The Pain of Living

Cradling his baby brother, Itachi drifts into memory. After the Nine-Tails devastated the village, the Konoha Council debates resettlement with the assembled clan heads, and both the Aburame and the Uchiha are moved to a new quarter. Villagers still greet Fugaku warmly along the streets, and Itachi tells his father he is proud to walk beside him. The two set out for dumplings only to find the shop cleaned out, then run into Izumi, who frets that she let his promotion pass without a gift. Beside a lake she presses her own dumplings on him until Tenma appears with orders.

Team 2 reports to Nekobaa, who sends them after one specific ninja cat. Tenma cares more than his squadmates, since the animal's whiskers are an ingredient for medicine to treat his ailing father. The cat claws Yūki and drops the rest of the group, but Itachi corners the creature and yanks Tenma clear when he lunges for the whiskers. Heading home, Shinko scolds Tenma for skipping his thanks and needles Itachi for hiding behind mission talk when the four of them are truly friends.

The recollection darkens as Itachi remembers a masked assailant, revealed later as Obito, cutting Tenma down on a separate assignment. That grief stirs his Sharingan to life, and the infant Sasuke catches the red glint in his brother's eyes. Itachi quietly wonders whether the same power will one day surface in Sasuke.