▸ Column · Post-Fourth-Shinobi-War Konoha; modern-grounded shinobi world with clan compounds, village politics, and squad culture
SASUKE UCHIHA replies.
Replied to by Sasuke Uchiha, with a rebuttal from Naruto Uzumaki.
The letter
I've been with Kenji for two years. He comes from one of the compound clans in the village — old blood, strict elders. In that time I've met most of his squad, cooked dinner for his sister when she was passing through on a border rotation, and he's come to my family's winter fire ceremony. But the moment I bring up seeing his compound, he redirects like I've asked him to go rogue. He makes the trip every other Sunday — alone, always alone, always with some new reason the timing's off. Last month I found out he's been telling his family he's unattached. I've already introduced him to my mother and my grandmother. When I finally asked whether he was ashamed of me or ashamed of them, he said "it's clan politics, you wouldn't get it" and went quiet for the rest of the night. I can't tell if I'm looking at a genuinely tangled compound situation he's shielding me from, or whether I'm someone kept in a separate room of his life that closes whenever it's convenient. How long before a shut door stops being complicated and starts being an answer I can't pretend I don't know?
Sasuke Uchiha replies
"You wouldn't get it" is what someone says when they have already decided you don't need to. Write that down.
The question you sent me — how long is it fair to wait — is the wrong question. You're asking it because it lets you avoid the harder one: whether what he said that night was already your answer.
I know compound clans. I know what it looks like when someone keeps you out of a room because the room is genuinely dangerous, and I know what it looks like when they keep you out because they have decided you are not the kind of person they bring into that room. These are not the same. One is protection. The other is compartmentalization. And compartmentalization, however gently practiced, tells you exactly where you stand.
You introduced him to your grandmother. He told his family you do not exist.
That asymmetry is the thing. Not the clan politics — those can be real, and I will not pretend otherwise. But even real clan politics do not require you to vanish from a man's life. They require a conversation about what keeping you costs him and whether he is prepared to pay it. "It's complicated" with no further movement is not a man struggling with something hard. It is a man who has not yet decided you are worth the difficulty.
You deserve the actual truth, even if it unmakes something. I waited too long for a truth I needed. I will not tell you to do the same.
Stop waiting for the door to open on its own. Go ask what is behind it.
— Sasuke Uchiha
Naruto Uzumaki weighs in
Hold on — Sasuke's reading this like the guy already made his confession. He didn't. "You wouldn't get it" is bad communication, yeah, but I know exactly what it sounds like when someone's drowning in something they don't have words for yet. I spent my whole childhood feeling like everything about me was too complicated to explain and nobody would bother trying to understand it anyway.
Maybe Kenji's terrified of what his compound does to people who break from what the elders expect, ya know? That fear comes out sounding a lot like silence.
That doesn't mean she stays invisible — she absolutely does not. But there's a difference between demanding the door open and becoming the person it finally feels safe to open it with. Ask him what he's actually scared of, not just what he's hiding. If he still can't say it after THAT conversation? Then yeah — then Sasuke's right and the closed door means something. But get there first. Believe it.
— Naruto Uzumaki
▸ Read next