There was no one in Aunt Asa's house.

Aunt Asa herself had been moved to stay with my other aunties, who took turns watching her.

My relatives warned me that Aunt Asa was not doing too well. Aunt Asa had already lost her husband and her other sons. Shisui was her last child. When he was younger, she got antsy if he came home even a few minutes late.

Imagine how she reacted when he disappeared the first few days. Or when those days turned to weeks.

So I held my breath when I stood outside the door to Aunt Asa's room. I made myself knock.

"Come in!"

I slid open the door.

To my surprise, Aunt Asa looked…

Normal?

Sure, it was a little too late in the day to be wearing pajamas. And her hair did not look like it had been washed in a while, clipped back in a messy bun. But her expression was calm, and she looked very snug where she was, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a mug in her hands. The television was on.

She blinked.

"Ayae baby? That you?"

"Auntie Asa," I greeted, trying to smile. "I'm back from the Fire Capital."

"You are!" She set down the mug on the tatami. "Come in, come in!"

She hugged me, squishing me fully.

The rest of our conversation was normal too.

She asked me how I had been doing the past months. She complimented my hair. I showed her the snacks I brought her. She beamed, excitedly reading the ingredient labels.

Unlike Aunt Mikoto and all my other aunts, Aunt Asa wasn't gloomy at all.

It was only when Shisui got mentioned that she faltered. Her expression twisted.

Not into one of sadness, but one of rage.

Aunt Asa was so pissed.

She went into a rant almost immediately.

She did not know what type of prank Shisui was pulling, but a month? A MONTH!

When he got back, he was grounded. Meat.

He was sautéed vegetables.

Stir-fried noodles.

Grilled fish.

It was only then that I noticed the skillet pan that had been under the blanket with her all this time.

My mouth was open.

I closed it.

I threw out what I had planned to say.

Instead, I nodded, agreeing furiously.

"Yes, yes, doesn't he know it's very rude to not tell people where you're going! Look how worried it made everyone! Don't worry, Auntie Asa, I'll find him! I'll make sure you're together again!"

Aunt Asa had not expected to hear that.

I realized no one in the clan had given Aunt Asa those words, not even Aunt Mikoto.

Hearing me say them, Aunt Asa broke.

She immediately pulled me to her and hugged me tight, hugged me tight and refused to let go, rocking both of us.

Up until now, Aunt Asa had not cried.

There had been no one to cry with. There had been no one who understood.

With me, she could finally release all the pain in her heart.

"Please, Ayae baby. Please, please do." She wailed and hiccuped. "And when you do, tell him. Tell him that his mama is stupid and stubborn and bad at learning her lessons. Tell him I'm sorry. I'm so sorry…"

.

My relatives had to eventually come in and pull me away from Aunt Asa.

They repeated to me that Aunt Asa was unwell.

Her mind was not quite right anymore, and I shouldn't be making it worse.

I didn't try to argue with them.

I didn't tell them that they didn't need that many people hovering over Aunt Asa. That there was a difference between concerned family and prison guards.

I walked back to the main house.

"Wh—"

I kidnapped Sasuke.

I dropped him in the backyard.

I squatted, arms over my knees.

"Full story please."

Sasuke scrambled up. His immediate reaction was to yell at me to back off.

He never did. As he stared at me, more and more parts of him crumbled. And that was when he realized, he was glad I was here. He was relieved that someone in the family had finally come to talk to him about it. No one had bothered to talk to him about it.

Ever since I left, everyone had gone crazy. Nothing was the same anymore. It was like his whole world was falling apart.

He was a kid, but it didn't mean he was unaffected. He was a part of the clan and the family too.

As Sasuke told me everything, I was surprised by just how much he knew. The boy had very sharp eyes and ears, and he could sneak even better than most adults.

He told me about how the police came to his house announcing Shisui's suicide. How they suspected his brother, and his brother snapping. About Michio accusing Tomoe before running away. He blurted it out all so fast, I had barely processed one thing before he had already moved onto the next.

"And now father is acting weird and and—"

"One thing at a time," I said, dizzy.

Sasuke held back a scream of frustration.

"I forgot how stupid you were," he said, wanting to claw his face.

"Yes, I'm a dum-dum," I whined. "Let's start with Shisui. Can you tell me what happened with him?"

Sasuke took a big breath.

Calming himself, he found a stick.

"Shisui drowned himself in the Naka river. There was a suicide note." Using the stick, Sasuke wrote it out for me in the dirt.

Tilting my head, I read it.

I'm tired of the duties.

There is no future for the Uchiha.

And me, I can no longer follow this path.

"That's what Shisui wrote?" I double-checked.

"Word for word." Sasuke crossed his arms. "I swear."

I looked at the words again.

"They said it was his handwriting," Sasuke said.

"Yeah, no, it's definitely him," I confirmed.

Sasuke's gaze snapped to me.

I shrugged. I worked under Shisui. I had filed enough paperwork to recognize his writing style.

I pointed to the words in the dirt. "So the first line refers to police duties, obviously. He's complained about it for as long as I can remember. I guess the third line is… he doesn't want to do it anymore?"

I stared harder.

I squinted.

"Did he quit and go on vacation or something?" I mumbled to myself.

Sasuke stared at me like I was insane.

"And the second line?" Sasuke demanded.

"No idea," I lied.

Sasuke was about to call me out on it.

"Okay, some idea," I admitted. I looked at him. "Why do you think he drowned again?"

"Did you hear what I said?" Sasuke snapped. "They found the note by the river."

"Uh-huh."

Sasuke did not like where I was going with this.

"So if I have this correctly, Shisui went missing. And all we've got is this one note. Which happened to be found near a river."

"Yes."

"And from that, you concluded he drowned himself and died?"

I pinched the bridge of my nose. I swear, the heart attack this kid had given me.

I had really been bracing for the worst.

You know, like blood and corpses and... I don't know, ghosts?

"Any other reason you think this is a suicide note and not a resignation letter?"

As far as I could tell, this was exactly the type of peace out I'd expect from Shisui. My only surprise was he kept it so professional. Really thought he'd tell Uncle Yashiro to kiss his ass.

Sasuke was speechless.

He reread what he had written down. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at the note again.

Sasuke was a smart kid. He didn't need me to explain how the math wasn't mathing, his face already turning red with embarrassment.

"It's… but they… it's what they said!"

"Who?"

"The adults. From the police station, Uncle Yashiro and Uncle Inabi and Uncle Tekka!"

I pouted. Uncle Tekka too? That was disappointing.

"I didn't make it up! They were the ones who told Brother it was a suicide by drowning. And everyone else…"

… also acted like that was what happened. I had seen his mom's reaction at breakfast. He didn't need to say more. I was not going to blame Sasuke for reading people correctly.

Had I not visited Aunt Asa myself, I would have believed it too.

I sighed.

I got serious, sitting cross-legged.

"Sasuke, as your big sister, I need to teach you something important."

I patted the dirt next to me.

Sasuke didn't take the invitation, preferring to stand. He waited for me to go on.

I took a big breath.

"When facing something big and confusing, people don't see reality. We see the reality we want to see." I pointed to myself. "Me, I really want to believe that everyone and everything is good. And so, when not-so-good things happen, I… have a very hard time making sense of it. I tell myself the not-so-good thing must be part of an even bigger, better good, and I'm just too stupid to see it. But… that doesn't say so much about reality, as it does about me."

Sasuke knitted his eyebrows.

"So what you're saying is… you're delusional."

"Very delulu," I said solemnly.

Sasuke closed his mouth.

"So Shisui is dead," he hissed. "You're just in denial like Aunt Asa. Both of you are so bad at controlling your emotions, you can't face facts!"

I raised an eyebrow.

"Facts being… this one note." I pointed to the dirt.

I waited as Sasuke tried to come up with a snappy comeback.

But the longer Sasuke stared at the note, the more it broke his brain, as my interpretation and the clan's interpretation began to blur.

And I could see the moment Sasuke came to really, really hate Shisui with all his guts. Thinking this was the exact type of chaos Shisui would sow. Demanding why he couldn't have written something more clear. For all the trouble he was causing us, he owed us that. If Shisui wanted to kill himself, at least be straightforward about it.

"You want to draw your own conclusions, Sasuke, but the note itself is inconclusive. To make a conclusion, you have to make a leap in logic." I made a hopping motion with my arm.

There was only one person being objective right now. And that was, annoyingly enough, Sasuke's dad. He was the most clear-eyed about the situation, when he said the investigation was ongoing.

Everyone else made assumptions.

"If you assume Shisui is a perfect shinobi, then yeah. The only conclusion is that he died. After all, wouldn't the perfect shinobi tell his superiors where he is? Wouldn't he be reporting to work? The only explanation why he's not here is that he died. He must have sacrificed himself to protect us from something dangerous. Or maybe someone killed him."

Judging from Sasuke's reaction, I had struck a chord.

I continued.

"But let's say someone doesn't care what kind of shinobi Shisui is. What if they just want him to be alive. They want him to be alive so badly, they are willing to accept any version of him that lives, even if that means wildly changing everything they thought they knew about him. In that case, assuming Shisui is alive, what's the simplest conclusion?"

Sasuke said nothing.

He had already got it, everything locking in place, even the questions he hadn't thought were related.

"He quit," Sasuke said emptily. "He's missing."

Missing, as in missing-nin missing.

I knew how scary it was for your world to fall apart. But I felt it was my responsibility. To help him connect the last dots. To be with him through it. Thankfully, Sasuke, on top of being smarter than me, was also braver than me.

"Remember how I said, people see what they want to see?" I said softly. "Well, here, everyone also picks the assumption that best suits them."

It made sense to me that our clan would quickly announce a suicide. I couldn't imagine how they'd explain to Konoha otherwise. The amount of embarrassment they'd be under. The questions they'd have to ask themselves.

The note didn't reveal anything about Shisui. But it revealed everything about us:

The clan would rather have a dead child than a problematic one.

It took some time but Sasuke began to understand.

The meaning of Shisui's second line.