Naruto, still with doubt shining in his mind, took a few steps and went to the door. There was no peephole, so, innocently, he turned the knob and let the door open.
What he saw outside was a man, of ordinary yet almost spectral appearance, with bright black eyes, slightly long hair, and loose, thin clothing. His eyes instantly caught the man's aura.
Naruto swallowed and took two or three steps back. In his heart, a growing fear arose. He saw the man outside staring at him with strange eyes, almost as if he were looking at a farm animal waiting to be slaughtered.
"M-mister," the blond murmured, still feeling some pain in his stomach from Altair's last attack as he fell on his rear.
"Have I reached my end?" he asked himself quietly. After all, the man just a few meters away gave off a dangerous feeling; he could sense it just by looking at him—an ability he had always had.
"This guy is evil," Naruto affirmed in his mind. However, the man simply entered and closed the door behind him. "My name is Devan," he said, smiling with such warmth that… it surprised his heart.
"Devan, the man whose appearance was so macabre and aura so dark that he simply seemed like the reincarnation of evil in this world," Naruto thought to himself. Yet, the man gave him a pat on the head with a smile.
Naruto didn't understand. He watched Devan as he surveyed the room with a severe gaze, then observed the man cleaning his room, taking out the dirty trash, cleaning the bathroom, making the bed, changing the sheets, and even replacing the mattress with a more comfortable one, and more.
"I'm going to take care of you from now on. It's my mission, so I'll live in the adjacent room. Understand?" he said. These were the only words he addressed to Naruto all afternoon.
Naruto found something new, something incredible—someone incredible. Devan, a man with such a malignant aura that surpassed anything he had seen before, yet a man who had smiled with genuine calm, cleaned his room, organized everything, and even stocked the fridge with healthy food.
At the end of the day, when Devan left, Naruto looked at his fridge; it was full of pre-cut vegetables ready to cook by just placing them in a pot with water. There were also sliced meat fillets, fresh milk, and foods that Naruto had previously considered only for lucky people.
He looked at his room. "It's strange," he murmured as he headed to his bed to lie down. "Too comfortable," he said softly, a strange smile forming on his face.
"Devan, you're strange. Why are you so kind when you're a bad person?" he asked himself. He didn't understand, yet he couldn't help but smile.
At the end of the day, Naruto was alone. Anyone who has spent much time in true solitude knows that this is incredibly dangerous, even considered a form of torture.
"I wonder if I made a mistake in seeing you. Maybe… you're not a… bad… person," he whispered quietly before falling asleep due to the softness of the mattress.
…
"Fractured Mind," in his room while lying down, Devan kept his focus on the Counter, which had stopped at 89. "Mental damage is the only way to raise it, but… What good is raising it?" he was genuinely curious. The sun had just set, so the night was still beginning.
Devan smiled. "Maybe if I cast a Curse spell on someone, it would help raise the counter, hehehe," he thought to himself with a chuckle. However, after a second, he reconsidered. "Wait, a Curse spell to raise the counter?" he wondered.
In a way, it made sense if the Fractured Mind Counter increased due to mental damage. Devan quickly put on a coat and decided to go out into the streets to test his theory.
On the streets of Konoha at night, people appeared worried about recent events.
Mostly civilians who feared that spies from other villages had spread the news and that it might be seen as a weakness of Konoha, potentially provoking a new war.
Among the crowd, a woman walked slowly. Her black hair lay disheveled while her face looked tired, yet her clothes were well-arranged and gave off a pleasant scent.
This woman, of course, was Kurenai. After spending the entire afternoon crying in her room, she decided to go out at night to try to find some way to free herself from thoughts of Devan.
In fact, she didn't know exactly where she was heading. She simply wandered through the streets without direction, observing the buildings as if they were old friends, and watching passersby with indifference.
It wasn't until she stumbled upon a bar that also served alcoholic drinks that she decided to enter.
As she walked toward a nearby table, she couldn't help overhearing the conversations of other customers.
"You could… just say it, but I think Lord Hokage is being a bit ambiguous on this matter. At the end of the day, he's the village's secret weapon, Isn't he?"
"Hmph, no. Actually, we don't need something like a secret weapon to deal with enemies, You know? Konoha is powerful; only we control the five great nations…"
Kurenai listened to these conversations until the waiter brought her some meat and drinks. She looked at her table for a moment, feeling… strange.
Her mind kept spinning over Devan's words from that morning. Her thoughts wouldn't let go of the words of the man she had loved for so long.
"Tsk," she made a small strange sound with her mouth, looking down. Her eyes scanned her own figure. "I'm beautiful, I've been told so. I have an attractive body, a pretty face, I'm young. Then, Devan, Why?" she whispered to herself, resting her head on her hands.
Her mind was, in a few words, in chaos. She had clung with tooth and nail to her fantasies of her and Devan sharing a future together.
Kurenai took a glass and poured a bit of rice alcohol into it. "Miriam and Ken," she smiled faintly, some tears running down her cheeks. "If it were a girl, she would be Miriam. If it were a boy, Ken. You would be an excellent father, a loving husband, a life partner. Then…" she squeezed the glass so hard that, with just a little more effort, she could have shattered it.
She swallowed slightly and drank the alcohol in the glass in one gulp. Her bright eyes seemed not to notice the world around her.
"Idiot, idiot, idiot!!!" she cursed fiercely in her mind before grabbing the entire bottle and beginning to drink straight from it.
The other customers paid her no attention, each absorbed in their own problems.
"If Karma exists, then, Devan, you will pay dearly for what you've done to me," Kurenai cursed, grabbed a piece of meat with her chopsticks, and without even placing it on the grill to cook, ate it raw.
Her mind wandered to the past. When she had dreamt almost awake of the man who had saved her from suicide, she had imagined so many times what he would say to her.
"How would an 'I love you' sound coming from his lips? What would that lips taste like? How warm would his arms be?" Questions that stole her sleep now pierced her heart like nails on a coffin.
Kurenai drank alcohol from the bottle and ate raw meat nonstop for hours that night.
Chapters Ahead on: [email protected]/tgthegoodd
Replace "@" with "a"