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

A World Without Roots

The Hokage's office was quiet, too quiet.

Naruto stood by the window, his gaze fixed on the horizon, arms folded, a rare stillness clinging to his usually restless frame. 

Behind him, the wall clock ticked too loud. 

Each second seemed to count how long she'd been gone.

Gone.

Sasuke leaned against the opposite wall, his arms crossed, fingers digging into the fabric of his cloak like it might anchor him.

 But there was no weight in the room heavy enough to ground the kind of dread they all felt.

Because she wasn't missing. Not like that.

She had vanished from this world entirely.

Not dead. Not even lost.

Just... untraceable.

Sarada stood on the edge of the table in the office, her hands clenched on either side of her. 

Boruto paced nearby, but not the usual reckless kind of pacing he did when annoyed or bored.

This one was quieter. Focused. Trying to hold himself together.

"She's not in any dimension I can access, right now," Sasuke said flatly, breaking the silence. "I've tried, but there are far too many."

Boruto stopped walking. "Where could she have gone?"

No one answered.

That was the worst part was, there was no trail to follow. No signature to chase. No enemy to fight. 

Just a feeling, like the moment before thunder breaks, when everything is still and wrong and heavy in the air.

Naruto turned around, his face grave but softened by something unspoken. "We can't follow her. Not without any traces. Maybe not without her coming back to this world."

Boruto pursed his lips. How long would that be in?

Sasuke said nothing. But something had broken already, he could feel it. 

The moment she vanished, something inside him had clenched and refused to let go. 

That same feeling he remembered from another life... when the people he loved disappeared, and he was always too late.

His eyes drifted to Sakura across the room.

Their gaze met for only a second, but it was long enough.

She knew that look. She'd seen it in the mirror before, the guilt of being powerless, the ache of history repeating itself. 

This wasn't just about losing someone.

It was about failing them. Again.

- ☆ -

Sasuke's boots echoed softly against the stone floor of Orochimaru's abandoned research lab.

Dust curled in the air like ghosts of old sins. Cold glass vials stood untouched. Old machines hummed faintly, as if remembering what they once were. 

He was here searching for answers.

He scanned rows of preserved chakra samples, sealed scrolls, and cataloged notes. He was looking for her.

Y/n's chakra had once slipped past Konoha's entire sensory unit. Even his Rinnegan couldn't locate her. That level of precision wasn't learned. It was born.