Though the people of the Land of Waves had been squeezed to the brink of survival by shortages, the samurai and ronin in Gatō's employ faced no such hardship. The country was small, but more than large enough to be divided into a commoners' district and a wealthy quarter.
It was, after all, a nation with a proper daimyō at its helm. Adjacent to the neighborhood where Tazuna lived—right in the heart of the country—lay the capital district. Both the local daimyō and moneyed thugs like Gatō made their homes there.
Naturally, the residents of this quarter didn't need to worry about scarcity or rationing. Gatō had restricted the civilians' boats, not his own. He certainly wasn't about to let himself go hungry—his own supply vessels continued to make their scheduled runs, ferrying provisions and goods from the mainland on a regular basis.
A group of ronin with katanas slung at their waists stumbled out of a tavern, weaving and swaying. Their well-fed swagger made it abundantly clear that serving under Gatō had its perks.
"Hey, boss—heard another ship went down today. This backwater's getting spookier by the day."
The one in the middle let out a belch and spoke first. As Gatō's subordinates, they weren't exactly cut off from the news.
"Who cares. We just take the money and do the job. Oh—tell the boys to dial it back a notch these next few days. Word from the top is once that old man Tazuna finishes his bridge, that's when they'll put him in the ground."
Wiping the grease from his lips, the lead ronin grinned with smug satisfaction. "I hear that one of the 'Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist' Gatō-sama hired got his teeth knocked in the moment he showed up for his first fight. Heh heh heh—just goes to show, those so-called ninja are nothing but a pack of pathetic, gutless mutts. Mark my words, this world's gonna end up back in the hands of us samurai sooner or later."
"Damn right. Although, those kunoichi are all pretty easy on the eyes. When the time comes, they'd make great stress relief~"
Still boasting and laughing, the group of ronin turned into an alleyway—a narrow passage squeezed between two buildings. Cut through here and they'd be back at their quarters.
But then the lead samurai stopped dead in his tracks. Some residual warrior's instinct drew his gaze to the far end of the alley, where a figure stood with its back turned, seemingly examining something on the ground. From where the samurai stood, he could make out a human body lying on the pavement. In the darkness, an ominous black pool of blood was slowly spreading beneath it.
"HEY!! Who's there?!"
A spike of instinctive fear sharpened the samurai leader's voice. The men behind him sobered up fast, and only now did they catch the scent hanging in the air—something coppery and sickeningly sweet, like rust mixed with raw iron.
"..."
The figure at the far end turned slowly. And in the next instant, bathed in moonlight so pale it seemed born of malice itself, a pair of pupil-less white eyes came into view!!
"You—!"
The terror descended on them like a web dropping from the ceiling. As men who killed for a living, they recognized exactly what emotion lay behind those eyes. It was the most direct, most merciless thing a pair of eyes could communicate.
Then—several piercing, agonized screams shattered the silence of the night sky.
"Ngh—!!"
With a strangled gasp, Sasuke jolted awake from his nightmare, bolting upright in bed with cold sweat plastering his forehead. Even after becoming a capable shinobi, the images from his past still haunted him. Tonight's dream hadn't been especially vivid in detail—just a deluge of blood-soaked scenes.
The corpses had all worn clothing bearing the Uchiha clan's fan-shaped crest. They lay strewn across every corner of the district's streets. Sasuke couldn't make out their faces—only pairs upon pairs of contorted, glassy eyes that seemed to silently scream at him with the resentment and bitterness of the dead.
"...Damn it."
Any trace of sleep had been thoroughly obliterated. Sasuke shook his head and turned irritably toward the window. Tonight's moonlight was poor—a diffuse, hazy glow with blurred edges, the kind of thing colloquially called a "wool moon." In folklore and ghost stories, this was precisely the sort of night when wraiths and vengeful spirits were said to be at their most active. An ill omen, by any superstition.
But for Sasuke, fresh from being ripped out of a nightmare, the boy felt something beyond even fear—a churning, bone-deep restlessness that refused to settle. To him, the blood-soaked corpses of his clansmen in his memories were far more terrifying than any demon or specter this world could produce.
Since sleep was no longer an option, Sasuke swung his legs out of bed, dressed quickly, and vaulted out the window. The wool moon's formation was actually a harbinger of changing weather—a sign that rain, wind, or even frost might be on its way. And in the Land of Waves, a maritime nation, "incoming weather" more often than not meant a full-blown thunderstorm.
And where there were thunderstorms, there was lightning. For Sasuke, who was in the middle of perfecting his Ame no Habakiri, that made for ideal training conditions.
But...
He paused on the rooftop, fingers tightening at his sides. He knew exactly why he felt so unsettled. It was what Kakashi had said: Naruto chose to stop training Divine Sandstorm because he was afraid of hurting the people around him.
"What kind of reasoning is that... A dead-last like him, acting as if—what, as long as he stops holding back, he'd automatically be stronger than everyone around him?"
The muttered words finally slipped past his lips—the thought he'd been clenching between his teeth all day. To him, it felt perilously close to humiliation.
It was exactly like an opponent forfeiting a match out of concern that they might injure you. That kind of condescending mercy.
Like hell!!
So what if there was some Nine-Tailed Demon Fox sealed inside Naruto's body? As a proud member of the Uchiha clan, accepting defeat like this was simply not an option!
If the issue was that an ultimate technique might trigger the Nine-Tails, then fine—he simply wouldn't use his ultimate in their sparring matches. Besides...
He wanted to beat the dead-last when Naruto was fighting at a full hundred percent. Only then would victory actually mean something.
"Hey! Dead-last!"
With a cold expression, Sasuke slid open Naruto's bedroom window. The blond boy stirred groggily on his bed, cracking one eye open. "Huh? Oh, it's you, Sasuke. What do you want, it's the middle of the night..."
"Urusai! Get up! I want a round."
Without waiting for an answer, Sasuke leaped back out the window and headed straight for the nearby forest. Naruto—reluctant but ultimately unwilling to back down—dragged himself up and followed. Once they were among the trees, the blond crossed his arms with a show of indifference. "Tch, are you a little kid, Sasuke? I already told you I gave up on Divine Sandstorm. So just take the win this time."
"Hmph. Kakashi told us you quit training Divine Sandstorm because you were worried about hurting us. But... Naruto, my thinking is the exact opposite of yours."
Sasuke pulled on his Sacred Fist Gauntlets. His voice dropped, and a vein of cold steel threaded through his words. "You're afraid that having power will lead to the people around you getting hurt. But me... my belief is the opposite. The thing that truly gets the people around you hurt—is not having enough power."
"Wh—why are you saying weird stuff like that to me?! I'm nothing like you! You probably just see me as some kind of freak monster anyway, right?"
His deepest insecurity laid bare in a single sentence, Naruto's fists clenched tight. The answer came in the form of a sudden burst of crackling light—
"Yami Barai!!"
The same stance and motion as Hinata's technique. A shower of lightning-born sparks erupted from Sasuke's palm and raced along the ground like an electric serpent, streaking toward the stunned blond. Naruto scrambled out of the way at the last second, then roared, "What the hell are you trying to do?! And that move—that's clearly—"
"I bet you didn't know this. These eyes of mine can see through and copy any technique. In other words, the more opponents I fight, the stronger I become. So, Naruto—if you really do have power—"
CRACK. Sasuke's fists clenched so tight the knuckles popped.
"Then show me!!"
"Dead-last!!"
Hmm... well, this is certainly unusual.
Kakashi stood in the hallway, gazing into each of his three students' rooms with a mixture of resignation and amusement. Every room was empty. Given their ages and temperaments, the answer was obvious: they'd gone out to train through the night.
Diligent bunch. Might actually make my job easier, at this rate.
Satisfied, the silver-haired Jōnin descended the stairs, intending to take a morning bath—a habit he'd maintained for years. Yesterday's mortifying incident notwithstanding, that had been a statistical outlier. Abandoning years of good hygiene over a single fluke was simply not worth it.
But the sound of running water from the bathroom brought him up short. Someone was already in there.
"Oh my, Kakashi-san..."
Tsunami emerged from the bathroom carrying an armful of laundry, looking mildly surprised. From her appearance, she hadn't been the one bathing—someone else was inside.
"Ah, good morning~ Lovely weather today..."
Kakashi raised a hand in an instinctive, breezy greeting. He hadn't forgotten that this woman—Tazuna's black-haired, statuesque daughter—had been among those who'd seen rather more of him than intended yesterday. He was just about to beat a tactical retreat when a flash of dark crimson caught his eye.
In Tsunami's arms was clearly a pile of freshly changed clothes—his students' clothes, by the look of them. And splashed across the fabric, unmistakably, were thick stains of... blood.