Chapter 19 — You Look a Little Lost, Karin
"Bite me! I'm still young — I'll recover!"
In a sudden, heartbreaking gesture that mirrored her mother's, Karin thrust her small, pale arm toward Nobunaga's face.
The smooth, unscarred skin of her youth stood in jarring contrast to the network of bite marks covering her mother's body — a living testimony of suffering and sacrifice.
And at that sight — of mother and daughter, each willing to throw away their own life for the other — even the coldest hearts faltered.
Kakuzu, who had long buried any trace of humanity under gold and blood, frowned deeply.
Kimimaro and Jūgo, both scarred by their own twisted fates, stood silently, eyes fixed on Nobunaga.
"Drink your blood? Eat your flesh to heal and gain chakra?"
Nobunaga's voice cut through the tense air — cold and sharp as a drawn blade.
"Are you insulting me? Or are you insulting the Land of Fields itself?"
Gone was the gentle, smiling daimyō who always seemed unflappable.
For the first time, his expression hardened — and that alone made the air around him suffocating.
Everyone — shinobi, medics, even battle-hardened wanderers — instinctively held their breath.
None dared move.
None dared speak.
Even Karin froze mid-motion, her arm still half-raised, her eyes wide with fear.
"We are the warriors of the Land of Fields' Hidden Sound Village," Nobunaga declared, his voice steady and powerful.
"Our purpose is not conquest — it is justice, principle, and peace."
"Even if the day comes when we must go to war, our strength will not lie in violence — but in belief."
"Because we fight for the ideal of a peaceful world."
His words rolled across the camp like thunder — not a shout, but a quiet conviction that carried farther than any scream could.
He wasn't just speaking to Karin.
He was speaking to everyone — his men, his allies, even his enemies.
Reaching out, he gently pushed Karin's trembling arm down, his eyes locking with hers.
"Peace…?"
Karin repeated the word softly, as though tasting it for the first time.
Part of her wanted to believe him — but another part couldn't.
Her life had been nothing but blood, screams, and loss.
She had seen villages burn and her own people wiped from the map.
"That's impossible," she murmured, lowering her gaze.
And around her — Kakuzu, Kimimaro, Jūgo — they all silently agreed.
In their eyes, Nobunaga was just another naïve fool.
A dreamer.
A man doomed to drown in his own ideals.
But Nobunaga only smiled faintly.
"Whether it's possible or not isn't for you to decide," he said softly.
"It's for me, and for everyone who still dares to dream of peace, to prove."
He placed a hand over his chest.
"The world is vast — and we, as individuals, are small.
No matter how great your achievements, time erases all traces of what you've built.
Statues crumble. Records fade. Names are forgotten."
"But one thing endures — something that even time itself cannot erase."
He pressed his hand against his heart, eyes burning with quiet fire.
"The path you walked for the sake of others.
The kindness, the sacrifices, the choices you made for peace — those will never disappear."
"Even if you fail now, the spark you ignite will one day set the whole world aflame — and from that fire, a new dawn will rise."
"Because we were here."
"Because this world belongs to us — but ultimately, it is yours to inherit."
Those words came not from a shinobi, nor from a noble, but from a man who had seen another world.
A world where ideals, not weapons, could move the hearts of millions.
Compared to that — the so-called Will of Fire of Konoha seemed almost laughably shallow.
A slogan long since emptied of meaning, repeated by hypocrites who had forgotten its origin.
"Ideals? Justice?"
Karin's lips trembled. She couldn't yet understand all that he said, but something in his voice… resonated.
A peaceful world — free from fear, from slavery, from the cruelty she had known —
it sounded exactly like the world her mother used to describe to her as a child.
A dream she thought had died with Uzushiogakure.
And now, hearing it again — from a stranger's lips —
her heart, for the first time, began to stir.
Her eyes shimmered faintly — fragile, uncertain, but full of light.
Is this… the world Mother dreamed of?
"Foolish."
The voice that broke the silence was low and cold — Kakuzu's.
Even though Nobunaga was his employer — and a generous one at that —
he couldn't keep his cynicism buried any longer.
The man who had lived through a century of death and betrayal looked at the young daimyō and saw only another deluded idealist.
"You talk about peace as if it's some market good," Kakuzu sneered.
"But this world only moves for one thing — profit."
Nobunaga merely turned toward him, the faintest hint of a smile returning to his lips.
"Then I suppose, Kakuzu," he said quietly,
"we'll just have to make peace… profitable."
And for the first time in years —
the immortal miser had no words.
Kakuzu — a man who'd seen too much — suddenly rose to his feet. He had once sworn loyalty to his village, had even tried to assassinate the so-called shinobi god Hashirama Senju when Hashirama's power was at its peak. This wasn't some tossed kunai myth; Kakuzu had fought the man and lived to tell the tale.
So what had he gained for his trouble?
"Justice doesn't exist!" Kakuzu's voice cut through the camp, raw with feeling. He had every right to rail — the waterfall village had betrayed him in the name of "righteousness," and since then he'd put his faith where betrayal couldn't reach: gold.
"Whose justice?" Nobunaga's face lit with interest rather than anger. He welcomed debate — the kind that clarifies truth by being fought out loud. Kakuzu's outburst was exactly the kind of provocation Nobunaga wanted.
"Is it the justice of a single village? The justice of a handful of men inside a village? The justice of a nation — or of the whole world?" Nobunaga paced slowly, each question landing like a stone. "Justice lives inside every person, in whatever they do and say. It's easy to deceive the world; it's easy to fool people. But a person's conscience — that cannot be fooled forever."
"Am I really on the right path? Am I truly practicing justice?" He gestured, challenging Kakuzu to ask his own conscience — and the conscience of everyone around them. "Wrong is wrong. Right is right."
Kakuzu blinked. Conscience — how much did that buy you? He curled a fist; his eyes glinted. "My justice is my fist. If anyone says I'm wrong, I'll force them to admit it with my fist. Conscience is nothing before force. If justice were real, then why — back then — did I—" His voice trailed off, caught on memories he'd rather not voice. The question was sharp; the wound it exposed was sharper.
He swept a green-eyed glance across the gathered crowd and fixed it on the trembling Uzumaki Shion. "If what you say were true, her country wouldn't have been destroyed. She and her child wouldn't have suffered hell. Where was your justice then? And now you bring them out — only to use them, aren't you?"
Kakuzu sneered, awaiting an answer. Kimimaro and Jūgo stared at Nobunaga with the same intensity — men who knew too well how betrayal tastes.
Nobunaga didn't flinch. "I hadn't appeared then," he said quietly, voice steady. "But because I have appeared now, justice will come." He looked back at Kakuzu, and his tone sharpened. "Tell me — when you were in that darkness, didn't you hope for a savior? Didn't you ever wish for a great power, a nation, a person to cut through the night and bring justice?"
"And them?" Nobunaga's voice rose. He looked directly at Uzumaki Karin and Uzumaki Shion, his words fired like a bell. "When their country was under threat, when they were about to be cast adrift into the dark, did they not hope for someone to come — a mighty force, a righteous light — to end the shadows? To let justice drive away the night?"
"Someone had to take that step. If justice didn't come back then, why can't it start now — with us? Let us be the ones to pierce the darkness. After the rain, you want to hold an umbrella for somebody else." His voice was incandescent. He had transformed: not a naïf, but a living flare of resolve.
Kakuzu's jaw worked; his lips trembled with a mixture of contempt and a reluctant, bitter awe. In the dimness where he stood, he didn't like this sudden, bright light — but even he could not deny that something in Nobunaga's words had cut through the cynicism.
And yet… the question hung in the air: could light alone change what blood and history had already carved into the world?