We're Different. | The Other Uchiha ✓ (Boruto)

Match in the Rain

The morning had started like any other.

Boruto showed up first, kicking a stray stone near their usual meeting spot, hands shoved deep into his pockets.

Y/n stood there already, arms folded, her eyes distant. When Sarada arrived a few minutes later, her brows knit at the sight of only two out of three.

"Where's Mitsuki?" she asked, glancing between them.

Y/n didn't respond immediately, her gaze dropping for a moment. "He said he had something to take care of last night," she finally answered, tone unreadable.

But the minutes passed, and Mitsuki never came.

Konohamaru hadn't shown up either, and when they asked around, a message was relayed through another chunin that today's mission had been cancelled.

Confused and a little uneasy, Boruto scratched the back of his head. "Well... maybe we should go check on him? Go to his place?"

A beat of silence followed. Then, sheepishly, "Uh... where does he live again?"

Sarada blinked. "Yeah... I don't know either."

Y/n sighed, not in irritation, but in that quiet way people do when they're used to carrying things alone. "Come on," she said simply, already turning away. "I'll take you."

- ☆ -

The late morning sun filtered through the misted windows of the upper floors of Konoha's residential sector, casting long shadows across the narrow stairwell as they climbed.

Y/n moved ahead of them without a word.

She hadn't offered an explanation. She simply walked quietly, her footsteps echoing slightly in the stairwell, and something in her silence told them not to ask questions just yet.

Boruto exchanged a glance with Sarada as they trailed behind, their footsteps less certain, less sure.

On the ninth floor, Y/n stopped in front of a plain door, unmarked and indistinct.

The kind of place you'd walk past a hundred times and never look twice. Her hand hesitated for the smallest second on the handle.

Then she pushed the door open.

Warmth met them first. The kind of quiet warmth that came not from heat, but from the presence of a life fully lived.

Not chaotic or messy, but alive in a way that made Boruto's breath catch for a moment.

Photos lined the narrow entry wall, not in ornate frames, but clipped simply with string and pins, unevenly spaced, like someone had filled the wall slowly, over the years.

Most photos were of Y/n and Mitsuki, younger, smiling, mid-laugh, holding food, racing across the fields, sitting side by side under stars.

Y/n didn't say anything as she stepped out of the way to let them in.

Boruto looked around the apartment, blinking like he was seeing Y/n for the first time. The space was quiet but lived-in. The kind of quiet that didn't feel empty.

There was a low dining table to the left, and beyond that, a small kitchen nook with open shelving. A kettle rested on the stove. Tea leaves in a jar by the window.

"This is... Mitsuki's?" Boruto asked finally.

Y/n didn't answer directly. She simply walked toward the hallway and murmured, "Come on."