Renjiro's mind, moments ago mired in the leaden grief for Hiro, was now a whirlwind of icy, terrifying deduction. The impossibility of it—a Mangekyō pattern in virgin eyes—left only one horrifying, logical conclusion. He didn't need confirmation, but he had to see it. To make the nightmare concrete.
"Quick," he rasped, the words scraping his raw throat. He pushed himself up on trembling elbows, ignoring the lance of pain in his temples. "Give me a mirror. Now."
Kushina, still rooted in place by her own shock, blinked. The command shattered her stupor.
"A—a mirror? Right."
She turned, her movements uncharacteristically clumsy, and began rifling through a small dresser in the corner. Her mind was a frantic scroll unfurling.
'I saw his Mangekyō. Just hours ago, when he demonstrated the evolution process. A six-pointed star, sharp and complex. The pattern I just saw… it was different. Simpler, but… deeper. How? How can one person have two different Mangekyō patterns?'
While her back was turned, Renjiro closed his eyes. He didn't need the mirror to know. The pieces fit together with a dreadful, mechanical click. The unique, soul-wrenching trauma of Hiro's loss. The freshly regenerated, genetically receptive ocular canvas. His own Uchiha blood, a catalyst waiting for a specific kind of lightning.
'Don't tell me…' he thought, a wave of nauseating irony washing over him. 'This is how I get this. Not through careful planning, not through stolen power, but by having my heart ripped out again.'
He brought a clenched fist up and slammed it against his own forehead, a dull, punishing thud that did nothing to dispel the furious, grieving frustration.
The sound made Kushina spin around, a small, hand-held mirror clutched in her hand. She saw the self-recriminatory blow, the despair etched on his pale, scratched face.
"Renjiro," she said, her voice softening with worry that overrode her confusion. "Are you sure you're okay? You shouldn't—"
"I'm fine," he interrupted, the words brittle. He lowered his hand, letting out a long, shuddering sigh that seemed to drain the last of his defensive energy. "Or… I will be. I think I know what's happening. Just… give me the mirror."
Hesitantly, she stepped forward and placed the polished glass disc into his waiting hand. His fingers closed around the cool, wooden frame. For a second, he just held it, staring at the back of it as if it were an explosive tag. Then, with a grimace of resolve, he lifted it.
His own reflection swam into view. He looked terrible—pale, with dark circles under his eyes, the scratches on his face standing out like accusations. But he barely registered any of that. His gaze was locked on his eyes.
The Sharingan was active, burning with a faint, involuntary crimson light. But the tomoe were gone. In their place was a pattern he had never seen outside of his own worst imaginings.
It was a wheel of obsidian darkness set into the deep scarlet field of his iris. Not the intricate, star-like formation of his original Mangekyō. This was sleeker, more severe. Three stark, kunai-like black spokes radiated from the pupil, each one sharp and precise, forming a perfect, menacing tri-arm pattern. The design was clean, lethal, and utterly foreign. It held a silent, waiting violence his previous eyes had not possessed.
'So it really happened,' he thought, the observation flat and dead inside him. No shock, just a bitter, acidic acceptance. The universe's sick joke was complete. He had gained a new, cursed power, and the price had been the one person whose loss could truly break him.
Kushina, watching his face, saw the moment of recognition, the flicker of anguish before the mask of numb acceptance slid back into place. She could no longer contain her confusion.
"Renjiro… how? How can you have two?"
Renjiro lowered the mirror, turning it over in his hands as if it were the source of the problem. He didn't look at her. "You remember the 'trauma joke' I made earlier? When I said my first Mangekyō came 'easily' because my fuel tank was already full?"
Kushina's eyes widened. The pieces slammed together in her mind. "You mean…"
"A normal Uchiha," Renjiro explained, his voice monotone, a lecturer discussing a distant, academic subject, "awakens the Mangekyō Sharingan through a trauma of sufficient magnitude. The loss sears a unique pattern into their soul, which manifests in their eyes. This…" He finally looked up, his new, tri-spoke Mangekyō meeting her eyes. "This is my long-overdue trauma."
He let the implication hang, heavy and dark.
Kushina's hand rose to her mouth. She understood. "Hiro…" she breathed, the name a whisper of heartbreaking revelation. "Your friend died. And these new eyes… they were brought from the loss."
Renjiro gave a single, slow nod. "I didn't feel the shift immediately. I was too… shattered. And the sensation of activating the Mangekyō was already familiar. The chakra surge, the sharpening of perception… my brain categorised it as the same old eyes. I didn't realise it was a new one being born."
The room felt colder. Kushina stared at the new pattern in his eyes, a symbol of friendship turned into a monument of grief. A terrible, hopeful thought occurred to her, cutting through the horror. "Renjiro… isn't this… is this what you need? For the evolution you talked about? You have two Mangekyō patterns now. Doesn't that… satisfy the requirement?"
He recoiled as if she'd struck him. A flash of raw, unguarded disgust twisted his features. "No," he said, the word sharp and final. "Gaining power like this… it's disgusting. It's a violation. I don't want growth paid for with… with this." He gestured vaguely, encompassing the grief, the empty futon, the memory of Hiro's smile.
"This isn't a step forward. It's a scar."
The finality in his voice brooked no argument. He moved then, pushing against the mattress with a grunt of effort. His body protested, muscles screaming, chakra pathways still tender from their violent outburst. But a deeper, more urgent need was driving him—the need to be anywhere but here, in this room where his grief had been quantified into a new dojutsu.
"What are you doing?" Kushina asked, alarmed, reaching out a hand to steady him.
"Leaving," he grunted, swinging his legs over the side of the futon. The world tilted momentarily, but he clenched his jaw and steadied himself. "I'll return for the stored eyes later. The jar, everything. Keep it safe." He met her gaze, his new Mangekyō spinning slowly, involuntarily. "And Kushina… what happened here today. The eyes, the regeneration… this." He tapped a finger below his own eye.
"It stays between us."
She nodded immediately, her expression solemn. "You have my word. But Renjiro, you're in no condition to—"
"I need air," he cut her off, his voice softer but no less firm. "I need… space. To think. To process this… all of this."
He stood, swaying for a moment before finding his balance. He was still dressed in his rumpled, travel-stained clothes, now also smeared with dust and dried blood. He looked less like a Konoha jonin and more like a ghost who had forgotten to fully depart. Without another word, he walked toward the door, each step deliberate, as if he were learning to use his legs again.
Kushina watched him go, her heart aching with a mixture of pity, fear, and awe. She had witnessed something that defied the foundational laws of the shinobi world, and it had been born not in a laboratory, but in the silent, screaming epicentre of a friend's grief.
Renjiro slid the screen door open and stepped out into the late afternoon. The sunlight, golden and indifferent, washed over him. He paused on the step, lifting his face to the sky, his new, unwanted Mangekyō eyes seeing a world that was exactly the same, yet irrevocably altered.
He was shaken to his core, grieving a loss that felt like amputation, and now carried within his gaze a permanent, bloody testament to that loss—a power he had never wanted, marking him as a man who had loved and lost profoundly, not once, but twice.
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