Chapter 500: The Camera
It turned out Naruto had only found the first layer.
The chibi doll he had pulled from inside the toy -- the miniature version of Satsuki herself -- had led him to one conclusion: that she had simply wanted so badly to be near him that she had made a tiny copy of herself and hidden it inside the cat she sent him. The most clumsy, most sincere declaration a girl in the middle of her worst feelings could have managed.
He had even remembered what she had said when she gave him the toy: "Keep it somewhere you can see it." At the time he had taken it as a throwaway comment. Looking back now, it was probably the most honest thing she had said to him in that entire period, dressed up in the most awkward possible wrapping.
But Satsuki knew that was nowhere near all of it.
The real secret was in the cat's eyes.
Wait. Wait a moment.
Satsuki's thoughts hit the brakes hard.
Did this actually count as being safe?
Even she was starting to question her own sense of what was normal. What she had done -- hiding a camera in the eyes of a stuffed animal she sent to the person she loved, watching him through a screen every day, imagining herself held in arms that were holding a toy -- looked, from any angle she tried, like exactly one thing.
An obsessive, borderline-unhinged level of devotion.
What kind of person did something like that to someone they liked? If that wasn't disturbing, what was?
If he found out, he would think she was disturbing. He would be disgusted. Someone as genuinely warm and uncomplicated as Naruto -- how could he possibly be fine with learning his wife had once been...
Satsuki raised her head carefully and watched Naruto's face from the edge of her vision. She was terrified of seeing contempt surface there. Terrified of the moment his eyes shifted and the warmth drained out of them. Terrified of one step backward, of the look that said: so this is who you are.
But -- same as a moment ago -- there was nothing negative on Naruto's face.
No disgust. No unease. No quiet withdrawal that said I'm seeing you differently now.
There was only that smile that made her pulse jump -- the one that meant he had been genuinely reached, genuinely touched. The one that said he found what she had done charming.
...Charming?
Satsuki's brain stalled out entirely.
The things she had just told him -- the things even she recognized as not entirely normal -- and Naruto's response to them was that they were charming?
Though if she forced herself to think it through. If a girl who genuinely loved someone, who loved them in a way that went all the way down to the bone, did something like this -- then yes. For someone who loved her back, it would read differently. It wouldn't read as frightening.
It would read as proof. Proof of how much she had cared. Proof of how desperately she had wanted to be beside him. Proof that what she felt was real in a way that couldn't be faked or performed.
Naruto had not interpreted it as obsessive. He had not found it frightening or strange or symptomatic of something wrong. He had simply thought: oh, so she already cared about me that much. That makes me happy.
...
Satsuki slowly became aware of something. Had she been worrying about the wrong thing entirely?
Because she cared so much, every detail that might possibly upset him had been placed under her most unsparing scrutiny. Every one of those past behaviors had been examined at maximum magnification, every corner of them inspected for anything that could be interpreted badly.
In other words: completely and irreparably in love. No recovery possible.
And she was Uchiha Satsuki -- a person who had always valued her feelings more than her life.
"Um..." She couldn't stop herself from asking. "Naruto... don't you think... this is a little strange?"
"Strange?" Naruto looked at her, genuinely puzzled.
"...Because." Satsuki lowered her gaze, dropping her voice. "This kind of behavior... no matter how you look at it... it isn't entirely normal, is it..."
"Not normal? Seems fine to me."
Naruto glanced down at the chibi doll in his hand. "Knowing that Satsuki liked me that much back then makes me happy."
"...So you forgive me?"
"What do you mean, forgive..."
He laughed -- not at her, but with the exasperation of someone who has completely given up trying to stay detached. That fondness that had nowhere left to go. "If a husband needs to forgive his wife for liking him too much, then he's failing pretty significantly as a husband."
"..."
Satsuki's body gave a single sharp shudder. Not the kind that came from fear.
The other kind.
The kind that started somewhere deep in the spine and moved outward. The kind that made blood run warmer and skin turn suddenly, acutely aware of itself. A heat that ignited in her core and spread along every nerve, pulling her breath into something shorter and less steady.
Her eyes went somewhere slightly unfocused for a moment. And at the same time, quietly, a decision settled in her chest.
Under Naruto's gaze, Satsuki moved.
She walked past him. Walked to the desk.
She reached out and picked up the white cat -- the one with its body open and its head still intact, both black eyes still in place and still catching the light.
A small, clean crack of plastic.
"Satsuki?!" Naruto turned sharply, completely unprepared for whatever had just happened.
He saw Satsuki's fingers. Pinched between them was something she had just removed from behind those black eyes. Not stuffing. Something small, precise, and completely wrong for the inside of a stuffed animal.
Fine circuitry. A miniature lens. A memory chip smaller than a grain of rice.
"What is..." Naruto didn't understand. He genuinely hadn't considered it. The piece was so small, so deliberately concealed, that without someone deliberately looking for it, it would have stayed invisible indefinitely.
"...It's a camera."
Satsuki's head was down. Her voice was quiet. But every word was perfectly clear.
She could not stand the weight of it anymore. Could not keep it buried one more day.
The secrets she had hidden, the things she had been certain would never surface -- they were rising now, coming up faster than she could push them down, and there was no stopping the tide.
Only when it came to Naruto did her wanting become something with no ceiling. Always reaching for more. Never quite full.
"Back then..."
She began. Her voice was not entirely steady.
"All I thought about was Naruto."
"What was Naruto doing."
"Whether Naruto was thinking about me."
"I wanted to see Naruto."
"Every hour of every day."
Her fingers held the tiny camera. The knuckles had gone faintly white.
"When I was awake, I was thinking about him."
"When I closed my eyes, I was still thinking about him."
"I thought about him until I was almost out of my mind."
"I thought about him until --"
She stopped. Drew a slow breath, the kind that pulls everything that's been held too tight all the way down into the lungs before letting it out.
Then, one word at a time:
"Until even seeing him through something like this was something I couldn't stop myself from doing."
"That cat was something I gave to Naruto."
"To let it stay beside him."
"To let my eyes stay beside him."
She raised her head at last. Those black eyes looked straight at him, and in their depths burned the thing that was distinctly, unmistakably Uchiha -- a light made of obsession, absolute and consuming, the kind that reduced everything else to ash.
"That way I could see him."
"I could see what Naruto looked like when he slept."
"I could see what Naruto looked like when he got lost in his thoughts."
"I could see Naruto holding that cat and talking to it."
"I could see Naruto --"
Her voice got softer with each line. But hotter. Every word came out as though it had been sitting over a flame.
"Hold me the way he held that cat. Fall asleep with me in his arms."
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