Inside the dojo's guest room, the older Sasuke stood by the window, carefully observing the towering tree in the courtyard.
Its trunk was exceptionally tall, while its canopy wasn't particularly large, allowing plenty of sunlight to reach the buildings below.
The dojo had running water, but from the layout of the pipes outside, the older Sasuke could tell that all of the facility's water supply ultimately came from the well beneath that tree.
After watching for quite some time, he noticed something else. Unlike the trees in the surrounding forest, this one shed almost no dead leaves. The courtyard remained clean at all times.
That was completely inconsistent with normal plant growth.
Boruto asked, "Sensei, this may be Konoha, but it's completely different from the one I know. So many things have changed."
The older Sasuke nodded.
"Yeah, it's definitely different. Based on the timeline, this should be right after the Konoha Crush, around the time Tsunade became the Fifth Hokage. Your grandfather, Namikaze Minato—the Fourth Hokage—should have been dead long ago. But here, he's alive and well."
Boruto immediately perked up.
"Then doesn't that mean I can meet my grandparents while they're still alive?"
"You probably can. But don't let anything slip. Remember Karasuki's warning."
"Is that really necessary, Sensei? This doesn't even feel like twenty years in our world anymore."
Sasuke didn't fully understand it either, but he still replied, "It's always better to be cautious."
"What if we came to the wrong place?"
"I don't know. But I think the owner of this place probably knows more than we do."
"You mean Dad's jōnin instructor? He's such a weird and mysterious guy."
"Perhaps the changes in this timeline are connected to him."
"He also took my Karasuki. How are we supposed to get back now?"
"Judging from how he treats the people around him, he doesn't seem unreasonable. He'll probably return it to us."
After a pause, Sasuke added, "And if he doesn't, then I'll just have to find an opportunity to take it back."
Boruto felt this mission had gone terribly.
Not only had they failed to complete their objective, they had also ended up in a bizarre world.
The time was correct.
Konoha was not.
He flopped backward onto the bed and hugged his blond head.
"Ahhh... what a pain, sensei. So what do we do now?"
The older Sasuke replied, "We wait for Urashiki to show up. Eliminating him was our objective from the beginning."
"What if he doesn't come? What if only we ended up here while he got sent somewhere else?"
"That would be the real problem."
Sasuke paused before continuing, "But I still trust the information Karasuki provided."
Meanwhile, in another bedroom, Makoto activated a barrier.
In his hands was the very Karasuki the two had been talking about—the Ōtsutsuki artifact used for traveling through time and space.
It looked like a turtle.
Its body was pink on top and white underneath, encased within a blue-green shell marked by circular white stripes. A red ribbon was tied horizontally around the shell.
It appeared to be a living creature, but in reality, it was merely a highly autonomous tool created by the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
A truly fascinating object.
Makoto knew that in the original story, Karasuki possessed the ability to travel through time and had brought Sasuke and Boruto back twenty years into the past.
What he couldn't understand was why it had brought the two of them into his world instead.
After a single use, Karasuki's energy reserves had been completely depleted. It was currently gathering stray chakra from the atmosphere on its own.
Ever since the older Sasuke and Boruto arrived, Karasuki had remained within Makoto's perception.
Although the artifact had exhausted its energy after performing a space-time jump, it had still been capable of communicating with people and had explained various prohibitions regarding time travel to the two travelers.
The strange part was that it had now entered a state of complete dormancy.
No matter what Makoto tried, he couldn't wake it up.
Even threatening to destroy it had no effect.
Karasuki was merely a highly intelligent tool. It had no concept of fear.
Not only that, Makoto couldn't inject chakra into it.
With the amount of chakra he possessed, refilling Karasuki and restarting it should have been easy.
Yet he simply couldn't do it.
The energy Karasuki required was completely incompatible with Makoto's chakra.
So where exactly was the problem?
Makoto quickly arrived at an answer.
Most likely, it was because he was a unique existence.
The source seed of every person's chakra in the shinobi world ultimately originated from Ōtsutsuki Kaguya and therefore contained information belonging to the Ōtsutsuki Clan.
Makoto was different.
He had long since purged that source seed entirely.
His chakra now belonged solely to himself.
Because of that, Karasuki showed no response to him whatsoever.
It wasn't even willing to communicate.
Makoto had no solution to that problem.
He couldn't exactly destroy it.
If he did, the older Sasuke and Boruto would never be able to return home.
For now, the only thing he could do was devote himself to sensing the artifact's operating principles, hoping to analyze some useful knowledge from it and deepen his understanding of space and time.
...
Before long, the entire afternoon passed, and it was time for dinner.
The environment within Konoha had become increasingly similar to that of the dojo, so Higashino Jirō and his wife only came over regularly for meals.
At night, they still preferred sleeping in their own home.
Yamato and Hayate normally lived here full-time, and Yūgao was now effectively the lady of the house.
The older Sasuke also spotted many familiar faces.
He had never expected that in this timeline, Yamato—the future second jōnin leader of Team 7—would actually be Higashino Makoto's younger brother and even carry the Higashino surname.
They weren't blood-related, but it was still absurd.
Gekkō Hayate, who had died long ago in his memories, was alive and well. He looked energetic and healthy, nothing like the short-lived man Sasuke remembered.
As for Uzuki Yūgao, his impression of her wasn't particularly deep, but he at least knew who she was.
What truly surprised him was that Yūgao was one of Makoto's wives.
The other was the Uzumaki woman he had seen at noon—Honoka.
Boruto only recognized Yamato among them.
Hayate had died before Boruto was born, while Yūgao had largely retired after the Fourth Shinobi World War and had almost no interaction with him.
Boruto was equally shocked that Makoto had two wives.
He exchanged a glance with his sensei.
The meaning in both their eyes was exactly the same:
Could Konoha in this timeline really play things this wild?
As members of the ANBU, Yūgao, Yamato, and Hayate had already been informed of some details regarding the guests. They weren't surprised by the arrival of the two strangers, merely curious.
Like Jirō and his wife, they all found themselves secretly speculating about the pair's true identities.
Anyone with functioning eyes and average intelligence could see the resemblance between the older Sasuke and the younger Sasuke, as well as between Naruto and Boruto.
Was it merely a coincidence?
Or was there something else going on?
After dinner, the dojo became even livelier.
Minato and Kushina arrived first, followed by Karin, who had come specifically to watch the excitement.
The older Sasuke had already confirmed that this timeline was different, so seeing Karin didn't surprise him much.
He simply rested a hand on Boruto's shoulder while shooting him a warning look.
The kid was so excited at seeing the grandparents he'd only known from photographs standing alive before him that, had his sensei not stopped him, he probably would have dropped to his knees on the spot and performed a full ancestral-recognition ceremony.
As always, Minato wore his bright, sunny smile.
After glancing at the older Sasuke and Boruto, he walked over to stand beside Makoto.
"Makoto, it seems you trust them quite a bit. In that case, they probably aren't what Itachi's report speculated they were—Orochimaru's experimental subjects. Care to explain?"
"Minato-senpai, do you remember the topic we discussed years ago?"
"You mean...?"
"The possibility of traveling through time."
After hearing that, Minato quietly considered the matter and quickly arrived at a negative conclusion.
The reasoning was simple.
If these two truly came from the future, Makoto would never have allowed everyone to meet them so casually.
Doing so could easily create temporal paradoxes, perhaps even cause the future timeline to collapse and erase the two people standing before them.
Yet they were still here.
Perfectly fine.
That meant they were not from the future.
At the very least, not from the future of this world.
While Minato was carefully analyzing the situation, Kushina took a far simpler approach.
She immediately reached out and began kneading Boruto's face, as if checking whether he was using makeup or a Transformation Technique.
"Eh? He really does look a lot like Naruto. Same hair color, same eye color—even the whisker marks are almost identical. He's just missing one on each side."
Boruto laughed awkwardly, his face turning red.
Not only did he fail to resist, he actually seemed to enjoy it a little.
But after noticing his sensei's gaze, he stammered, "M-Maybe... it's just a coincidence."
Kushina shook her head.
"That's way too similar. If you hadn't said anything, I would've thought you were my grandson."
Boruto thought:
My dear grandmother, your guess is frighteningly accurate.
Naruto immediately protested.
"Mom, what are you talking about? How could I possibly have a son that old?"
"Then maybe he's your younger brother."
"You don't know how many kids you gave birth to?"
Kushina actually spent several seconds thinking seriously about it.
"I don't know. It hurt so much back then. How would I know how many I had? Maybe they were twins and someone stole one."
Naruto covered his face.
"..."
Having an airheaded mother could be incredibly exhausting.
The older Sasuke was starting to feel that things were becoming troublesome.
Perhaps he should have dragged Boruto away at all costs back then.
Staying behind to investigate the differences in this world now seemed like a terrible decision.
But soon, he encountered an even bigger problem.
Two pairs of eyes were staring fixedly at him.
They belonged to two figures who had appeared only in his dreams ever since the destruction of the Uchiha Clan.
They were deeply familiar.
And unbearably missed.
He often wished he could see them one more time and let them see the man he had become.
He never expected that fantasy to suddenly come true today.
Uchiha Fugaku and Uchiha Mikoto had arrived, accompanied by Itachi and Shisui, at what could only be described as a massive family-recognition gathering.
At this moment, the older Sasuke had officially unlocked the achievement:
Full Family Reunion.
His deceased parents.
His older brother.
And his future wife.
All gathered together under one roof.
It should have been an emotional and joyous day.
Yet the older Sasuke could honestly say that he wasn't happy at all.