The council of the Five Kage did not meet in the Great Hall this time. They met in a small, circular side chamber, their voices lowered, stripped of the posturing that usually accompanied the highest office.
"He is a living record," Onoki said, tapping his finger on the stone table. "Every outcome of the last two hundred years is etched into that boy's brain. If we can extract the Tenjō archives through his Jūgan, we can predict every troop movement the Akatsuki makes before they make it. We could save tens of thousands of lives."
"At the cost of his dignity?" Gaara asked quietly. "He is a man who spent his life trapped in a cage of his own sight. You want to keep him in a laboratory for his final hours?"
"I agree with the Kazekage," Mifune said. "The Land of Iron does not trade in the ghosts of the dying. He is a prisoner, but he is a guest of the sword. He dies in peace, or he dies fighting. We do not peel a man's brain like a fruit."
While the world's leaders debated his value, Arahata was relearning the value of a single shadow.
The door to his chamber creaked. Two people entered. Arahata didn't need the Jūgan to know who they were—their footsteps were as familiar to him as the beating of his own heart, though he had spent years pretending he only valued them as data.
"Ren-kun. Mei-chan," Arahata said. He was sitting up, his back against the stone wall. The black stain had begun to creep into the whites of his eyes, making his gaze look like a void being consumed by stars.
Ren walked to the edge of the bed. He looked different—his posture was no longer coiled like a spring. The "flicker" of panic that had always haunted his movements was gone, replaced by a weary sort of calm.
"The Kage want your eyes, Arahata-sama," Ren said bluntly.
"Of course they do," Arahata smiled thinly. "To the hungry, everything looks like bread. Even a poison fruit."
"They sent me to see if you would... cooperate," Ren's voice trailed off. He looked at his hands—hands that no longer bore the marks of the Hyūga branch seal. "I told them that I'm not a branch member anymore. I'm just a man you helped. I'm not a messenger."
Arahata looked at Ren. "Ren-kun. Do you know why I really removed your seal? It wasn't to free you."
"I know," Ren said, looking him in the eye. "You told me before we left the waterfall. You wanted to see what would happen to a bird when you took away the cage. You wanted to study the 'complexity of choice' as if I were a bug in a jar."
Arahata blinked, surprised by the directness. "And yet, you stayed. Why?"
"Because even if I was a bug in a jar," Ren replied, his voice thickening with emotion, "it was the first time anyone had ever really looked at the bug. You didn't care about my rank. You didn't care about my duty. You only cared about what I could become. To someone like me... being a 'point of interest' was more than I had ever hoped to be. You were the first person who ever found me interesting, Arahata-sama."
Arahata felt a sharp pang in his chest—a localized physical pain that had nothing to do with the black stain. It was the weight of a debt he hadn't known he owed.
"You're a terrible test subject, Ren-kun," Arahata whispered. "You were supposed to remain predictable."
He then turned his gaze toward Mei. She was standing at the window, the cold light of the Land of Iron washing over her silk blindfold.
"And you, Mei-chan?" Arahata asked. "I kept you near because your blindness made you a 'Dark Zone.' I used you as a shield against my own perception. I valued you because you offered me silence."
Mei didn't turn around. "I know. I am a void in your sight. I'm a rest stop for a man who is exhausted by light."
"Is that all I was to you?" Arahata's voice sounded small in the large stone room. "A man hiding from the world?"
Mei walked over and sat on the edge of the cot. She reached out and took his hand. Her grip was firm, warm, and entirely grounded in the physical present.
"No," she said. "You were the man who realized that the sky holds everything. And you were so terrified of the weight that you tried to stay empty. I didn't stay because I wanted to be your 'silence.' I stayed because I wanted to be the one who was there when the emptiness finally got too loud."
She leaned in, her forehead pressing against his. For the first time in seventeen years, Arahata's mind didn't provide him with the probability of a kiss, a conversation, or a betrayal. There was just the sensation of soft skin and the scent of damp wood.
"You're blind, Mei," Arahata whispered into the dark.
"And you were too sighted, Arahata," she replied. "We were both unable to see what was right in front of us."
Thirty-eight hours, twenty-two minutes.
Arahata let out a long, shuddering breath. He felt the stain at the base of his brain. The "Information Density" was starting to feel like gravity. Every memory, every possible future he had ever mapped, was beginning to condense into a single, singular point of truth.
"I want to see the waterfall again," Arahata said. "I want to see the village hidden in the water. I don't want to perceive its future. I just want to hear the sound of the drop hitting the rock."
"We'll take you," Ren said. "Mifune gave us his word. No Kage will touch you while you're under my protection. Naruto made sure of it."
"Naruto-kun," Arahata mused. "He really is an infuriating person."
"The most infuriating," Mei agreed.
Arahata looked at the ceiling. He realized that the gold rings in his eyes were no longer expanding—they were contracting. They were moving inward toward his center, abandoning the horizon of the future to illuminate the tiny, cramped space of the heart.
"I'm tired of seeing everything," Arahata whispered. "Ren-kun. Tell me a story. One you haven't told me. One I don't already know."
"A story?" Ren looked puzzled. "But you know my life."
"I know the structure of your life," Arahata corrected. "Tell me a story about something you did that was completely pointless. A secret mistake. A beautiful failure. Give me a piece of reality that I didn't calculate."
Ren sat on the floor, leaning his head back against the stone. He smiled. "Well. When I was six, before the seal, I tried to bake a cake for my sister's birthday... I forgot the flour."
Arahata closed his eyes. He didn't look at the branching futures where Ren succeeded or failed at the cake. He just listened to the boy's voice.
It was the most beautiful data he had ever received.