"Obito, how is he? Is it serious?"
Chiba sprinted over and quickly reached Kakashi. Kakashi had just opened his mouth, seemingly about to say something to Chiba, but when Chiba spoke first, he froze for a moment.
Chiba...
He seemed to know Obito would be hurt? The instant Kakashi saw Chiba's expression and movements, that thought could not help surfacing in his mind.
Uh... in a situation like this, with Chiba's intelligence, he had probably already guessed it from our tone and expressions.
Clearly, Rin's remark had reminded Kakashi of Chiba's identity as a Medical Ninja—and one highly skilled in Medical Ninjutsu at that. A sliver of hope rose in his previously despairing heart.
As for Chiba's reaction—how he knew Obito was injured before even seeing him—Kakashi quickly found an explanation.
After all, they had lived together for a time. Their familiarity was not something ordinary friends could achieve. Besides, though Chiba had never performed any dissections, his strange and bizarre medical experiments, along with medical summaries that looked like heavenly scriptures to Kakashi—and the period when Kakashi himself had served as a guinea pig to test Chiba's medicines—had taught him just how high Chiba's medical standards were, and how frighteningly intelligent he was. That wisdom, as if it could see through one's heart, probably had no equal in Konoha.
Sometimes, Kakashi even suspected that Chiba was over ten years older than him, rather than a year younger.
But regardless, if there was anyone Kakashi could trust at a critical moment, Chiba was unquestionably one of them.
And now, it no longer mattered how Chiba had gotten here, how he had escaped danger, or how he had crossed the battlefield to reach them.
What mattered was the present!
That fear of his, right now.
Even if Obito's fate turned out