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First off, you have to understand that nowhere in the Uchiha Compound is actually off-limits. Like sure, when you’re a baby and whatever there’s places you don’t go and there’s the understanding that your skillset may bar you from places, and sometimes if you’re caught you might have to do the groceries for someone for like a month straight. But! Aside from that, nowhere is like… really forbidden or any such thing.
Except for one place. One house. No one was allowed there. Not a single foot was to pass the boundary. Not a soul was to be seen on the presence.
“Because it’s haunted!”
Itachi sighs, longsuffering. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
His words do little to sway Shisui, who knows the truth. “Firstly, there absolutely is so jot that down. Secondly, what other explanation is there?”
“Someone just doesn’t want to be disturbed?” It’s a completely reasonable reason, in Itachi’s opinion. He would certainly love to not be disturbed—especially not at twenty-three-hundred when it is hours from dawn and he’d only returned home from a mission a few hours ago.
He’d been sleeping! It had been a nice sleep!
“Boring,” Shisui says, drawing the word out. “Don’t you want to find out?”
Itachi considers it. He could go with Shisui and have an adventure, or he could also sleep. The decision, it must be said, is very easy to make. He tells Shisui so.
Bristling at the indignity of it, Shisui sniffs loudly from his perch on Itachi’s windowsill. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll deal with this myself. Sleep well and dream of what you’re missing!”
“Uh-huh.” Then, without any ceremony, Itachi shuts his window and leaves Shisui on his perch, arms pin-wheeling as he tries not to fall.
Bereft of company, Shisui reconsiders his plans for the evening. He could absolutely follow in Itachi’s footsteps and go to bed himself, or he could follow in the footsteps of his Taichō and exhaust himself with training so that he can go to sleep, or—even better!—he could do as his ancestors have done before him and go commit mischief during the midnight hour.
Really, it’s not a hard decision.
The house in question is located at the back of the compound and on a slight incline. As far as Shisui can remember, he’s never seen anyone or any movement there, even though one would think that a banned house would see all the kids daring others to trespass. Shisui surely cannot be the first!
Then again, there is that whole ghost rumour to consider…
Shifting on his tree branch, Shisui considers the house. It isn’t exactly rundown, but only because they don’t really do that in the Compound. Someone’s always around to make sure the houses are up to standards—or at least give the façade that they’re up to standards. Still, to Shisui’s discerned eye, it does look somewhat… dilapidated. Something about the tone of the wood, the slant of the door, the growth of the plants. Small things, but obvious to one with Uchiha eyes.
Aside from the house’s appearance, there’s also the lore to go with the house. Some of the rumours are boring, like the one that just suggests it’s an old ojisan living there who’s very grumpy about life. The other is that the house constantly changes hands because it’s cursed.
The curse thing is ridiculous, of course. Curses don’t exist. Trust him, Shisui would know. He’s disproven at least four through various missions, one of which was ANBU and very highly classified by the end of the mission. Needless to say, it’s quite obvious that curses don’t exist.
Ghosts though? Ghosts do.
Look, Shisui is from a Clan that’s superstitious enough to be naming their best techniques after gods. He figures that gods exist because the names had to come from somewhere, and just accepts they don’t care for the mundane world and day-to-day minutiae, hence why they don’t actually do anything. Likewise, he’s pretty sure spirits also exist, if only because of that one festival when he’d been four and he’d definitely seen a lantern moving by itself and Itachi is wrong when he says otherwise.
So yeah, Shisui figures out that there’s a ghost in the forbidden house. There’s a ghost story about it, of course, but it’s not terribly detailed. As in, there’s a ghost and there’s a story but no one knows what the actual story is, or who the ghost is.
But Shisui’s onto it! He’ll find out the story once and for all.
Naturally, step one is reconnaissance. Thankfully, Shisui’s done that by listening to rumours and spending one night wide-eyed and staring at the house for every hour of darkness. Beside the obvious, there had been nothing of particular interest to report. Except for the light thing, of course. That was just weird. Like who even turns on the light for one minute at midnight? A whole sixty seconds too. Shisui counted. And it was the whole house! Not just a tiny bit!
Some people clearly do not care about their electricity bills. Shisui would love to relate to that. Unfortunately, he is poor and his life is dictated by the various bills he has to pay and also his pay check. But anyway, it’s just another piece of evidence suggesting that a ghost lives there!
Now, why is he focussing on the forbidden house in the Uchiha Compound rather than thinking about getting paid by picking up a mission? The answer to this is very simple—Shisui is on medical leave. It’s somewhat warranted, but mostly not in his professional non-medical opinion. He broke his arm in multiple places and misaligned the bone or something, but they did some weird medic stuff and it’s all healed now! Capable of being used the same as he did before the original injury!
The medics had been worried about the bone fully healing and about how the overuse of medical chakra had interacted with his own chakra, leaving him recovering slower than he should be. That could, of course, be due to the exhaustion and the poisoning he’d also experienced.
Shisui, personally, sees no reason to be concerned. Maybe he’s avoiding using chakra where he can, but who needs that anyway? Chakra is for wimps!
And for like people who need it to fight and boost their speed and strength and also use the Sharingan.
Okay so maybe Shisui should be on medical leave, but he doesn’t need to be happy about it!
All that is to say, Shisui can get onto step two: enter the forbidden house.
He does this in a very cautious manner. After observing no movement, he ends up crouching before the door and jimmying the lock until the door opens. The ease with which he unlocks the door means that the house probably belongs to a civilian. Civilian ghost, that is. No ninja worth their chakra would consider not having some kind of trap or at least warning system, and Shisui prides himself on being a good enough ninja to stop—or at least notice—said warning system or trap.
The entrance to the house provides no information. It is, Shisui must admit, like every single house in the Uchiha Compound. It’s just colder than most. Not anything to be concerned about, however. Another point of evidence about the ghost though!
Since step two has been a success, Shisui figures that it is time to begin step three, which consists of locating evidence of a ghost or the house’s occupants. There is one… small… challenge with that.
He hadn’t thought of how to do that.
But Shisui is a ninja and they endure and he’s absolutely broken into so many places before, this should be easy!
And it is! Right up until he walks into a room and the light flicks on and no one is around.
From his position hidden on the ceiling, Shisui activates his Sharingan and conducts a quick second check of his surrounds. But no, there’s still no one around.
“Ghost?” Shisui whispers.
The lights flicker.
He does not scream (because he is an ANBU and they don’t ever scream), but he does hastily vacate the room. No need to disturb any spirits, restless or otherwise. Behind him, the lights flick off once he’s left the room and Shisui really doesn’t appreciate that, okay? No one ever taught him how to like deal with ghosts. They’re already dead so it’s not like he can kill them.
And aren’t you meant to like complete rituals or something to soothe a ghost so they can home? Shisui is starting to think he maybe should have looked into this a bit more and-
Whipping his head around, Shisui searches for the movement he had seen, but there’s nothing there. He frowns. He could have sworn that he saw someone—pale skin, dark hair, strangely youthful face except for the eyes. Those had been missing.
There’s nothing there though. Had it been a figment of his imagination?
Somewhat more cautiously, he continues his way through the rest of the house. The kitchen is pretty ordinary, though the fridge almost seems to glow red if Shisui looks closely at it, so he doesn’t. Look closely, that is.
From the kitchen, he finds himself in the main living area. It’s a bit more personal, and there are some… pictures? They’re not photos, not like Shisui is used to. Rather, they’re hand drawn portraits. They’re obviously all Uchihas based on their face structure, but not any Shisui knows. There are a few non-Uchiha portraits too, but they’re rare and few in-between.
He’s studying them when someone says, “You should not be here.”
Shisui jumps, eyes wide as he stares into the glass reflection of a ghost with a pale face and black hair and no eyes.
“I’m sorry!” he says, hastily putting the portrait back. “I didn’t mean to intrude! Please forgive this one for his trespassing.”
“Ah, kids these days. No worry. Come, let me see your face.”
Slowly, Shisui turns around. He swallows down the words ‘please don’t take my eyes’ only because he’s fairly certain the ghost is an Uchiha and Uchiha look out for Uchiha, because that’s what family does. And they’re certainly not eye stealers.
Then, fully turned, Shisui finds himself blinking in surprise because- because the ghost staring at him is not young and doesn’t have black hair and isn’t missing his eyes at all.
“Um.”
The ghost smiles, wrinkles deepening—and he has a lot of them. Wrinkles, that is. Wrinkles and long white hair and he’s as pale as anything. “It is not often I have guests,” the ghost says. “They are often scared away by rumours these days. You were brave to come.”
Shisui kind of doesn’t feel very brave standing before the ghost, but he also isn’t entirely sure what else he expected. And so, when the ghost bids him to follow, he does.
“I don’t suppose you wish to share your name, child? I don’t believe you belong to either of my neighbours, though I suppose that could have changed.”
Are you meant to tell ghosts your name? Or are you meant to hide it? Shisui can’t quite remember.
“I’m- I’m not one of your neighbours,” Shisui says at last, “but I heard that this house was forbidden and I was… curious.”
He winces pre-emptively, waiting for the ghost to explode or do whatever it is that ghosts do. But the ghost only laughs. Shisui’s not certain whether that’s better or worse.
“Kids change so little over the years, and yet they are always brighter than the last generation,” the ghost says. “And your name?”
“Ah, Uchiha Shisui.”
“It is good to meet you, Shisui-kun. My name is Uchiha Hikaku. Would you like some tea?”
Can ghosts have tea?
Shisui’s not certain about whether ghosts can have tea, but he would certainly like some tea and requests some from Hikaku. The tea is very nice, and also fresh, and it occurs to Shisui that Hikaku might not actually be a ghost. He tries to ask this in the most polite way he can.
“Do you know why this house is forbidden? I heard rumour that it was haunted by ghosts. Or a ghost. Singular.”
Then, because he is a polite guest, Shisui sips at the tea Hikaku has placed before him.
It tastes very real. Is ghost tea a thing?
“Ghost stories have a habit of following me around,” Hikaku says with a smile, as if inviting Shisui to laugh at a joke with him. Shisui, obviously, knows the punchline already. He tries for a smile. “The forbidden rumour is, unfortunately, my own fault however. I was… rather frustrated at someone, and said that I forbid anyone with stupid ideas to come and bother me at home. The rumour grew, a little, and, well, I didn’t deal with stupid ideas as much, but I also didn’t deal with people as much, either.”
Shisui sips once more at his tea and then, very belatedly, realises why the name Uchiha Hikaku sounded familiar. Not something he learnt in the Academy, or in his own studies, but he’d learnt it from Clan teachings. Hikaku had been the second Clan Head that the Uchiha had upon joining Konoha. It had not been a happy start to his leadership, but he had worked alongside the Shodaime Hokage and the Nidaime Hokage, before stepping down. And that’s all very impressive, but the real reason that Hikaku is remembered is purely because he lived long past the life expectancy.
In fact, Shisui vividly remembers being told that Hikaku was one of the very few people left from the Warring Clans Era and was not to be disturbed by brats with tadpoles for brains.
And no, that’s not paraphrasing.
With all this in mind, and still thinking about stories of ghosts, Shisui really doesn’t think he can be blamed for blurting out, “You’re alive?!”
Hikaku, thankfully, takes this in good humour, and erupts into laughter. “Goodness, yes, I’m still alive. Just living apart from the politics that once made up so much of my life and, apparently, out of touch with many things. Did you think I was a ghost?”
Somewhat mulishly, Shisui sips at his tea. “No,” he lies. “I knew you were real the entire time.” Then, after a pause, he says, “But you’ve done well to make the house seem haunted. What kind of seals did you use for the effects?”
“Oh?” Hikaku raises an eyebrow, before shaking his head. “No, you’re mistaken. There’s no seal or ward or trap or anything like that. I rely on something much better.”
“And what’s that?”
Something flickers in Shisui’s peripheral but he doesn’t notice this time.
“A ghost.”
And, somewhat hidden from sight, Izuna cackles at Shisui’s yelp of surprise.