Spiritist | Itachi Uchiha

Chapter 2

"Tomioka?" Juzo pursed his mouth, showing his sharp teeth, without turning to look at Itachi. "I've heard something about them, but they are not very popular in Kirigakure so very few claim to have had contact with them."

Itachi watched as his Akatsuki partner finished cleaning the fresh blood from his precious sword, and began to sharpen it even more than it already was. He did it with more force than necessary, even without using much effort. Well, Juzo was much taller, stronger, and older than the Uchiha teenager, even though their power was equal enough to work as a team.

For the experienced adult criminal, Itachi was still a brat who had just turned his sad fourteenth birthday.

That day, both were resting at the top of a cliff lost between the Sand and the Leaf, waiting patiently, and with a couple of corpses under their feet, to be summoned by the organization to begin one of those strange remote meetings. Itachi decided to kill time and ask about that clan in which he had been interested since that time he got lost in the north, although he did not expect Juzo to be of much help. He was very reserved, and he practically didn't care about anything that didn't have to do with himself.

Juzo didn't even ask a single question when he found out that his new partner would be a brat who took to murdering his entire family just because he wanted to. Itachi preferred it that way. Without questions, without friendships, and without ties.

"Have you heard about the requirements for crying a person?"

"Exactly one person?" Itachi nodded, and Juzo scratched the back of his neck lazily. "That's very specific, do you want to do the calculation to cry several, or something like that?"

Itachi didn't tense up, because he knew that Juzo didn't need to be smarter than he looked to come to such an absurd conclusion. Although the Uchiha did know that, if the older man put his mind to it, he could decipher the truth behind the massacre of his clan in a few days as long as they continued to spend time together.

But Juzo didn't care enough about Itachi's life to bother digging deeper, he didn't care about his personal life even though he suspected he could use it as valuable political information.

He would never care how bad his pain was, or why it disappeared for days every time they finished a mission, or how many times his eyes screamed at him that he had cried every night since he joined the Akatsuki.

"Maybe," the youngest said simply.

"Maybe I'm wrong, but from the little I know, the Tomioka don't usually mourn a large number of people at the same time unless they have an emotional bond with them. That's why they never go to war, they are unnecessary burdens who may only cry for fifty soldiers out of three thousand. And when they do, the cost of each soldier is added to their respective family, because it varies greatly depending on many factors."

"I know they don't have a defined price," Itachi agreed.

"Not monetary either," Juzo snorted disapprovingly. "Sometimes they charge you money, other times they ask for rare items that only they value... who knows, it depends on what they think your soul is worth."

"It doesn't seem like you appreciate them."

"Businesses exist to make money, brat. A business stops being good when you mix it with feelings. Emotions and costs become clouded and you end up accepting anything to satisfy your non-material side. That family traffics in their emotional connections with the dead, and clans like that end up ruined if they don't gain power."

Itachi didn't reply, and there was silence until they were summoned for the meeting.

Since the day he got lost in that northern forest, Itachi had thought about hiring that girl to mourn the Uchiha, but he had no idea of ​​the emotional burden that mourning an entire clan could entail for a person so connected to death. Therefore, it should not be cheap.