Inside the Hokage building of Konoha, little abacuses still clattered faintly. Of course, Ryo and the others knew nothing of it.
The evening wind carried the sweltering heat of a summer night, mixed with the faint chorus of insects. It drifted past the uneven rooftops of Konoha and finally settled on Ryo's quiet little courtyard.
On the low table lay scattered utensils. The faint aroma of food still lingered in the air, the cold remnants reflecting the silence after a recently ended dinner.
But the atmosphere was taut, like a bowstring pulled to its limit.
Kushina stood by the table, her hands unconsciously gripping the hem of her skirt. Her vivid red hair fell forward over her brow, framing eyes filled with desperate determination.
She drew in a breath as though mustering all her courage. Her voice trembled just enough to betray her unease as it pierced the silence of the little courtyard.
"Ryo, tomorrow is graduation and team assignments. Do you want us to be on the same team?"
The hope in her words burned so fiercely it could almost scorch.
Uchiha Mikoto sat quietly on a cushion a little further away, her head lowered. In her hands, a plain handkerchief twisted tightly, her fingertips whitening with the force of her grip.
She too was waiting.
Ryo's eyes passed over Kushina's strained attempt at composure. In their depths flickered an emotion he himself tried carefully to hide, habitual avoidance or simply the clumsy defense of a boy who couldn't handle a feeling this raw.
And just like countless times before, the phrase carved into his bones as a shield slipped out of his mouth almost by instinct.
"I don't care."
It was like lighting a fuse. In an instant, Kushina's fragile calm snapped.
"Kamiyama Ryo!!!"
Her voice shot up an octave, sharp as glass shattering in someone's face.
"You're a complete and utter idiot!" Her bright eyes brimmed with tears, a blur of grievance and rage.
She wiped her eyes hard, but the harder she wiped the more the tears streamed until they soaked her face.
"Dammit!" She stomped her foot furiously.
"From now on," her voice shook with humiliation and heartbreak, "if I ever speak to you again, then I'm a dog. Woof!!!"
Before the words had even faded, she spun around, refusing him another glance. With all the wounded fury of a small beast lashed by a whip, she shoved open the half-closed door and stormed out into the dense, suffocating night.
In a blink, she was gone.
"Ryo-kun!"
Mikoto, who had been pretending to sit still like a doll, suddenly leapt up.
Her persona shattered completely. That soft and gentle mask cracked apart like broken glass, leaving nothing but sharp fragments.
In her eyes, once so tender, burned a fire as cold and cutting as blades.
"You know perfectly well that Kushina likes you. It's not just today, not just yesterday, it's always been like this. But you? You never give her a straight answer. You let her cling to hope again and again, only to crush it with your own hands. What do you think she is to you? Someone to toy with? Someone whose feelings don't matter?"
Her breath hitched sharply, her chest rising and falling as her words lashed like whips. Then came the knife, the one word sharp enough to cut through his chest.
"Scumbag!"
Mikoto threw him a glare that carried all the contempt of a woman who had once been blind to a man's true face.
She turned and stormed out.
The door slammed shut behind her with a heavy thud, the echo reverberating in the suddenly dead-silent house.
Ryo stood frozen.
Her accusations resounded in his ears again and again, "She likes you. You know it. You're playing with her heart. Scumbag."
The cruel reality of the ninja world clashed with the ideals he'd carried from his past life. This was no safe haven for childhood innocence.
Children of seven or eight were thrown onto battlefields that ground them into meat. Fragile shoulders bore kunai taller than themselves. Thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girls could already be wives, even mothers.
Here, cruel slaughter and premature romance weren't exceptions, they were the rhythm of life itself.
And what was he afraid of?
He was binding himself with the shackles of a world long gone, civilized moral codes and rules that had no place in a land where death was always a breath away.
Age differences? Responsibilities? Future plans?
In a world where no one knew if their head would still be on their shoulders tomorrow, all of it was a joke.
The biggest joke of all was himself, Kamiyama Ryo, a hypocrite from head to toe.
Worse still, his constant dodging, his false restraint, his cowardly evasions had smothered the foundation of true strength.
Faith. Absolute, unshakable conviction.
Faith that said, if I choose to act I act. If I choose to kill I kill. If I choose to love I love. No hesitation. No apologies.
But what was he suppressing?
Not something foreign. Not something wrong.
It was himself.
A part of himself as real as bone and blood.
If he couldn't even confront his own demons, his own shadows, how could he ever claim true conviction?
Bullshit.
No wonder his haki always slammed against a cold wall. No wonder his power felt like sand with no foundation.
"Damn it!"
His hand whipped up and slapped his own cheek with a thunderous crack.
The sting burned like fire. Five red finger marks stood out clearly.
But the pain was nothing compared to the release.
It was like he'd torn open a filthy dam within his soul, letting all the sludge of hypocrisy, guilt, and false morality wash away in an instant.
Cold wind rushed through the void, scouring it clean.
"Fuck it all!" His voice burst out of his throat, low but shaking the night.
"I, Kamiyama Ryo, am a complete fraud, a poser, a first-rate idiot, a hypocrite of the highest order!"
And at last, clarity.
"What am I pretending for? Talking about the future? In this blood-soaked world, tomorrow isn't guaranteed. The only truth is now!"
A roar exploded in his soul, shattering the final chain.
"So what if I like that red-haired little pepper? I'll say it loud. I'll protect her with everything I've got. Yes, I like Uzumaki Kushina. So what? Better to be honest than to keep running like a coward."
The dam burst. The last false restraint crumbled into nothing.
Like a beast long caged, he broke free.
His spirit blazed clear, shining faith.
And then—
BOOM!
Something deep inside was triggered.
An immense wave of power erupted from his soul, primal and overwhelming, like an ancient god awakening from beneath the earth.
It wasn't chakra. It was pure will, pure faith given form.
Conqueror's haki.
The air itself froze.
Invisible shockwaves erupted from him, warping light and ripping the silence. The courtyard shuddered as if struck by a meteor.
Trees outside trembled violently, leaves stripped and shredded into a storm of green fragments. The very ground cracked beneath his feet, the density of the air pressing down as though demanding submission.
Meanwhile, in the Hokage building—
"Hokage-sama, something's wrong!" an ANBU burst in, voice panicked, face pale with shock.
Sarutobi Hiruzen shot to his feet, his half-finished pipe falling to the desk.
The ink on the emergency order he had just signed, placing all clans on war footing, was still wet.
"Calm yourself. Speak clearly!" Hiruzen's voice was thunder, firm with authority.
The ANBU gulped air, forcing composure, but his words rushed out in fear.
"Preliminary assessment, it's not a physical attack. It's some kind of massive spiritual shockwave. Over two-thirds of the village, civilians, genin, even many chūnin—"
His voice cracked.
"They all collapsed instantly, as if their souls were struck by an invisible hammer."
"What?!" Even Hiruzen's composure cracked. His fingers clenched his pipe so hard the knuckles whitened.
Kumo? Iwa? Some new weaponized genjutsu? How had they slipped in undetected?
To cripple half the village in an instant, it was unthinkable.
"And Mito-sama?" Hiruzen demanded.
"Mito-sama's sensing abilities are heavily disrupted. She's forming a barrier to contain the shockwave while trying to trace the source. She believes this isn't genjutsu. It's something else. A manifestation of will itself, a storm of pure spirit."
"Will? Spirit?" Hiruzen's mind reeled.
Who could manifest will as a storm strong enough to shatter souls? Impossible.
And yet—
At the epicenter, Ryo's eyes flared with scarlet light. Not Sharingan red, but something older, more primal. A divine glow that pierced the veil of the world.
His senses surged outward, ignoring space, weaving through the village like invisible nerves.
Observation haki, awakened.
The entire village unfolded in his mind's eye, every street, every house, every person.
Not just Konoha. His will spread like roots, hungering for more.
He saw them all. The villagers collapsed like wheat before a scythe. Hiruzen's fear, Mito's barrier straining against the storm, the raging chakra of the Nine-Tails beneath her seal, all of it was clear.
And then—
A burning, familiar presence.
Kushina.
Her life-force, fading, almost extinguished.
Wrapped in a malicious aura, cold and venomous, coiled like a serpent.
She was being dragged away at unnatural speed, carried by a powerful chakra radiating thunder.
Southwest, toward Kumo.
Those bastards.
Rage ignited, pure and unrelenting. His killing intent surged, a volcano erupting.
"You're dead!"
The ground beneath him split apart in a spiderweb of cracks, stone and soil exploding upward.
"The trash of Kumo, you're already corpses!"
At his waist, his sword trembled.
Shing!
The Kusanagi sword tore free of its sheath, its blade not shining, but swallowing the light around it like a hungry abyss.
Ryo's foot slammed down, shattering the courtyard into rubble.
His body became a streak of blood and shadow, an arrow loosed toward the northwest.
Faster, faster, faster.
The air screamed around him, the village itself rattling as he ripped through like a living storm.
Unstoppable.
His destination was clear, beyond the wall.
To intercept. To kill.
(To be continued.)
***
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