"Hey, Guy."
After glancing at the man in the green jumpsuit with the bowl-cut hairstyle, Kakashi seemed genuinely not to have heard what the man had just said. As he spoke, his gaze returned to its original spot, his voice carrying a faint murmur.
"Huh?"
Hearing this, the green-clad, bowl-cut man—who had been turning something over in his mind—immediately turned around and let out an instinctive sound of confusion.
This man was none other than Might Guy, the Jonin instructor of Neji Hyuga's team, Konoha's Team 8.
"That Hada Ichiba really is... exactly the same!"
At that moment, Kakashi's reflective voice drifted over.
"Hada Ichiba?"
Might Guy paused slightly at those words. Then he followed Kakashi's gaze, and when his eyes settled on its target, his expression abruptly grew serious.
"So this is Hada Ichiba, the one who had the whole village talking even before the exams? He really is exactly the same!"
Then, beneath that rare seriousness, Might Guy spoke.
"Yeah."
Kakashi nodded, but his gaze never left Hada Ichiba for even a moment.
Even his tone sounded somewhat distant, and though his words were affirmative, they carried a hint of perfunctoriness.
He really is... exactly the same as Chiba when he left! At that moment, the agitated thought flashed through his mind, difficult to calm.
As for Chiba, after the Nine-Tails' Rampage, aside from the Third Hokage and a very small number of ninja, Kakashi was probably one of the only people who had ever seen him.
That mottled, graying hair, that appearance with only his left eye exposed—it was exactly like the boy in his memories, walking away beneath the sunlight.
Though more than ten years had passed since that scene, he still remembered it with perfect clarity.
He knew very well how much that boy had