Archive of Our Own ^beta

Sasuke listened, but his attention drifted. The other kids from the academy were already fanning out, their excited shouts echoing as they kicked up leaves. His eyes scanned the base of a nearby oak, where a cluster of mushrooms pushed through the moss. One of them looked almost right, but its stem was thinner, more delicate. A faint, iridescent sheen glistened on its cap where the dappled sunlight hit it.

He reached out, his small fingers brushing against the cool, smooth surface. It felt different. Not like a plant, but like polished stone. A reckless curiosity, a need to know that went beyond Iruka’s lesson, prickled under his skin.

He plucked it.

Holding it closer, he noticed the hue matched precisely the one Iruka had shown them. In the background, he could make out the sensei scolding another pupil just a few paces away. Sasuke’s gaze flickered around. No one was looking at him. His heart beat a little faster. He raised the mushroom to his lips and took a small, tentative bite.

The flesh was surprisingly crisp, like an apple, but it tasted of nothing. Just a dry, woody texture. He was about to spit it out, disappointed, when a sound bloomed inside his head.

It wasn’t a sound he heard with his ears. It was a melody, pure and crystalline, that seemed to emanate from the very core of his being. Not only that, but it was a wordless, melancholic song weaving through his thoughts. The surrounding forest, Iruka’s voice, the other children, faded into a distant hum. A warm, heavy feeling spread from his stomach to his limbs, a pleasant numbness that made him want to close his eyes and just… listen.

His fingers tightened around the mushroom stem. He wanted to hear more. He brought it back towards his mouth, the song swelling, promising a deeper, sweeter silence if he just took another bite.

A sharp pain pricked his lip. He’d bitten himself. The tiny shock of it pierced the fog for a single second. His own hand was moving, seemingly of its own accord, guiding the mushroom back. A cold dread cut through the warmth. Let go.

His fingers were locked. They felt like stone. The song was a lullaby, coaxing him to sleep, to forget.

Let go!

He focused everything on his right hand, a tremor running up his arm. It was like trying to unclench a fist in a dream. The muscles screamed in protest. With a final, grating effort of will, his fingers sprang open.

The mushroom tumbled silently onto the bed of moss.

The melody vanished. The world rushed back in: the rustle of leaves, the kids' loud laugh, the smell of damp soil. Sasuke stared at his empty hand, his breath coming in short, quiet gasps. His lip stung. A faint, coppery taste of blood was on his tongue, the only real thing in a suddenly unreal world. He felt dizzy, disconnected, as if he’d just woken up from a deep sleep and couldn’t remember his own name.

“Find anything, Sasuke?” Iruka called from a few meters away.

Sasuke quickly wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jacket, hiding the small spot of red. He shook his head, not trusting his voice to sound normal. He kept his eyes fixed on the strange mushroom lying innocently on the ground, a cold knot tightening in his stomach. Had it truly happened, or was his mind playing tricks?

“Big brother?” Sasuke began, his voice softer than usual. He kept his eyes on a stray grain of rice.

Itachi looked up from his own meal. “Hm?”

“Today in the forest, I found a weird mushroom.”

Itachi’s expression didn’t change, but a flicker of attention sharpened his gaze. “You should be careful. Many are poisonous.”

“This one was different!” Sasuke finally met his brother’s eyes. “When I bit it, I heard music inside my head.”

Itachi’s chopsticks paused halfway to his mouth. He set them down carefully. “Oh?”

“Yeah! And it was beautiful.” Sasuke struggled to find the right description. “Have you ever heard of that? A mushroom that makes music?”

Itachi considered him for a long moment, his dark eyes unreadable. He shook his head slowly. “There are studies that discovered mushrooms can send and receive chemical signals. They sense and respond to their surroundings that way, but it’s not something humans can hear or feel.” He gave a small, dismissive shrug. “You must have a big imagination, Sasuke. You must promise me you won’t do that again. It’s dangerous.”

Sasuke watched him closely. There was something off about Itachi’s calm—too careful, almost rehearsed. The crease between his brows didn’t belong to a brother scolding over a childish mistake; it was worry, sharp and buried deep. Whatever unsettled him, it wasn’t the mushroom. But Sasuke had no proof, nothing solid to reach for, so he just nodded instead.

“I promise,” Sasuke mumbled, looking back down at his plate. But the promise felt thin and hollow.

Later, when the compound was asleep and the moon cast long shadows across the garden, Sasuke slipped out of his room. The night air was cool on his skin. He moved on silent feet, retracing the path from memory back to the training grounds near the forest’s edge. He didn’t have to search for long. Moonlight glinted off the same iridescent cap, nestled at the base of the same oak tree. It was as if it had been waiting for him.

His heart hammered against his ribs. Itachi’s warning echoed, but it was a distant thing, drowned out by the memory of the song. He just wanted to hear it again. Just for a moment. To see if it was real.

He knelt and plucked the mushroom. It felt cool and firm in his hand. He took a deep breath, then brought it to his lips and bit down.

The crisp texture gave way, and instantly, the world dissolved.

The melody bloomed, richer and more profound than before. It wasn’t just a song; it was a feeling, a state of being. The gnarled roots of the oak tree became beautiful, intricate patterns. The leaves shimmered with a silver light he’d never seen. A profound, unquestionable happiness settled over him, warm and heavy. He felt rooted. He was part of the earth, part of the tree. He was growing. Like a plant, unfurling towards the sun.

I’m growing, he thought. Happy.

He felt a gentle pressure, a pleasant stretching sensation. He was blooming. This was paradise. There was no clan, no training, no expectations. Just this perfect, expanding peace.

Then, a shadow fell over him.

The melody faltered. The shadow loomed closer, blotting out the silver light. A face, distorted and terrifyingly close, filled his vision. It had no distinct features, just a dark, rushing presence.

The happiness shattered, replaced by a cold, primal fear. The pleasant stretching became a violent tearing. He wasn’t growing anymore; he was being ripped apart. Hands, impossibly strong, were clawing at him, pulling him out of the earth, out of his paradise. The melody twisted into a scream inside his head. He was dying. The bliss was being murdered.

Itachi found him just after dawn, a faint unease having pulled him from his bed. Sasuke wasn’t in his room.

He discovered his brother lying on his back near the edge of the forest, his body unnaturally still. At first, Itachi’s breath caught, thinking the worst. But then he saw the peaceful expression on Sasuke’s face, serene in the early morning light. Relief washed over him, followed by confusion. What was he doing out here?

Then he saw it.

Protruding from Sasuke’s slightly parted lips was a mushroom. This was a pale growth, thick and bulbous, its stem widening as it emerged. It was larger than Sasuke’s head, a grotesque, fleshy bloom that seemed to have sprouted from deep inside his throat. The cap was already unfurling, a sickly beige against the boy’s pale skin.

Itachi’s mind, usually a fortress of calm and logic, went blank with sheer, uncomprehending stupefaction. This was impossible. This was a nightmare.

He moved without thinking, his training taking over where his reason failed. He dropped to his knees, his hands, usually so precise and controlled, trembling as he reached for the obscene growth. He grabbed the base of the stem where it met Sasuke’s lips. It was warm, disturbingly organic.

He pulled.

It didn’t budge. It was rooted. A cold terror seized him. He adjusted his grip, gritted his teeth, and pulled with all his strength.

The mushroom came free with a wet, tearing sound.

The moment it left Sasuke’s mouth, the boy’s body convulsed. The peaceful expression shattered. His face contorted, eyes squeezing shut, features twisting into a mask of pain and terror. A choked, guttural gasp escaped his lips as he curled onto his side, coughing violently, his small body wracked with spasms.

Itachi stared at the thing in his hand. The mushroom looked ordinary, benign, even appetizing in its way, if one ignored its impossible size. It was just a mushroom, a perfectly normal mushroom. The realization hit him with a profound and chilling clarity: the anomaly was not the fungus, it was Sasuke. Somehow, his little brother had influenced it and shaped it into being from some hidden, unconscious place within himself. Itachi’s fingers tightened around the stem. He carefully placed the mushroom aside, then gathered his shaking brother into his arms. Sasuke was trembling uncontrollably, his eyes wide with a terror that seemed to belong to a realm far beyond this one.

Itachi wasn’t worried, not truly. This wasn’t the first time something truly weird and unsettling had happened to Sasuke. He’d long understood that his little brother wasn’t completely human like the rest of them. Nobody else knew the real nature of what Sasuke was, but Itachi had seen enough glimpses to recognize the signs of a power that didn't belong to this world. He held the trembling boy closer, a strange sense of calm settling over him. This was just another piece of the puzzle that was his brother.

The next day, Sasuke moved through the Uchiha compound like a ghost. The morning sun felt too bright, the sounds of the village too loud. He kept seeing it: the mushroom’s pale, fleshy cap unfurling from his own mouth, the feeling of being one with the earth, and then the violent, tearing end. But the worst part wasn't the fear. It was a strange, hollow sadness. He felt like he’d lost something precious.

He shuffled into the kitchen for lunch. The smell of frying tofu and miso soup filled the air. His mother, Mikoto, stood near the stove, her hands on her hips as she watched Itachi work. “A little more dashi, Itachi. Not too much, or it will be too salty!”

Fugaku sat at the low table, his presence a silent pressure in the room.

Itachi nodded, his movements fluid and precise as he adjusted the flame. Sasuke slid into his seat, his eyes fixed on the cutting board. Itachi was slicing a mushroom. It was big, with a smooth tan cap and a thick white stem. It was the same kind. The exact same kind he had bitten yesterday.

A cold knot tightened in Sasuke’s stomach. He watched a piece slide from the knife blade into the sizzling pan. That was it. The one that had sung to him. The one that had been so happy.

“Big brother…” Sasuke whispered, his voice thick.

Itachi glanced over, a question in his eyes.

“This mushroom…” Sasuke couldn’t finish. His throat closed up. He saw it again, the peaceful, expanding joy, the feeling of being part of something beautiful. And then Itachi’s hands, pulling, tearing. He’d murdered that feeling.

He’d murdered the mushroom.

He pushed himself away from the table so abruptly the legs scraped against the floor. He didn’t look at anyone, just turned and fled down the hall to his room. He slammed the door shut and threw himself onto his bed, burying his face in the pillow. The sobs came then, hot and messy. He was crying for the mushroom. It didn’t deserve this. It had just been growing, being happy. It hadn’t done anything wrong.

A soft knock came at the door a few minutes later. “Sasuke?” It was Itachi.

Sasuke didn’t answer, just curled into a tighter ball.

The door slid open. Itachi stood there for a moment, then walked in and sat on the edge of the bed. He didn’t touch him. “It’s lunchtime.”

“I’m not hungry,” Sasuke mumbled into the pillow.

“Because of the mushroom?”

Sasuke nodded, a fresh wave of tears making his shoulders shake. “It was happy. It was just… living. And we’re going to eat it!”

Itachi was quiet for a long moment. The only sound was Sasuke’s ragged breathing. “Sasuke,” he finally said, his voice low and even. “Everything dies. The mushroom, too. It was already dying the moment you picked it.”

“That’s not the point!” Sasuke sat up, his face flushed and wet. “It’s different! We were like the same!”

Itachi’s expression remained calm, but his eyes were serious. “Maybe, but the truth is the same. If we don’t eat, we die. So when something dies, it’s better if its life goes to another. That way, its death isn’t wasted. It lets someone else live another day.”

Sasuke wiped his nose on his sleeve, staring at his brother. The logic was cold, hard. It made a terrible kind of sense, but it didn’t touch the ache in his chest. The mushroom’s happiness felt more real than Itachi’s explanation.

“It’s just the way the world is,” Itachi said softly. He stood up. “The food is getting cold.”

He left the room, sliding the door shut behind him. Sasuke stayed on his bed, listening to the faint sounds from the kitchen. He could still feel the ghost of the song, a faint, sad hum at the edge of his hearing. Itachi was probably right. But right now, sitting alone in his quiet room, Sasuke didn’t think the world was a very fair place at all.

Sasuke knelt by the small hole he’d dug near the compound’s outer wall. He’d placed the wilted, discolored mushroom inside with a strange sort of reverence. He patted the loose dirt over it, making a tiny mound.

Itachi watched from the shadow of the engawa, his arms crossed. The whole thing was baffling. It was a fungus. A thing that drained Sasuke's life energy. Yet Sasuke was treating its burial with more solemnity than some clan members gave their own kin.

“What are you doing, Sasuke?” Itachi finally asked, his voice carefully neutral.

Sasuke didn’t look up, his small hands still pressing the earth flat. “Saying sorry.”

“It can’t hear you.”

“I know.” Sasuke’s voice was quiet, stubborn. “But I can.” He found a small, smooth stone and placed it on top of the mound like a headstone. It was the most illogical, sentimental thing Itachi had seen in a long time. A deep, unfamiliar worry settled in his chest, cold and heavy. The purity of it was unnerving.

This wasn’t just a child’s fancy. This was something else entirely, a fundamental facet of Sasuke that he simply could not decipher. Itachi watched his little brother, this unknowable variable, and wondered when Sasuke would begin to question the world, and himself, with the same intensity. When would he gain conscious of his true power and start using it for his own advantage?