From the Sidelines (2)

When Sasuke woke up the next morning – feeling sluggish, irritated, and terrified – he was greeted with the sight of his smiling mother, holding a very much alive baby in her mother's arms. It was the first time that he had seen her smile in months, thus Sasuke ignored how his mother's smile was stretched too wide, ignored how there was something that just seemed off with her, ignored how his instinct told him to run away from her.

Though confused – thinking back about it, Sasuke still could not comprehend what his mother had done. Dead person did not just suddenly come back to life, the dead should have stayed dead – he also felt happiness for his baby brother. He was finally cured.

His mother handed his baby brother to him, saying that she was going to take a shower. She indeed smelt horrible. There were dried red crusts in her fingernails and neck. Sasuke only rocked his sleeping – but breathing – baby brother back and forward, his mother's odd appearance quickly pushed aside in favor of playing with his baby brother.

It never occurred to Sasuke that his mother was so drenched in blood that the smell of deaths practically clung to her because of the atrocities that she had committed in exchange for her baby's life.

Slowly, but surely, everything returned to normal after what Sasuke dubbed as the second incident. With his baby brother no longer being the source of worries in everyone's head – he's still as quiet as before, but now he actually felt alive, he has a presence, he's no longer just a dead husk that their parents stored at the corner of the house – his parents were still giving each other cold shoulder, but they were no longer hostile. His big brother on the other hand had become more distant, only watching them from afar. Sasuke was not even sure what went through his head anymore. Maybe he was the one that had gone insane.

Time passed again. Sasuke watched as his baby brother grew, watched him as he forced himself to crawl and then walk at an abnormally young age. Watched him as he listened attentively to what others were saying, trying to understand the world around him.

The boy had come far from being a half-dead mannequin into an actual living being. He still had not ceased his staring habit though, not even when father gave him glasses to help his eyesight. Mother said that it was normal. She said that the boy was learning their faces, recognizing them. That might be true if the boy was indeed looking at their face. However, when one spent as much time with the boy as Sasuke did, one would eventually realize that the boy was not staring at people's faces, rather, at the spaces on top of their heads.

When the boy turned one, he started to question Sasuke about strange noises and phenomena. At first, Sasuke had thought that the boy was only imagining things, but he quickly realized that oddities had indeed started to happen at random intervals. They were always subtle, almost unnoticeable if one did not know where to look. The occurrences always varied, sometimes strange sounds would resonate, sometimes the air would get colder, wind would blow out of nowhere, sometimes the lights would flicker and shadows would dance and twist at the door and the windowsill. Sometimes animals would behave weirdly, they would huddle in the corner, hiding. Even the fishes on the koi pond would not appear to the surface. Sasuke might not really understand just what exactly made his little brother different, but he was certain that the boy was the one who was causing those things.

Sasuke, of course, always denied it whenever the boy asked whether he had seen or heard anything peculiar, even if he was only able to notice the insignificant things. He was unwilling to admit that the boy's oddities had started to affect him as well.

Sasuke was the only sane person left in his house, and he would like to remain that way.

So far, things had been going fine. Sasuke had been successfully juggling between school, training, and looking after his baby brother without any significant difficulty. When father asked him to take his little brother to the park, Sasuke was sure that it would be an easy task.

He was wrong.

The boy just had to wander around – Sasuke chose to ignore the part where he urges his little brother to befriend someone – make Sasuke search him for over two hours, and then get himself hurt whilst under his watch. Sasuke could easily sprout a made up story about his knee wound, but the same thing could not be said about the boy's eyes.

Father would probably kill him if the boy was unable to use his sharingan again, and mother would kill him if he abandoned the boy here… wherever this place was. Sasuke himself was not sure, he only followed his baby brother's trail. However, just as he was about to return home and had his big brother deal with the boy – hopefully he was already home – that sound just had to appear. Sasuke still remembered it as clearly as one year ago.

Locked in his own room, alone in the darkness, unable to run or escape, with undependable father and brother that never come no matter how long he cried, all he could hear was it scratching his bedroom door, whispering for him to come out, saying that they should play, with his life as its stake.

Sasuke was not embarrassed to admit that he was ready to bolt out of here – because bad things always follow it – but his baby brother just had to be a brat and refused to go home. And before he knew it, their conversation spiraled into this, where the boy freaked out about the thing and Sasuke denied everything.

On any other day Sasuke would indulge him, but not today. He was scared on top of being tired and irritated. He was only six, he should not have been the one who had to deal with this.

"No, you're just insane. That's why father locks you up in the house after all."

Actually, it was because a Hyūga girl had been successfully kidnapped by foreign ninja. His little brother could not defend himself, so it was better for him to stay in the house, where he would be safe, but the boy did not need to know that.

Sasuke knew he was being needlessly cruel, but it was not like the boy actually understood everything he said. And Sasuke had so much pent-up anger and frustration towards everything that he did not even care just what came out of his mouth anymore.

"You have no idea just what kind of trouble you cause for me, there's never a day without something weird happening to you. Why can't you just be normal?! Other children are free to do what they want while I am stuck here watching over you." Sasuke pressed his palm against his forehead and muttered, "Sometimes I wish you would just stay dead…"

Registering what he had just said, Sasuke immediately searched his brother's face for any kind of reaction, but there was nothing. The boy was only staring eerily blank at him.

Sasuke sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Just what did he expect anyway?

"Let's just go," he muttered.

His baby brother was curiously obedient.