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Uzumaki Naruto.
It’s a name everyone knows. The young adult author’s ongoing trilogy has achieved critical acclaim and global success, selling nearly 100 million copies in not even three years. And now, with the final novel on the cusp of release, it seems the entire world is collectively holding its breath for the conclusion of the epic tale.
The world save for Uchiha Sasuke.
Sasuke has no interest in juvenile fiction, much less some shit about superpowered ninjas and glorified child soldiers. The series is inescapable, though—his friends read it, Itachi reads it, his mother reads it. Uzumaki Naruto is like a curse, the name always followed by grating enthusiasm and long-winded conversations that make Sasuke feel even more exasperated than usual. Every plea to just give it a try chips away at his sanity until he finds himself counting down to the book’s release too just so that he can finally stop fucking hearing about it.
But alas, that was wishful thinking. When the book comes out, it’s even worse. Everybody talks about how brilliant and impactful the ending was, how they can't wait for it to be adapted to film, and Sasuke slowly realizes that it will be a long, long time before he is free of the ubiquitous Uzumaki Naruto.
So, maybe it’s defeat that leads him to give in and buy the stupid books. The cashier at the bookstore is annoyingly excited, asking if he’s reading them for the first time and assuring him that he’ll love them when he reluctantly says yes. They’re just doing their job, he knows, but he’s sick of listening to other people’s unsolicited opinions. It makes him all the more eager to get through the story so he can tell everyone exactly how unimpressive and banal it really is.
He’s half a bottle of sake deep when he cracks open the first book and initially, he blames the alcohol for why it’s actually sort of... good. The writing is refined, the plot is captivating, the characters are vibrant and three-dimensional. But more than that, there’s something just out of reach of his conscious mind, a nagging feeling that the story has awakened something he can’t yet comprehend.
He doesn’t—can’t—put it down until he’s finished. He still has that strange feeling but is no closer to uncovering what it means. It’s unsettling. It takes him hours to fall asleep and when he does, he dreams of the boy who abandoned his village, his friends, feeling his anguish so vividly he wakes with a gnawing in his chest and hot tears burning down his face like streaks of fire. When he takes a deep breath, all he can smell is ash.
He calls out of work. He hates himself for it, but he has to know what happens next. The speed at which he devours the remaining two books likely sets a new personal record. He finishes shortly after the sun sets, letting the hardcover fall to his chest as he leans his head against the back of the couch. When he closes his eyes, he imagines a different ending, one where the protagonist says “because I’m your friend” instead of “because I love you,” and Sasuke—
Sasuke wonders how he has such a clear picture of what he looks like. Sure, the books describe him with blond hair and blue eyes, but Sasuke sees him, he smells the blood and sweat and when he wakes up the next morning the first thing he does is reach for his left arm, almost not believing it’s truly there.
He’s still in bed when he grabs his phone and types Uzumaki Naruto into the search bar. Somehow, despite hearing the man’s name practically every day for the past two and a half years, he’s never seen what he looks like.
The two seconds it takes for the page to load are excruciating. Then the first picture appears and his heart stops because it’s him, a perfect rendering of the golden-haired boy in his mind’s eye, and Sasuke wants to—has to—tell him that he loved (loves?) him too.
Fingers trembling, he taps into a recent interview clip from YouTube. Seeing Naruto like this—candid, not retouched or choreographed, makes him feel slightly hysterical. The hand not holding his phone moves to cover his mouth, as if doing so will hold in the explosive sob building from deep within like it’s waited millennia to be released.
The interviewer, praising Naruto’s world-building, asks how he came up with the idea for the series, what inspired him. And Naruto laughs, a sonorous sound that resonates through Sasuke’s body and soul. It’s sanative and familiar and he’s never felt so woefully incomplete, like his very being is lacking. He’s so distracted by the matchless blue of Naruto’s eyes and the way his smile rounds his whisker-less cheeks that he doesn’t even register the man’s response.
“I know it’s cliché, but it came to me in a dream.”
His hand is stiff. Naruto flexes his fingers and rotates his wrist in a quick stretch, grateful he only has one more hour to go. He’s lost count of how many books he’s signed today. Not that he cares about numbers—having anyone read his writing is incredible.
The popularity of the series still blows his mind. In the beginning, he wrote only to try to make sense of his dreams, to organize years of disconnected memories into something linear. Once he had all of the pieces, it evolved into something else, a means to alleviate the crushing pain and emptiness that threatened to consume him. It was the only happy ending he’d get, he thought. A selfish pursuit, like always.
When his first book began topping bestseller lists and getting translated into other languages, a small part of him hoped that he would find him. It was a longshot, but he still hoped, still continues to hope even if he won’t admit it. He doesn’t even know if he’s alive or if he is, whether he remembers their past life. Or, the most heartbreaking possibility—he remembers, he knows how to find Naruto, but he doesn’t want anything to do with him.
Naruto can’t blame him if that’s the case. He’d been too craven to acknowledge his feelings and that cowardice had condemned them both to lives of pretense and suffering. Now, this is his punishment: to live a life with everything he’d ever dreamed of, without his soulmate. It’s an agony that taints all else, poisoning the good in his life with the knowledge that he will never be able to share his joys with the one he loves.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do next. First, he just wants to rest. The book tour’s been nearly two months long and he’s physically and emotionally drained. This is the final stop, though, and after tonight he’ll be free to go home at last. He’s going to have time to just be, to process the whirlwind that has been his life for the past three years. Maybe, with this finished, he’ll finally be able to move on. He’ll never be whole, but at least he might learn how to accept it.
Footsteps approach the table as he fumbles with a new marker. The cap is being stubborn and he has to bite back a curse as he wrestles with it, annoyed all over again that his usual retractable markers were out of stock. Finally, it twists off and without looking up, he flips open the front cover of the book placed before him and poises the implement over it. “Hey there, who should I make this out to?”
He lifts his head and his breath hitches in his throat. There, just in front of his table, stands the very man he’s tried so hard to convince himself he’ll never see in this lifetime—alive—and here—with two arms and a lightness to his eyes that Naruto’s never seen before. He’s stunning, so much more so than his brain could ever hope to replicate in his dreams. Every minute detail of his features are imprinted on Naruto’s soul, but the full extent of his beauty is impossible to fathom. And gods, that beautiful face is smiling, soft eyes catching his like they know precisely who he is, too.
It’s his moment of reckoning, and that smile feels like salvation.
“Uchiha Sasuke.”