Here is...
Where?
Slowly opening my eyes, I found darkness shrouding everything. There was no light, nothing else—only darkness as deep as ink, boundless darkness.
I should already be...
Then where, where is this? Why, why is there nothing at all?
I should have set foot on my Yellow Springs Road. And I had already let go—let go of this life. Even if I hadn't transmigrated again, I should have walked my Yellow Springs Road and reached that "Pure Land," shouldn't I?
There probably was no concept of hell or heaven in the Naruto World, nor one where good people went to heaven and bad people went to hell.
Whether it was the past Kage summoned by the Sage of Six Paths at the end, Kakashi, who had been to the Pure Land, or Hatake Sakumo, who had appeared at the Yellow Springs Road's crossroads because he could not let go—in the strictest sense, none of them were good people.
Every one of them, myself included, had blood all over their hands. We had all taken countless lives with our own hands. But among those people, who could claim they had never killed a righteous and kind person? Who could say that everyone they killed had been utterly wicked and deserved to die?
Whose hands were not stained with the lives of noble people who had devoted themselves to their villages, the friends and family of those villages, or even strangers?
Then, it could be said that everyone would walk that road and go to that "Pure Land." Otherwise, if hell truly existed, then Kakashi, Hatake Sakumo, the past Kage, and I would probably all go to hell.
But why...
Why am I here? In the silent darkness, the young man lowered his gaze slightly. Beneath his feet was darkness