
"What? Hey! Mikuroooo!" She reached out, but the boys were leaving. In annoyance, Kaede reached for her half-eaten bun and chucked it at him. She missed, of course, but she was seething.
And it wasn't Yasashī who came to the dock after Mikuro and Neyuki ventured off. "Kaede?" The girl turned around to see Sarani-sama: husband to the clan head. She blinked very quickly in confusion and patted a seat beside herself on the tired old wood.
The man obliged, but Kaede couldn't recall a time where Sarani-sama didn't look exhausted. He was a small, slight man with tired eyes behind a pair of glasses. While she saw bits and pieces of Fugaku in him, it still privately amazed her that the father of someone so strong could look so frail. "Yes, Sarani-sama…?"
The man sat next to her, but didn't make eye contact. His eyes went instead toward the body of water with a sense of familiarity and grief that gave the girl a chill. "I don't know who told the Lake Boy story first, but I'll never forgive them. They had no right to turn a personal family tragedy into something so irreverent."
'A family tragedy…?' Surely, he couldn't mean–
"My little brother was a gentle boy who never hurt anyone. He deserved better than to be remembered like this."
Oh god. Mikuro was right. He still had family!
"I remember a time when you were too scared to go near that lake without an adult nearby. You didn't even want to learn how to swim because you were afraid my brother's angry ghost would drag you into the water and never let you leave."
That, he remembered all too well. Naho wandered off to talk to his wife and left her child unsupervised. Kaede did fall into the water and it was a solid two minutes before anyone realized where she was. The moment Tatsumi noticed his little girl, he dove in and pulled her out protectively. Sometime later, Sarani heard him not only yell at the child but tell her about Yasashī as some sick sort of precautionary tale.
"He wasn't a monster and he certainly didn't become one after he died. Yasashī was my baby brother and he would have loved you had he lived long enough to meet you. There's nothing in that lake conspiring to drown Uchiha children because he's angry…or lonely…or anything. He's…"
She could hear Sarani's voice shake. All she could feel in that moment was childish shame and guilt, never realizing her idea of morbid entertainment and a cheap thrill would hurt this gentle man.
"He's dead," Sarani finally whispered. He took off his glasses to dab at an eye. "And no amount of rehashing or butchering the truth will change that or make him any more present in that body of water than he already is. So please. Will you stop?"
…
"But in the end, he's just a lonely little boy who can't move on. He died waiting for his big brother to save him, but his brother never came. And now he never will, because he grew old and died.
"Yasashī will wait forever if he has to, but please don't tell him about his brother. Give him sweets. Give him attention. Give him your words so he can listen. If you're a lonely child, too, he'll understand.
"And if you're good enough company, you can distract him from the fact you'll sleep in a warm futon at night while he remains in the cold water. But whenever you need him, you'll know where to find him. It's not like he'll ever leave.
"Not until we find Sarani-sama's body and bring him home, too, and Fugaku-sama swore he'd do that…"
…
The foil rattled the instant he opened the bag. A delicious-smelling puff of air greeted his senses, causing his stomach to growl. Excitedly, he stuffed a flake of barbecue-flavored gold into his mouth and grinned in gustatory glee. That tangy-sweet taste was a personal favorite.
In the summertime, the water remained pleasantly cool to the touch. His legs were (finally) long enough to have everything below the ankle dip beneath the surface. Some of the aquatic plants tickled the bottom of his feet. At the far edge, a mother duck attempted to teach her babies to swim. Perhaps, once he was done with his snack, he'd throw the remnants into the water and feed them.
He had a convenience store daifuku on hand, still in its packaging, but the rosy pink treat wasn't for him. The sweet served as a gift for the company he sensed but never saw. Some things, he wished he still had parents to talk to. His grandmother loved him, but she'd tease him for this if she knew. The older boys, like Inabi and Yuuya, would openly mock him.
And the clan head…Fugaku wouldn't get it. He'd leave the boy feeling guilty because the focus of his affection was outside the clan.
Sure, Obito supposed he could talk to his parents at the house shrine and leave them an orange; but the Lake Boy was another kid. Maybe Yasashī was too little to understand what he was experiencing; but he wasn't so far removed from his own childhood that he'd forgotten how special he felt when older boys confided in him.
"I wasn't sure who else could keep a secret half as well as you can, Yasashī. You've kept so many for me over the years."
'Just listen to me: rambling like a silly old man.' But he knew every silly old man in the village! D-Rank Mission or otherwise, he'd made it one of his life's goals to help the elderly at all costs. They had done so much for this village and their families. Surely each one of them deserved a comfortable retirement.
He'd heard it, though: the tired old men who bemoaned the paths not taken in life. The largest recurring lamentation came in unspoken or unrequited love. At present, Obito's remained the former for fear of it becoming the latter as soon as he uttered the words aloud.
"Do you remember Rin?" If Yasashī existed, he was certain the dead boy would recall a girl as cute and sweet as Rin was. "I took her out here to skip stones when we were little." What was he saying? He was only twelve! That hardly made him a grown man!
"She's my best friend in the whole world and I hope nothing ever changes that." He touched the daifuku and peeled open the plastic packaging. "But there's something about me she doesn't know, and I'm afraid that if she finds out…"
Like a skipping stone, he threw the sweet into the water and watched as it dove down like a rock. "I'm in love, Yasashī. I want to be with her forever. But Rin might not feel the way I do and she's outside the clan, and…
"…I get it. I do. It doesn't matter how much time passes. This is something you'll never understand because you'll always be a little kid. You didn't live long enough to feel like I do, but I had to tell someone."
The ducks swam closer and he dumped the whole bag of chips. "It might as well be you. No one else listens."
…
'But they're all dead now…just like him. Will he go with them, too, and leave me all alone?'
…
It wasn't Sasuke's first time out here, nor would it be his last. Back when his father was too busy to pay attention to anything other than work, and his big brother was so far out of reach; he'd occasionally see a curly-haired woman sitting on the dock with candles and entire plates of food: nauseating sweets for as far as his young eyes could see.
She chanted things under her breath: sobbing and imploring the clan's most famous ghost to return her missing boy to her. Her entire body shook in anguish as she hugged herself, nails digging deep into her elaborate fuchsia brocades until Sasuke saw cherry-red spots grow and seep into the fabric. The instant he tried to approach, wanting to talk to the woman, Mikoto pulled him back inside and told him that lady was dangerous.
He found out about the ghost later, and that lots of lonely kids in the clan left him offerings to show that he was still loved and would never be forgotten. Now Sasuke wondered if all the food and candles in the world would be enough to convey his love for all the new ghosts. His entire clan, save Itachi and himself, now consisted of nothing but the slaughtered innocent masses.
Sasuke loved them all, even when they didn't pay him much heed. Even when they compared him to Itachi and made him feel second-rate and second-loved, and even when they were too busy to pay attention…
Even the scary ones who showed up at the house and accused Itachi of killing Shisui: he now realized how right they probably were. This whole time, he loved his nii-san and idolized him, oblivious to the amount of hate and animosity that bubbled just beneath Itachi's placid surface.
He'd fallen asleep at the waterfront a few times, especially now that he was the only living soul remaining. And he swore his eyes played tricks on him, because he could have sworn another Uchiha boy smiled at him from the other side of the water. He truly would be alone once he set out to make things right again. They didn't need food, bitter tears, and a lifetime of heartbroken devotion. They needed retribution.
It wasn't only hate consuming him. Along with his anguish was the cool, welcoming sensation of the water all around his tiny body. He didn't need a ghost to drag him down.
He'd find those depths all on his own.