>>5943603>>5943613>>5943639>>5943753>>5943762>>5943830>>5943936>>5943973>>5943980>>5943985>>5944042You gingerly take the sash from Atsushi. After a moment of consideration, you wrap it around your waist and affix your Konoha protector to it, covering the stab hole.
Wearing it feels right. Covering the stab hole with the symbol of the leaf village felt right. You often thought of your sister as a mythological figure, some kind of ideal that predated you and defined what you were meant to be. But she also died, maybe because even in a different village, in a different time, she still knew more about the Will of Fire than you did. She would have done well in Konoha. Girding yourself and the evidence of her demise with the symbol of your people was a nod to that. A nod to the fact that you could aspire to be better.
You approach and take a good look at Hihari’s body, exhaling sharply out of your nose while you take in how you feel about it.
You killed him. Maybe yours was the final blow, maybe it wasn’t, but ultimately he was dead because of you. It all happened so fast you didn’t really have a moment to take in the gravity of it, but… Even now you’re feeling utterly neutral about it. You expected to be disgusted with yourself. Honestly, you HOPED to be disgusted with yourself, as if some emotional turmoil would have validated your journey to developing into a better, more righteous person.
But he attacked you, you responded with lethal force, and now he’s dead. It all seems so distant and mechanical. In the heat of the moment you didn’t even think about it, you just acted to kill him with no real hesitation. You wish you had hesitated, but maybe that was selfish. You still wanted him dead, you just wanted to also feel like you were morally vindicated when you did it. You wanted to kill, and you wanted to stay clean while doing it. You were just a hypocritical fool who wanted to have his cake and eat it too.
Even now you struggle to see an alternative. This man’s death was written in stone before you even met him, it seemed like there was no other way it could possibly work out other than with your death instead of his. Maybe Naoki was right? Just kill your enemies and be done with it, have the courage to accept yourself for what you are and move on.
But is that really the way? Just shrug your shoulders and say ‘These things happen and I don’t care.’, move on, forget about it?
Could you have talked it out? No. Things were way beyond talking since before you even laid eyes on him. He wanted you dead, so you wanted him dead. Could you have avoided him? No, he would have caught up with you eventually. It was you or him.
But, kami-sama, you really ought to feel bad about it.
