The night wind was slightly cool.
The sea breeze, faintly carrying the scent of the ocean, blew across the island's coast. Even with the surrounding mountains acting as a barrier, the continuous sound of waves could still vaguely reach the ears of sharp-hearing shinobi.
Jiraiya leaned against the corridor railing of the study-tour inn Kirigakure had specially built for the convenience of Konoha Village's exchange team. He stared blankly at Kirigakure Village, which seemed draped in a layer of pure white gauze beneath the moonlight, allowing the unfamiliar air to stir the white hair at his temples.
A creak sounded.
Not far from him, a door opened from the inside. Tsunade, wearing an extremely relaxed sleeping robe, walked to Jiraiya's side with two small wine flasks in hand and handed one of them to him.
"Can't sleep?"
"Aren't you the same?"
Jiraiya smiled helplessly.
He turned and took the craft sake they had bought from the restaurant during dinner from Tsunade's hand. After raising his head and drinking a mouthful, he slowly exhaled a breath of white air.
"That kid Rei Kaguya really dares to say anything… Konoha is no different from the Village of the Bloody Mist secretly controlled by Madara Uchiha? Only someone like him, whose brain no one knows the contents of, could say something like that, right?"
"But if we look at it from his perspective, those words are not fundamentally wrong, are they?"
Tsunade sighed and said somewhat absentmindedly,
"If he had not brought it up, I would have almost forgotten the things Grandfather and the others once told me about the Warring States Period…"
"Isn't that the truth?"
Jiraiya's expression and tone were equally melancholy and complicated.
"The earlier someone graduates from the Ninja Academy, the earlier they stain their hands with blood. But the children who graduate early and get promoted early are also the ones most easily entrusted with great hopes by the village and their clans…"
"Even if they come to understand the value of peace in the days afterward, I'm afraid it would be very difficult for them to realize the problem with that evaluation method on their own."
"Especially when everyone in the shinobi world does it that way."
Tsunade poured some clear wine into her mouth and spoke unclearly.
"Yeah. Since everyone does it, naturally no one will think there is anything wrong with it."
After raising his head and drinking deeply again, Jiraiya looked at the wine flask in his hand, which was already half-empty. Yet his gaze seemed especially clear.
"What are your plans after this, Tsunade?"
"Me? I'll probably follow that little brat Anko Mitarashi first and take a look at the so-called commercialized cursed seals she and the Fourth Mizukage developed together. After that, I'll consider whether to accept the invitation Kirigakure threw my way."
Tsunade stopped sipping and slightly turned her head, looking at Jiraiya's face, which had taken on an expression of firm resolve.
"What about you, Jiraiya? What do you plan to do?"
"I want to go take a look at the historical research association organized by Rei Kaguya."
Jiraiya turned back, his gaze steady as he said,
"Before today, I thought his study of the period when Madara Uchiha secretly controlled Kirigakure was only for the sake of understanding the methods Madara used, improving Kirigakure's experience in dealing with similar incidents, and also applying those methods to Kirigakure's external infiltration…"
"And now? What do you think he wants to do now, Jiraiya?"
"I don't know. But I have a guess."
Jiraiya took a deep breath, his gaze sharp.
"In order to survive the chaos of the Warring States Period, it was only natural to research how to clench one's fist into the most lethal form."
"But if that research reaches the point of obsession, to the point that one completely forgets how to loosen the fist, or even the common sense that a fist can be loosened at all, then that is absolutely abnormal."
…
At the same time, inside the room shared by Kakashi Hatake and Itachi Uchiha.
"Senior Kakashi, are you asleep?"
"No… You're the same, Itachi?"
"Mm."
Seeing that neither of them had any desire to sleep, the two simply sat up from their beds, turned the room light back on, then sat facing each other and began to chat.
"Senior Kakashi, do you think… the words Lord Mizukage said to us during dinner today were intentional?"
"They were definitely intentional. The Fourth Mizukage is someone capable of making a genius like Shisui Uchiha, who was praised by everyone, abandon everything and defect to his side. When it comes to using words to shake people's hearts, it is impossible to overestimate his ability."
Kakashi Hatake looked at his right hand, his mood complicated as he spoke.
"Then Senior Kakashi, how much of those intentional words do you think are worth seriously thinking about?"
Itachi Uchiha hugged his knees and asked with a slightly lost expression.
"That… I don't know."
Kakashi Hatake smiled bitterly and buried his head into his knees. Then he answered in a muffled tone,
"Judging from Lord Jiraiya and Lady Tsunade's expressions, they were probably moved by the Fourth Mizukage's words, right? But from my perspective, there is definitely still a difference between Konoha and Kirigakure during its era as the Village of the Bloody Mist…"
"A very, very large difference."
"But what Lord Mizukage said about the standards used to evaluate a child's value as a shinobi… I feel like they really are consistent."
Itachi Uchiha pursed his lips.
Inside his small head, enormous question marks were spinning.
"A child who graduates early from the Ninja Academy is more outstanding than children who follow the normal process, learn everything step by step, and spend several years before graduating. But if they graduate early and become a shinobi, they will inevitably take the lives of others during missions."
"Is there really such an enormous difference between taking the life of a complete stranger and taking the life of a close, beloved friend?"
"Who can say clearly?"
Kakashi Hatake turned his face sideways and looked with his remaining right eye at the starry sky outside the window, hidden behind the mist. His tone was just as confused as he murmured to himself,
"Perhaps in that person's eyes, making a young child actively take another person's life is itself something unacceptable."
"But even if shinobi truly are, as he said, a pitiful group that only knows how to clench fists and weapons…"
"After we loosen our fists, what can we do?"
Itachi Uchiha did not know the answer to that question.
But he felt that since Rei Kaguya, the person whom Shisui Uchiha followed wholeheartedly, had raised this question, then during his exchanges with Shisui Uchiha, he must have given an answer to it as well.
Then should he take the initiative to seek that answer from him?
Even knowing full well that the other party paid special attention to him?
Itachi Uchiha likewise did not know the answer to that question.
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