____________
In every art store, the pages of Volume Eleven had been brimming with gripping developments from the very beginning.
After the war council and all its gravity, the pages that followed were quieter… but by no means any less weighty.
[— Manga Scene —]
In front of the hospital building, Sakura and Ino sat on a wooden bench beneath a tree, a small bouquet of flowers in Ino's hand.
"Sigh…"
"Where did Sasuke-kun go?"
A short while earlier, they had arrived at the room they had come to visit, only to find an empty bed and a confused nurse.
"Uchiha Sasuke-san left the hospital tonight."
"He shouldn't be leaving the hospital in his condition…"
Sakura whispered, wrapping her arms around her knees.
"Sasuke-kun… where did you go?"
While the two girls were lost in silence…
"Hah… hah… hah…"
The sound reached them from the hospital's rear courtyard.
There, on the dirt ground, Rock Lee was down on his hands and feet. His body was wrapped in bandages and one arm was broken, yet he pushed himself off the ground… collapsed… and forced himself up again.
"Lee-kun, stop this!!"
The nurse responsible for him shouted.
"Your body…!"
"Please, just stay quiet for a little while!" But the thick-browed boy did not stop.
Through the sweat and dust, faces flashed before his eyes: Gaara… Naruto… Sasuke… Neji…
'I…'
'I'm not finished yet…'
A short distance away, unnoticed by anyone, stood a man with the same bowl haircut and equally thick eyebrows, silently watching his student.
'There is no point in hard work…'
'…if you don't believe in yourself.'
On the ground, Lee clenched his trembling fist and raised his broken body once more.
"Just… just…"
"One more!!"
[— End Scene —]
These pages held no battles, no conspiracies, and no revelations that shook entire villages.
Yet the Konoha hall read them in a silence deeper than the one that had accompanied even some of the battles.
Between a boy dragging his broken body toward "one more" and a teacher watching him from afar with a single thought in his heart… many people in the art shop's hall found a piece of themselves that no one had ever drawn for them before.
…
By the western wall, where the Uchiha sat, these pages struck a special chord… but not because of Rock Lee.
"He left the hospital at night."
Fugaku spoke with his eyes fixed on the panel showing the empty bed.
"An injured boy, carrying a cursed seal placed by Orochimaru himself and supposedly under observation… slips out of the village hospital in the middle of the night, and no one discovers he is missing until a nurse checks on him in the morning."
The young man slowly shook his head.
"If that future hospital security report were to pass across my desk… may the gods help whoever wrote it."
"Your desk? The clan was massacred. Do you think you'll still be alive in that future?"
"And is that all you saw?" Hugaku asked calmly.
"What do you mean?"
"You saw a security failure," the clan leader said, his eyes never leaving the page.
"I saw a boy of our blood who went out alone at night, his body broken and a seal whispering against his neck…"
"…and there was no one to stop him. No father, no mother, no clan." A brief silence settled over the western corner.
For several volumes now, the truth of that boy—the last Uchiha, the sole survivor, the son of an empty district—had been an open wound that the clan's people could discuss only through silence.
"He'll come back."
The voice came from the seat beside Fugaku.
Uchiha Mikoto—the girl whose constant companionship with the clan leader's son on release days had become a favorite topic among the clan's women—was looking at the same page with calm black eyes.
"Look at when he left," she said quietly.
"He didn't flee the village. He didn't run away from the exam. He left after seeing everyone training… Naruto with a Sannin, Neji with his clan, and even Lee with his broken body."
"He went out to train. Alone, because he doesn't know any other way."
Then she added in a softer voice, her eyes still fixed on the drawing of the empty bed:
"That child doesn't need someone to stop him at the door…"
"…he needs someone waiting for him when he returns."
Fugaku gave the girl beside him a long look.
He said nothing.
But Hugaku, who had noticed his son's gaze, smiled faintly behind his volume—a smile no one else saw.
'One day, Fugaku… you'll understand why I insisted that you attend release days with her,' Hugaku thought, smiling inwardly.
…
A few rows away from the clan leader's family, another branch of the clan was experiencing the same pages in an entirely different way.
"Dad! Dad! Look!"
Six-year-old Uchiha Obito stood atop his seat—even though sitting was required and standing on the seats was an offense punishable under the shop's rules—shaking his father's shoulder with one hand and pointing at the page with the other.
"He's getting up! Look! His arm is broken, and he's still getting up!"
"I see him, Obito. Sit down."
Uchiha Minoru spoke in the tone of a father who had repeated the same sentence a thousand times that morning alone.
The child sat down… for two seconds. Then he straightened onto his knees atop the seat and resumed staring at the page with shining eyes.
"Rock Lee is the strongest!"
"The strongest?"
Minoru raised an eyebrow.
"He lost his fight, son. And now he's in the hospital with his body shattered."
"So what?!"
The child turned toward his father and spoke with the absolute seriousness that only six-year-olds could manage.
"Naruto lost to Sasuke at the Academy a thousand times, and now he can summon toads! Lee lost to Gaara, and here he is training with a broken arm! The truly strong are the ones who lose and then get back up!"
"As for geniuses…"
Here, the child waved his hand with regal disdain.
"…geniuses are born at the top. Where's the fun in that?"
Minoru stared at his son for a long moment.
A boy from the clan of geniuses—the clan of the Sharingan, the elite, and royal blood—sat in a public hall declaring that persistent losers were better than geniuses.
'If the clan elders could hear you now…'
The father thought, something between pride and concern stirring in his chest.
'…they would be dumbfounded.'
"All right, then," Minoru finally said.
"What will you do, my little loser? You failed last week's shuriken-throwing test."
The father expected the child to protest or make excuses as usual—after all, he had arrived late to the test because he had stopped to help an old woman carry her belongings.
But Obito looked at the final page, at Lee lifting his broken body, and then spoke with a calmness strangely at odds with his usual constant motion.
"I'll take the test again."
"And if you fail?"
"I'll take it again."
"And if you fail a second time?"
The child raised his head and flashed a wide grin with one front tooth missing.
"Just… one more!"
Minoru laughed despite himself, reached out, and ruffled his son's short black hair.
Deep inside, the father etched the words into a place where they would remain:
'One more…'
'Who knows, Obito? Perhaps those words—not the Sharingan—will be the most precious thing you take away from this hall.'
…
Far from the lively art shops, far from the light, the warmth, and the laughter of children…
In the depths of a hideout that sunlight could never reach sat a ghost from another age.
Uchiha Madara.
The latest update reached him as all the others always did: right on time.
Ever since the earliest chapters, Zetsu had made a habit of disguising himself as an ordinary ninja who attracted no attention, entering the art shop with everyone else, taking his place in line like any eager reader, paying the price, and retracing his steps…
Carrying the future in his hands to the place the world was supposed to forget.
"The new update, Madara-sama."
The old man turned the pages with patient fingers. Eyes that had witnessed the birth of villages and their wars swept over the drawings with the cold detachment of a surgeon examining a corpse.
Two girls on a bench. An empty bed. A boy crawling through the dirt.
'…'
Madara lingered for a long time on Rock Lee's page.
A boy with no lineage, no kekkei genkai, and no talent, lifting a broken body from the ground again and again, driven solely by his belief that the next attempt would be different.
'Hard work…'
'Belief in oneself…'
Something appeared on the old man's lips—not a smile, nor pure contempt, but that old mixture whose name he had never known.
'I've seen those eyes before.'
'On the face of a man who reached out to me whenever the walls between us fell… smiling that foolish smile of his and speaking of faith, willpower, and dreams fit only for children.'
'Hashirama…'
'Your village still produces this kind of fool.'
He turned the page.
Then he stopped again at the empty bed.
'…But it produces the other kind as well.'
'A boy of my blood, bearing an evil seal upon his neck, slips alone into the night in pursuit of a power the light cannot grant.'
'Uchiha eyes do not mature on sunlit training grounds, boy…'
'…they mature in darkness. And you, it seems, have begun to find your way there.'
Madara closed the volume and placed it atop the stacks of earlier volumes, arranged with a meticulousness strangely out of place for a man living in isolation.
Twenty years of the future had been revealed on those pages thus far.
Villages, betrayals, alliances, monsters…
And throughout all those pages, there had been no mention of his hideout, his plan, or his name.
'Good.'
The old ghost thought, closing his eyes in the darkness.
'For the most valuable pieces on the board…'
'…are the ones the players do not know are still in play.'
____________
Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
____________
Chapter 210: The Fourth Hokage!
Chapter 211: And Every Single Person in This Village!
Chapter 212: The Hidden Sand Village Appears in the Manga!
Chapter 213: Face to Face with the Kyūbi!
____________
Support the journey and unlock advanced chapters!
If you're enjoying Rob's story, his journey of publishing the Naruto manga inside the Shinobi world, and the impact it has on the world, and you want to know what happens before everyone else… there's always a way to stay ahead.
I work on this novel every day, developing its world and chapters, and every bit of support helps me keep delivering higher-quality content at a faster pace.
By supporting me on Patreon, you'll get exclusive access to advanced chapters before they're released to the public. You can move ahead in the story and read up to 30 chapters in advance!
📚 Support Tiers:
$5 → Read 5 advanced chapters
$10 → Read 10 advanced chapters
$15 → Read 15 advanced chapters
$20 → Read 20 advanced chapters
$30 → Read 30 advanced chapters
Every bit of support, even a small one, makes a real difference and helps me continue writing this journey that we're experiencing together.
Join now and start reading the stacked chapters before everyone else:
Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/BlackStar_BH
Thank you to everyone who supports the story and believes in this world. You are the reason it continues. ❤️
____________