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NAJ Chapter 115: The Path I Chose for You
🕑 Added 2025-08-03 17:24:11 +0000 UTCIn the classroom where white feathers still floated gently down…
“Guh—cough, cough, cough…”
Sasuke clung tightly to Uchiha Itachi’s arm, trying to pry it away.
But even though Itachi’s build wasn’t particularly bulky, his grip around Sasuke’s neck was like a steel vice—utterly unbreakable, no matter how hard Sasuke struggled.
The suffocating pressure was turning Sasuke’s face red and then blue.
His small body was lifted clean off the floor—
held up effortlessly with one hand by Uchiha Itachi.
“Sasuke… Uchiha Keizumi’s [Absolute Justice] doesn’t suit you. Or rather—that ideology doesn’t belong in Konoha.”
“It clashes with the Will of Fire. Its existence will only drag Konoha into endless civil strife.”
Itachi’s eyes gleamed—a scarlet Sharingan, spinning with three tomoe.
“Look at Shimura Danzō, whom he killed. Look at the entire Shimura clan, whom he wiped out. Look at the kin he slaughtered—
and look at the fear ordinary villagers feel toward him.”
“My foolish little otōto… Why do you always disappoint me so much?”
“If you insist on believing in this so-called Absolute Justice…”
“Then I’ll make you kill someone with your own hands.”
“The moment your hands are stained with blood—you’ll no longer be worthy of claiming to believe in such a thing.”
“And only then… will you be able to walk the true, correct path to your future.”
“And once you’re abandoned by justice…”
“You’ll witness with your own eyes how I wipe out the Uchiha clan—every last one of them.”
“Of course…”
“There’s a part of what I just said… that you’ll never remember. You’ll only be left with burning hatred—clinging to life like a stray dog, barely hanging on.”
Sasuke’s eyes, already wide open, widened further.
“Kh… cough, cough! Uchi…ha… Itachi…!”
His face flushed red with effort. Forcing out each word took everything he had.
“You’ve… truly… gone insane!”
In Sasuke’s eyes, a single tomoe Sharingan had begun to faintly emerge.
Staring directly into Sasuke’s gaze, Itachi’s lips curled into the faintest of smiles—so faint that even Sasuke, just centimeters away, could hardly see it.
‘Yes… That’s the kind of hatred I need from you, Sasuke. Only hatred like this can awaken the true power in our Uchiha bloodline. Compared to that, Uchiha Keizumi’s so-called Absolute Justice is nothing.’
‘The path I choose for you is the only one that fits you best. Forgive me, Sasuke… One day, you’ll uncover the truth. And when that day comes, you’ll understand everything I’ve done.’
‘But even if you never do… it doesn’t matter. As long as I know I did it all for your sake… that’s enough.’
‘After all, I never expected emotional repayment for my sacrifice.’
Though Itachi’s face remained expressionless on the surface, the turmoil in his heart at this moment was no less intense than the storm raging in Sasuke’s.
He briefly closed his eyes—forcing back the surge of emotion, and with it, the tears that had nearly escaped.
By the time he opened them again, Sasuke was on the verge of passing out—his eyes rolling back, his body twitching from lack of air.
Only then did Itachi loosen his grip on Sasuke’s throat—just a little.
Suddenly—
A small hand shot in from the side and grabbed Itachi’s wrist.
“…Hmm?!”
...
[BOOM!!!]
A thunderous explosion rang out from within the Ninja Academy, startling Konoha’s already on-edge shinobi. The noise especially alarmed the Academy instructors.
“That sounded like it came from Iruka’s class!”
Several teachers dropped what they were doing and rushed over—
Only to spot, outside the classroom window, an ANBU-clad shinobi unconscious and slumped over a tree branch.
Before they had time to fully register that, the wall of Iruka’s classroom exploded outward with a deafening crash!
A shadowy figure was flung through the crumbling rubble—
from the outfit, it looked like another ANBU operative.
Then—another figure came barreling straight out of Iruka’s class.
Wait a minute…
Was that… a red fox?!
“Hold on!”
One of the teachers’ pupils contracted sharply as he stared at the red figure’s retreating back. He muttered, “Isn’t that the demon fox brat… Uzumaki Naruto?!”
Though his voice was soft, all the teachers nearby heard him loud and clear.
They froze in place, a chill running down their spines.
In an instant, the horrifying memory of the Nine-Tails Incident from seven years ago flashed through their minds.
Many of them had lived through it firsthand.
Some had barely escaped with their lives that night.
That terror had never left them.
“…This is bad!!!”
…
Not far away—
“Keizumi-sama, sounds like something’s happening over there.”
A cat’s ears were always sharper than a human’s.
Tachibana Jirō gave the warning before leaping high from Izumi’s shoulder.
When he landed, he almost knocked the girl over.
With a stern look on his feline face, Tachibana Jirō said, “Looks like the Ninja Academy. Seems like two shinobi are fighting inside.”
“The Academy?” Izumi didn’t even have time to grumble at Jirō’s usual drama. She gasped. “Isn’t today a school day?”
“Keep up, rookie.” Uchiha Keizumi threw the words over his shoulder and immediately dashed toward the Ninja Academy.
“Eh?! Senpai—wait up!”
The Uchiha Police Force was, of course, responsible for maintaining public order in Konoha.
And Uchiha Keizumi wasn’t killing people every waking moment.
If he were, the entire village population wouldn’t be enough to keep him busy.
More often than not, Keizumi patrolled the village as an officer of the Uchiha Police Force, keeping the peace.
So when a commotion broke out at the Ninja Academy—
Naturally, he had to go investigate.
“You don’t think this has something to do with Naruto and Sasuke, do you?”
The girl chasing after Keizumi muttered with concern as she struggled to keep up.
Tachibana Jirō replied, “Meow—those two brats? No way they could cause this kind of scene.”
“But… isn’t Naruto a Jinchūriki?” Izumi said hesitantly.
Tachibana Jirō’s face stiffened.
He yanked hard on a lock of her trailing hair and snapped, “Rookie! Shut that jinx mouth of yours!
Do you even know what happens when a Jinchūriki loses control?!”
Izumi’s expression darkened, her tone heavy. “My father died in the last Nine-Tails incident… That night, I awakened my three-tomoe Sharingan.”
Tachibana Jirō: “…”
Meow! How the hell did I forget that?!
Damn it—I'm the worst!
…
“The Nine-Tails… the Jinchūriki…”
Uchiha Itachi retreated a step, then leapt onto the roof of one of the Academy buildings.
From above, he looked down at Uzumaki Naruto, now completely engulfed in swirling red chakra.
Itachi’s brows furrowed.
This situation was completely outside his expectations.
Naruto had definitely been trapped in a genjutsu earlier—
so how had he suddenly broken free?
And why had he unleashed such overwhelming chakra?
“…Did the seal suppressing the Tailed Beast weaken?”
But something about it didn’t feel right.
Because Uzumaki Naruto didn’t look like he’d lost control.
Even though the red chakra around him was chaotic and violent, Itachi could still see a flicker of clarity in the young Jinchūriki’s eyes.
“This… This looks more like he’s drawing on the Tailed Beast’s chakra!”
Itachi’s heart trembled slightly.
He didn’t know much about Jinchūriki, but even he understood that this kind of synchronization—this level of harmony—was something that only came from a deep bond with the Tailed Beast.
“It’s certainly powerful… But at your age, there’s no way you can harness that power’s full potential.”
“And even if you look like you’re still in control…
Better safe than sorry.”
“Go to sleep.”
In an instant, the three-tomoe Sharingan in Itachi’s eyes spun—transforming into the Mangekyō.
And the moment their eyes met—the illusion from the Mangekyō was immediately implanted into Naruto’s body.
…
“Hmph… Mangekyō Sharingan…”
Inside the sealed space, Kurama’s eyes suddenly narrowed, but it quickly gave a subtle shake of its head.
“No… it’s different. This isn’t the same Mangekyō Sharingan as back then.”
Kurama had the ability to break through Uchiha Itachi’s Mangekyō illusion cast on Naruto—
all it needed to do was use its chakra to disrupt the brat’s chakra flow.
But the moment it remembered this damn brat’s cocky attitude from earlier…
Kurama couldn’t help baring its fangs in irritation.
“Hmph!”
With a cold snort, Kurama let Naruto’s eyes roll back and his body go limp as he collapsed to the ground.
…
“Hah… cough!”
Uchiha Itachi let out a light cough.
Even just using a single illusion from the Mangekyō—not Tsukuyomi, not Amaterasu—still left his body feeling weak and hollow.
He glanced at the Academy teachers in the distance, then at Iruka’s classroom, where the walls now had two massive holes blown through them.
Though a bit unwilling, he knew the commotion had gotten too big.
It wouldn’t be long before more people arrived.
“Some things do need to happen earlier than planned… But even if they do, there’s still a full year of buffer left. Sasuke, we have plenty of time. You won’t escape it…”
Itachi murmured to himself. After releasing all the genjutsu, his figure vanished in an instant.
And at that exact moment—
Sasuke stumbled out from Iruka’s classroom, one hand gripping his throat, the other braced against the wall.
“Cough… Dead last… cough, cough!”
The lingering discomfort in his throat and the earlier suffocation left his head spinning.
Still, he forced himself to the corridor,
glancing once more at the two gaping holes torn through the classroom wall.
Sasuke raised his head and looked through one of the openings.
He didn’t see the Uchiha who had already strayed down a dark path.
But he did see Naruto, collapsed on the ground not far away.
“Damn it… What are you interfering for, dead last?! This had nothing to do with you… cough!”
Sasuke grumbled bitterly, but still staggered toward where Naruto lay.
By the time Sasuke reached him, Naruto was already surrounded by several Ninja Academy instructors.
“You’re…”
One of the teachers seemed to sense something.
Turning around and seeing Sasuke, he said thoughtfully, “You’re that genius from Iruka’s class—Uchiha Sasuke?!”
Sasuke: “…”
The word “genius” struck a nerve.
If he were truly a genius, how could he have been so helpless against Uchiha Itachi?
How could he have been completely overpowered, choked half to death with just one hand and unable to resist at all?
A real genius…
An image flashed through Sasuke’s mind—that strange red chakra that had wrapped around Naruto just moments ago.
A faintly pale hue crossed his young face, his expression becoming subtly complicated—then shifting into a deep, burning anticipation.
If even the dead last could receive such power from the blessing of Absolute Justice… Then what about me?
“What exactly happened in Iruka’s class?
Where’s Iruka?” the teacher pressed again.
Sasuke replied in a hoarse voice, “He was put under genjutsu. Everyone in the class got knocked out—only me and the dead—Uzumaki Naruto woke up.”
