"Because we're friends."
That was the answer Naruto Uzumaki gave out loud.
But the Uchiha inside Naruto Uzumaki's heart, and Sasuke who had come from the Fourth Shinobi World War, both knew the truth.
What Naruto Uzumaki felt couldn't be summed up by the word "friends."
He could go all-out for his friends, but for 'Sasuke Uchiha,' he could let go of everything.
His life. His pride. Even his dreams, and the promises he'd once made to other people. All of it—every last thing—he could throw it away for Sasuke Uchiha.
'This isn't "friends" at all!!'
'Idiot!'
'You're killing me!!'
'Wait! Naruto… does this kid not even understand what this feeling means…?'
'Save me, I want out of this illusion so badly I just want to shove their heads together!!'
It wasn't just Izumi, a girl who loved this kind of drama. Even Mom Mikoto was getting frantic, practically cheering the two kids on.
Fugaku Uchiha let out a long sigh inside his chest.
Young Itachi Uchiha puffed his cheeks out like a bun, silently cursing his brother and Naruto for being so dense. Watching Naruto and Sasuke from within Naruto's consciousness, he felt like he was staring at the skewer of dumplings in Izumi Uchiha's hand back then—his Sharingan, no, his Mangekyō was about to pop right out.
"That word 'friends' again! I'm sick of hearing it!!"
"Honestly… I can't really explain it. It's just, seeing you all alone, carrying everything on your back, looking like you don't know what to do with yourself… I don't know why, but I…"
"...feel that pain too."
"That kind of pain… I can't pretend I don't see it. I can't just leave you alone."
That single line carried something that reached straight into Naruto Uzumaki's heart—something no words could properly gather up—and it made him understand, deeply, what kind of road Naruto Uzumaki had been walking all along.
Fourth Shinobi World War Sasuke was just like the Sasuke Uchiha standing beside Naruto. In Naruto's memories, he saw Itachi entrusting Sasuke to him. He saw Naruto's determination to chase him down. He saw how much Naruto had paid for his dream—and how, to chase after him, Naruto had even stopped caring about that dream at all…
Tears streamed down his cheeks.
And when he thought about it carefully, he realized he was the same.
They shared the same fate. He had passively avoided this world, while Naruto had fought desperately to connect with it.
Without realizing it, their eyes always followed each other.
Like light and darkness, day and night—chasing each other, drifting farther and farther apart. Neither could ever catch the other, and yet they still couldn't be without…
'Just knowing the other exists is enough to feel…'
'At ease.'
Shisui pressed a hand to his forehead and sighed. The feeling between Naruto and Sasuke had clearly gone beyond friends, beyond brothers, beyond even love. It was something elevated, almost philosophical.
Seen that way, his own desire to place everything in little Itachi's hands…
…really was shallow.
Obito Uchiha smacked his forehead. Thinking about himself, Kakashi, and Rin, he suddenly didn't know what to say.
Later, Naruto still couldn't quite put his feelings for Sasuke into words.
Things like: because you exist, I—who once had nothing—finally gained a bond with this world.
Things like: you can do everything, I'm jealous of you, and I selfishly pushed you around, treating you like a rival.
Things like: you're my goal, and I want to become as cool and strong as you.
Seriously…
Mikoto sighed. She understood Sasuke.
Sometimes, through Naruto's eyes, she'd catch Sasuke sneaking a glance over. And in Sasuke's gaze, she saw the same look he used to give Itachi.
That look of admiration and reverence—of someone setting another person as their goal.
'These two kids… honestly.'
Watching Naruto finally pull Sasuke back to the side of his comrades, the Uchiha clan shinobi felt as if their hearts had been redeemed as well.
Sasuke's figure was finally added to the full picture of Naruto's companions, and the Uchiha clan was there with him.
Daybreak arrived…
"I lost. I acknowledge you, Naruto."
It was as if those words were all they'd been waiting for. Every Uchiha soul inside Naruto's consciousness drifted up into the sky, about to leave this illusion.
Only then did the Uchiha—each one existing separately within Naruto's mind—finally see one another.
So it hadn't been the whole world experiencing this. It had only been the Uchiha clan.
All at once, they understood.
Through Naruto Uzumaki, they remembered the original resolve of their youth—the pride of being a Konoha shinobi, of serving as part of the Uchiha Police Force.
To exist for the village. To give everything to protect the people within it.
For a moment, everyone felt almost the same thing.
They looked at each other, then looked down below.
Kakashi Hatake and Sakura Haruno arrived while the two of them were still conscious.
The stone that had been hanging in Fourth Shinobi World War Sasuke's chest finally dropped. With Sakura, a medical-nin, there, that guy would be fine.
He'd already copied Orochimaru's severed-limb restoration techniques into his Sharingan. All he needed was to go back and have Sakura and Kakashi put it into practice.
'Look! Over there!!'
One of the Uchiha pointed at Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke.
When they focused, they saw the two lying on the ground. The blood from their severed limbs had formed a Seal of Reconciliation between them.
And the statues of Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju had been damaged in the battle.
The shattered Seal of Confrontation lay scattered on the ground. Naruto and Sasuke lay atop it, and it had clearly become a Seal of Reconciliation…
'Fate?!'
'The statues of First Hokage-sama and Madara-sama… the Seal of Confrontation actually turned into a Seal of Reconciliation like this?!'
Shisui Uchiha and young Itachi Uchiha exchanged a look. Even they felt this coincidence had gone beyond what you could call miraculous.
Young Obito didn't have a bad impression of the founding elders from Konoha's early days.
So watching him use the other world's version of himself, then watching him become Six Paths Madara and get used by Black Zetsu… he couldn't quite describe what it did to him.
And those last words he'd spoken to the First Hokage had been especially bleak.
With things ending like this, you could say he and the First Hokage finally made peace in the Pure Land.
Knowing exactly what he was thinking, Adult Obito muttered a snarky line.
'Maybe they already finished that brotherhood cup of sake too.'
Indra and Asura.
Madara Uchiha and Hashirama Senju.
A battle between brothers, finally reaching mutual understanding in this lifetime—through Sasuke Uchiha and Naruto Uzumaki.
No one could see Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha drinking together in the Pure Land, but the Uchiha could see two unfamiliar souls drifting up from directly above Naruto Uzumaki and Sasuke Uchiha, dispersing into the sky even faster than they did.
'It's Indra and Asura!'
Young Obito spoke, and the other Uchiha turned to look at him.
'Those two are the ancestors of the Uchiha clan and the Senju clan?!'
'Yeah. We met them in the mission scroll world. Because of certain circumstances, they ended up traveling to that world too.'
Adult Obito nodded.
'It's just that the brothers aren't that close yet.'
He remembered the way Asura would sometimes glance at his brother—those little, hesitant looks that clearly wanted to make peace, but couldn't, because he already knew his brother would refuse.
He really didn't have Naruto's talent for clinging to someone until they caved.
The living seemed unable to see those souls born from obsession drifting up into the sky.
Sakura Haruno gave Naruto and Sasuke some quick medical treatment on their arms.
Then the two of them returned to the battlefield. Each used their remaining arm to form hand seals, undoing the Infinite Tsukuyomi and releasing all the tailed beasts—and all the humans trapped inside it.
Everything ended happily. The shinobi world looked lost and dazed, and Kurama's ears twitched in contentment.
The Uchiha clan members, Fourth Shinobi World War Sasuke, the three parallel-world Obito Uchiha, and the mission scroll world's young Naruto—along with the Kurama inside him—returned together to the real world.
Seventeen years of life made the Uchiha feel strangely unaccustomed to their own bodies, even after coming back.
A lot of them still had blood on their faces. When they pulled out their forehead protectors and used them like mirrors, they finally realized…
Well then. The ones who hadn't awakened their eyes before had awakened them now.
And the ones who used to have three tomoe… now had the Mangekyō.
Shisui Uchiha analyzed, "It's probably because even though our consciousness experienced another world's Naruto's life inside the illusion, our brains were still operating in our own bodies. So when we ran into despair, grief, pain, or even hot-blooded excitement, the brain still triggered the chakra in our bodies and stimulated the optic nerves."
Minato Namikaze looked at the pairs of Mangekyō before him, all those strange, varied patterns.
"Looks like Konoha needs to put solving the Uchiha Mangekyō blindness problem on the agenda as soon as possible."
Adult Obito glanced toward Konoha. With how things were between the Uchiha and Konoha, would they really allow helping the Uchiha grow stronger?
Fugaku Uchiha came back to himself sooner than the others. As the Uchiha clan head, he couldn't afford to be careless.
Even after experiencing the illusion, he could already tell the clan's internal mindset had changed drastically, but it didn't seem like Konoha had experienced anything like what they had.
"Um…"
A Konoha shinobi suddenly spoke.
Stared down by countless crimson Sharingan, the man reflexively drew his neck in.
Minato Namikaze looked over. It was a Konoha medical-nin.
Medical-nin: "Based on the information from the illusion, I analyzed that if brothers or blood relatives exchange eyes without damaging them, it might allow both parties to receive a curing effect against blindness at the same time. But that's only a hypothesis. Another approach could be to study ways to slow or delay chakra flow, and to use chakra nature research to try to reduce the damage."
He went on and on, getting more and more academic toward the end. Even Naruto and young Obito were starting not to follow.
The Uchiha didn't all understand it either.
But they noticed one thing: Konoha wasn't rejecting them becoming stronger.
And then the sensitive Uchiha noticed something else. They'd originally wanted to follow Naruto Uzumaki's example and be a bit more proactive, but in the eyes of the Konoha shinobi across from them, they saw guilt.
What was… going on?
"Wait."
Shisui Uchiha spoke up suddenly.
"I have a question. Why hasn't future Itachi Uchiha woken up from the illusion yet?"
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