𝐍𝐚𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐨 𝐔𝐳𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢 𝐗 𝐅𝐞𝐦!𝐔𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐡𝐚!𝐎𝐜 ── ❝ 𝐈 𝐖𝐀𝐓𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒 ❞
── Misaki could never have anticipated what awaited her in the years to come-her tumultuous feelings, her fractured famil...
I knew I had to free myself from the Genjutsu, as my friends might need me out there. If I remained trapped, something disastrous could happen.
"This isn't enough to break a Genjutsu at my level," Itachi responded as his voice echoed around me, his figure looming over me in a swirling cloud of crows. "You try so hard. I wonder why you do so? For a person, perhaps?"
"Why do you care?!" I exclaimed, my frustration finally boiling over, though I struggled in vain against the chains that bound me, imperceptible as they were to anyone else.
"Ah, so you do," he hummed, his tone almost amused. "Let me guess—for my sister, right? Misaki."
I merely ignored him and tried with all my will to break the Genjutsu.
But deep inside, I knew he was right. I did care about Misaki. I loved her; it had taken me too long to realize. Her image, sleeping beside me right after her confession, haunted me. All of a sudden, everything was very clear—I loved her too.
"Your attempts are foolish, both in this Genjutsu and your advances with my sister," Itachi commented, cutting down my concentration.
"What do you mean?" I asked, frozen with shock as my mind reeled from his revelation.
"You don't know? She's. sick," Itachi replied, his voice laced with weight that sank my heart.
"She would have told me if she was!" I yelled back, denying his words. "She tells me everything!"
"I find that debatable," he said again, his calm demeanor in huge contrast to my rising panic. "She's only told Tsunade about it. Ask her. Misaki is taking pills to extend her current lifespan."
My eyes widened in horror. "What are you saying?"
"If she continues to take her medicine in the same way as now," Itachi spoke slowly, his deliberation a clear calculated attempt, "she will live long enough to see her eighteenth birthday."
"You're lying!" I exclaimed, my voice cracking as tears threatened to spill from my eyes.
Itachi's expression was blank, his black eyes holding a realism to which I just would not turn. This fight against the Genjutsu began to wane as my mind became gripped with fear and incredulity at the fact that I might lose Misaki, lose the time to tell her how much I loved her.
I had to break free. I had to protect her. Whatever it took.
Something Misaki would have said to me. She doesn't keep secrets from me; why would this be an exception? Itachi must be lying. But then, Misaki's reaction, right before I was caught in this Genjutsu, made something feel very off inside me.
