Chapter 53: Uchiha Obito
The cool moonlight flowed like a silent river between them. They sat across from each other at a low table, close enough to reach out and touch, yet separated by what felt like an impenetrable wall.
The man who had removed his mask—his face now fully exposed to the moonlight, with nowhere left to hide under Rubik's gaze—was a study in contradictions. One half was sharp and handsome, with bold brows and tightly pressed lips, faintly retaining the shadow of that hot-blooded, impulsive, comrade-cherishing youth named Uchiha Obito.
The other half was a ruin of twisted, grotesque scarring—ridges and furrows that had utterly destroyed the young skin beneath, leaving behind a topography of suffering.
The stark contrast gave his face a bizarre dissonance: a young foundation overlaid with the deepest scars of grief and hardship.
Obito's gaze was evasive, wavering. He didn't dare—or perhaps lacked the courage—to look directly at the boy across from him. That boy, with features so strikingly similar to his own. That boy, who carried his blood. That boy, who in this cruel and false world, was his one and only—his final—blood relative… his son.
Rubik didn't push. Silently, he raised his own cup, tilted his head back, and let the cool, burning liquid slide down his throat. The heat spread through his chest, but it couldn't quell the turmoil inside.
He set the cup down and cast a calm gaze at the man across the table—whose lips were twitching, as if wanting to speak, yet ultimately unable to force out a single word.
"Aren't you going to drink?" Rubik's voice broke the silence, ringing out sharply in the quiet room.
Obito's throat bobbed. A sound like sandpaper scraping dry wood came out: "…I… I've never had alcohol."
The answer was clumsy and honest, carrying an awkwardness that didn't match his imposing identity.
Rubik's lips curled into a faint, bitterly ironic smile. He picked up the flask and refilled his own cup: "The Three Ninja Prohibitions. Are you afraid of breaking another—'alcohol'?"
Obito's body tensed almost imperceptibly. He naturally caught the sharp implication in Rubik's words.
He dropped his gaze, avoiding those eyes that seemed capable of piercing straight through his soul, and chose silence. It was a wordless resistance, a powerless defense. He was still hiding inside that shell called "escape"—even if it had already been cracked wide open.
Watching that stubbornly unresponsive, refusing-to-communicate attitude, the pent-up frustration and impatience inside Rubik finally broke past its limit. He slammed his cup down on the table with a sharp crack—splashing a few drops of liquor.
"Tch." He let out an impatient click of his tongue, his gaze sharpening with direct intensity.
"Since you won't speak first, I'll ask and you answer. That work for you?"
He stared at Obito's bowed head—that solitary, desolate silhouette under the moonlight—drew a deep breath as if mustering every ounce of his strength, and then, as if it were nothing, awkwardly let out that unfamiliar address: "…Father?"
That single word struck like an invisible lightning bolt, splitting apart the last pretense Obito had been clinging to!
His entire body went rigid! As if struck by an invisible hammer square on the spine! His shoulders shuddered violently, rattling the sake cup on the table.
That lowered head, after several seconds of deathly stillness, moved—excruciatingly, agonizingly slowly—and gave the faintest of nods.
Barely perceptible.
A hoarse, almost formless syllable scraped out through his clenched teeth: "…Ah."
That answer—so soft it was barely a whisper.
Yet it hit like a thunderclap, exploding across the cold, distant expanse of silence between them.
He had admitted it.
At last—as "Uchiha Obito"—he had acknowledged this bloodline, this responsibility, that he had never anticipated, never been prepared to face.
The moonlight continued its silent vigil. Illuminating that cup of sake Obito had never touched.
Rubik gave a slight nod, his gaze sharp and fixed on Obito's evasive eyes: "Then about my mother—Uzumaki Chino—I want you to tell me yourself."
Obito's body tightened almost imperceptibly, as if bound by invisible ropes. He drew in a deep, heavy breath—the kind that came with suffocating weight.
His gaze was scattered, unfocused, as if piercing through the space before him and sinking into that deliberately buried memory—one he couldn't even touch without agony.
It was that chaotic period—before he had fully transformed into "Uchiha Madara"—the unforgivable sin of his life, the desecration of Rin.
When he opened his eyes again and refocused on Rubik's face—so similar to his own, yet so young and stubborn—there was no warmth in his gaze. Only numbness steeped in pain, and a brutal honesty:
"About your mother…"
His voice was dry as grinding gravel.
"…I have nothing to say."
He paused, each word cold and hard: "I never had… any extra feelings for her."
He didn't look away, as if using that unflinching stare to punish himself, and to show Rubik a bloody, unfiltered truth: "Back then… to me, she was just… a tool. A way to test this world."
"That's all."
"A… tool? To test this world?"
Rubik repeated the cold phrase. His expression shifted from grim composure to sheer, incredulous absurdity!
Then that absurdity, like ignited gunpowder, erupted into towering rage and bone-chilling cold! "A tool?!" He was practically roaring. "Then what does my existence prove?! That your test succeeded?! That this 'tool' worked well?! That your impulsive little 'experiment' left behind an inconvenient 'mistake' that shouldn't exist?!"
"…"
Obito flinched as if lashed by those rapid-fire accusations, his whole body shuddering violently. He squeezed his eyes shut in anguish—as if trying to shut out Rubik's enraged, contorted face, and that gentle, blurred figure that Rubik's fury was now re-outlining from the fog of memory.
Fragments churned behind his closed lids, cutting him apart: Chino's gentle smile… the warm food she'd handed him… the pure, unguarded kindness and concern in her eyes… memories he had deliberately forgotten, buried in the deepest darkness, now being dragged out of their grave by Rubik's very existence—by that word "Father," by that accusation—covered in rotting soil and the stench of blood, stabbing into his long-numbed soul.
That night…
That night swallowed by immense pain and darkness…
He had just witnessed Rin's death. Had seen with his own eyes the moment Kakashi's hand pierced through Rin's chest. Had experienced firsthand this world's ultimate filth, betrayal, and despair! He was like a beast with its spine shattered, howling in its own blood, soul torn to shreds!
That encounter with Chino…
It wasn't driven by desire so much as—
It was escape! A collapse of the soul! A coward's act of self-destruction!
He could almost smell again the cold rain of that night, feel that soul-freezing despair. Inside, he was a wasteland burned by blood and fire—chaotic, agonized, numb. The so-called "testing the world" was just a self-deceiving excuse he'd given himself for that unbearable pain, that fractured sanity!
He was just… a coward crushed by overwhelming grief!
At his darkest, most chaotic, most agonized moment, he had instinctively—like a drowning man grasping at driftwood—clung to the only source of living warmth and comfort he could feel.
Even if that comfort was an illusion. Even if he knew it was just drinking poison to quench thirst. He just wanted to use that fleeting, illusory, physical pleasure to numb himself, to momentarily forget the bloody reality, to forget that bone-deep pain! Even for an instant!
That was escape! Desecration! Betrayal of the deceased! And a denial and betrayal of himself—of the person named Uchiha Obito!
Yes! That was the root of everything he'd done! He had to completely obliterate that "Uchiha Obito" self!
That weak, naive, bonds-believing, Hokage-dreaming self—uproot him from the depths of his soul and grind him to dust!
Only then…
Could he, to capture the Nine-Tails and weaken Konoha, raise his blade without hesitation against the master and mistress who had raised him like their own child!
Only then…
Could he watch coldly—even push things along—to acquire enough Sharingan, to cause that clan he'd once been so proud of, that shared his own blood, to be slaughtered by his own "pawn," Uchiha Itachi!
Those familiar streets, those faces—friendly or arrogant—those roots belonging to "Uchiha Obito"… all had to be washed in blood! Erased!
Only then…
Could he walk single-mindedly over mountains of corpses and seas of blood, advancing relentlessly toward that plan to destroy reality and reshape the world—the "Eye of the Moon" Plan!
Only then could he create that dream world he yearned for—a world without death, without betrayal, without pain… the perfect dream!
A world that had them in it. Peace. And… Rin.
This thought—like the hottest flame—instantly flooded into Obito's body, which had been nearly hollowed out by confusion! That brief collapse and cowardice seemed forcibly suppressed by this extreme, fanatical conviction!
His spine seemed to straighten again. That crimson Mangekyo Sharingan grew deep and cold once more, like an abyss that controlled all. Numbness and pain were replaced by the obsessive gleam of a martyr's devotion.
Yes! None of it—this boy's fury, those shameful past events, this sudden suffocating bond of blood—mattered! None of it!
As long as Infinite Tsukuyomi was completed… everything would be corrected! Every pain would be erased!
That weak, incompetent, emotion-driven "Uchiha Obito"… was dead!
What lived on was "Uchiha Madara"! The fanatical savior who negated the entire old world to create a new one!
The man seemed to have donned his impenetrable armor again, recovering that "Uchiha Madara" aura of looking down on all. He tried to use that cold, powerful facade to face this boy who had thrown him into such disarray—tried to use that grand "salvation" blueprint to crush this insignificant personal emotion and ethical dilemma.
Yet—
Just as he forced himself to lift his chin, attempting to use "Uchiha Madara's" all-seeing, fate-controlling gaze to look again at Rubik across the table…
His gaze, inevitably, collided head-on with those eyes!
Those eyes—burning with fury and confusion, yet at their very depths concealing a trace of sorrow not even their owner was fully aware of…
Those eyes, set in a young, spirited face brimming with defiant vitality…
That face… the contour of those brows, that stubborn mouth, that unruly black hair…
BOOM—!
The fortress of conviction named "Uchiha Madara" that Obito had just constructed in his mind—the instant their gazes met—was struck by a thunderbolt of ten thousand volts, collapsing into dust and ashes in a single moment!
He couldn't keep up the act anymore!
He couldn't run from it anymore!
This boy before him was no "obstacle" to be evaluated and handled by "Madara." This was fate's cruelest, most biting joke! A mirror held up by this world that he couldn't possibly break!
And what that mirror reflected…
Was that hot-blooded idiot who'd yelled about becoming Hokage back in the Ninja Academy!
That fool who'd crushed himself under a boulder to save his comrades!
That boy who'd jump for joy at passing the genin exam, explode in rage at Kakashi's taunts, and flash the goofiest smile at Rin—Uchiha Obito!
This boy—with a face almost identical to his younger self—had forcibly exhumed that "self" he'd desperately buried, denied, and killed, dragging him out of the grave of his own heart! Bloody, undeniable, and laid before him!
Forcing him to admit it!
Forcing him to face it!
Forcing him to confront that identity he thought he'd long since slain.
He was Uchiha Obito!
That person who had once… dreamed of becoming the Hokage of Konoha…
Uchiha Obito!
Under the moonlight, that spine he'd just straightened seemed to have all its strength drained away, slumping slightly. The oppressive aura of "Madara" he'd tried to muster dissipated without a trace.
What remained was just a man—broken by his own past and his own blood—sitting there in a daze, lost, staring at the "self" in the mirror, with nowhere left to run.