Reborn to the Uchiha Clan

Truth be told, he did not expect to open his eyes and stare at the white ceiling of a room that smelled of disinfectant so wholly dissimilar to the smell of the Hospital wing of Hogwarts School.

It was quiet around him. At least his immediate circle was silent around him. He could somehow hear other people around. People were moving and dealing with things, but he was just there, staring up at the ceiling.

He blinked, wondering about the fact that he didn’t seem to be dead and was, in fact, still in breathing order. He wasn’t sure what to think. He tried to breathe and take a deep breath but felt like there was some kind of a weight on his chest.

He could see a curtain at one side and natural lighting, maybe a window, coming from the other side. The sun seemed to be high in the sky. He looked closer, and his eyes finally seemed to be able to focus on things. He noticed the dark hair or fur first and breathed as deeply as he could.

He smelled a little blood and a lot of something that made his nose burn. He wasn’t sure what that was, but then he heard padding feet. Someone was running, and he gulped down the anxiety that was building with the action of someone running.

A head suddenly popped up in his vision. It was a child with dark eyes and a little curly hair bouncing all over the place. He gulped down. He would never have been able to have his hair act like that. His hair was always neatly combed behind his back and braided. He wasn’t allowed to cut it. It was a tool used against him more times than he wanted to count, but he had not been able to cut his hair or risk a worse punishment than he was already receiving.

The child turned away from him and yelled, “He is awake!” The boy turned back, grinning, but Masaki only cringed. The boy was everything he was never allowed to be. His breath got shaky, and he could feel his hands already shaking. To hide it, he took hold of the first thing his hands reached for, holding onto something he couldn’t see.

The boy frowned and tilted his head. “Your sister won't leave your side. The nurses couldn't even clean her,” he said as he looked upon the dark mass of hair.

He blinked and finally realised that the weight on his chest was just his sister. His hands twitched, letting go of the fabric he held and wrapping his hand around the girl.

He didn’t even know that the child was a girl, not to mention her name. She probably didn’t know it herself. After all, even he had learned his name when he was around three. He was never called by his name, but he was made to read and write. That was how he figured out what his name was.

An adult figure stepped into his view, and his jaw locked. This was an adult. He had short black hair, and his face looked somewhat similar to his father's. He also had dark eyes. He carried a notepad and an ordinary-looking pen with him.

Masaki swallowed his apprehension and blinked, trying not to lose himself to his emotions. Everything in him was swirling. For the entire four years he had been alive here, he had yet to see any other adults. He did not know what this one would do, and he was still a child, a tiny child who just probably killed a person.

He could still see it. The man's red eyes were unlike anything he had ever seen before, and a hunger-filled, grazed smile was on his lips. He had been more than simply scared at the time. He had been terrified of what this man would do now, but all that happened was that his eyes turned dark and then faded.

He did not know what this adult would do to him, and he was scared. No matter that he had the mind of an adult, he was still in the body of a child. He was still frightened.

“Hello, I am Uchiha Karuho, an Officer of the Police Force, and unfortunately for you, you are the only one who could answer my questions.” The man paused for a moment, looking at him. He looked to be frowning. “Can you tell me what happened before you fell unconscious?”

Was that all he wanted to know? He wanted to know what happened. He had no idea why, but he felt lighter after hearing that he just wanted to know what happened. But what about after? What would happen when he got his answers?

They probably already knew what happened or guessed what happened.

Masaki moved his hand to his mouth and motioned.

“Yes, you are allowed to speak,” the man answered him with a raised brow.

When he heard that, his breath was weird and hitched, and he tentatively tried to open his mouth to speak. Then, he felt how much air suddenly entered his lungs and took several long and slow breaths. It was calming, and some sort of weight seemed to lift off him.

“The day... began as usual. I waited for orders at the door... He ordered me to the Courtyard. As always, I took my position and started with Katas. But there was a change this time. I usually don’t look around. I don’t want to mess up, but I looked when he brought out the other child. The child was placed beside me and told to copy me. I wasn’t allowed to slow down the movements, and the child stepped wrong,” he swallowed and looked up to the ceiling, not wanting to see their reactions. “He raised the cane and hit her. The hit was normal, but the next one, even before it landed, was faster, stronger, and sharper. He had not hit me like that before; there was a terrible crack, a deafening silence, and then the scream tore out of the child. He stuffed that thing in her mouth, which always made us quiet and sleepy. He was raising his cane again, but only this time did he intend to use it the other way. I think I moved then, took it from him and hit him with it just as he thought me. There was so much blood… the child was screaming, and the sun peaked over the courtyard wall.” He stopped. He could feel the tears falling from his eyes to the side. He blinked them away.

It wasn’t sadness he was feeling, but he couldn’t pinpoint what he was feeling.

He turned to the adult then with a question: “Is he dead?”

“He is dead,” the man answered.

“Am I going to prison?” It felt childish to ask that, but he wasn’t thinking straight or at all at this point.

“No.”

He felt confused about his answer. He had just killed a person. Why wouldn’t he go to prison?

“Why?” he asked. He felt stupid for asking that, but it was something he couldn’t understand right now.

“Your story aligned with what we thought happened. Your reactions to it are genuine and honest. You seem smarter than a normal four-year-old child. I have more questions about your home life. Would you care to answer?”

Masaki blinked at him, wondering why he was asking permission to ask questions. Was that his duty as a Police Officer? He nodded to the man in a moment. He couldn't recall if he ever talked to a Police officer or an Auror like this before.

“Do you know your name?”

“Masaki,” he said simply.

“Your name is Uchiha Masaki. You are a member of the Uchiha Clan. Did he not tell you those things.”

“No. He never used names. Only orders, if not fulfilled, prepare for pain.”

“I see. For clarification, you don’t know her name, only your own?”

“He made me read and write things,” he said, still looking at the ceiling. It was the explanation he could give for knowing this.

“Alright. Unfortunately, we do not know her name either. Can you say something about that?” He didn’t know her name, but he knew the rest of it. He knew the day the child was born. There was no screaming, and there were no orders that day.

He sat at the door without any orders, food, or bathroom breaks. He only broke out of his position when he heard a small scream and the sound of a fist hitting flesh. There was a small, muffled cry but nothing else. He resumed his position and tried to forget what it meant.

His mother had birthed a child, but something about it wasn’t to the man's liking.

Currently, that child was sleeping on him. Was that it? Was that why he beat her that time, that it was a girl? He remembered his own birth, but he could not remember a moment when he did that to her. But it was also a time when he slept a lot, so it could have happened anyway.

“She is two years old. She was born on May 12th. It was a day I received no orders," the man wrote things on his pad. He had simply ticked things off previously.

“Moving on. Can you explain your mother's condition to me?”

“Her condition?”

“She is unresponsive to the healers and does not answer questions in any way. The healers determined that her tongue had been burned, but that wasn't likely the problem of her silence. She simply doesn’t respond.”

“Oh… order her.”

“Explain that.”

“Why? She should be at the house.”

“She is not. She is here in the hospital.”

“Did he do something to her?”

“There is an extensive amount of bruising all over her body, just like the two of you. But that is not the reason she is currently in the Hospital.” The man sighed, looked him over one more time and continued. “You seem like a smart kid. Your mother is pregnant, and she can't sustain the pregnancy alone or without Hospital care. She might go to labour any time.”

That confused him. He did know that the woman was pregnant again, but her stomach had been growing faster than last time. She was already almost as big as she was with his sister, but the time was wrong.

“No,” he mumbled, “It’s not time yet.”

“What?” the man looked thoroughly confused. “How would you know about that?”

“He stopped…”

“He stopped what?” the man insisted now.

“He stopped going to her room about six months ago. It should be two more months before she…”

“Ah, I see. When we were alerted to check your house, we found her lying at the bottom of the stairs. She had probably stumbled. Initially, we thought that was why a child was crying, but then we found you, your sister and your father.”

He thought about it and almost wished that they would all die. It would be better for his mother to stop breathing. Her continued survival was a pain to her. She should be entitled to rest eternally. She should never have been treated that way. Her behaviour toward them was non-existent, but no person should ever be forced to live like this. She was what he thought slaves would be like.

He turned to the side toward the natural light. He couldn’t see much from the window.

“What now? You said I’m not going to prison, but what will happen now?” he asked almost numbly.

“When the Healers deem you fit to move, you will be escorted back to your house. Nothing else.”

“What about … mother and her…?”

“About that, since your mother is in her current condition, you will not have anyone to look after you, so you will be assigned someone from the Clan to teach you and occasionally look after you.”

“Teach us what?”

“How to take care of yourself and the house you live in.”

“What is… what is Mother's condition?” he returned back to that one.

“Right, she is currently still pregnant, and the Healers are doing everything they can to keep the children inside her. She is sedated to keep her from doing weird things.”

“… plural?”

“Yes. She is currently carrying twins.”

“That’s why she was bigger…” he heard himself mumbling, which he knew wasn’t ever a good thing. His body felt heavy and tired.

Maybe it was the realisation that he was alive. Perhaps it was the realisation that He was dead. He almost scoffed in his mind. He didn’t even know his name. He didn’t know her name either.

It was always He or Her.

He didn’t feel sorry for what he did to the man, but he felt sorry for his mother. She should be allowed to rest. It was her right to rest. He didn’t need to carry out the pregnancy. If he could just say it, that it was alright to want to die.

For a moment there, he thought that maybe she threw herself down the stairs to end herself. To end it all and quit everything. But it was barely possible. He had not seen any life in her eyes ever since his first beating. He thought it was impossible.

To awaken now…