My Foolish Brother

"Dad's home..."

Naruto stared blankly at the layout inside the house, the words sending ripples through his mind.

A spacious kitchen, a clean living room, the warm layout of a family of three.

For some reason, Naruto's nose suddenly stung, and the scene before his eyes gradually blurred with tears.

Wasn't this the home he had always dreamed of?

The image he had imagined on countless late nights, lying on a cold bed and staring at a shabby ceiling.

Like a dream, it had appeared right before his eyes.

Second floor.

Namikaze Mirai looked around before stopping in front of a room from his memories.

Click!

He deftly turned the handle and pushed the door open.

The room was already packed with clutter and covered in dust.

This had once been his bedroom, but it had now become a storage room.

As he stepped inside and swept his gaze around, a corner of an album sticking out from beneath the clutter caught his eye.

He moved aside the piled-up junk, took it out, and brushed away the dust.

Looking at the familiar scene in the photo, Namikaze Mirai suddenly let out a scoff, though his eyes grew even wetter.

It was a photograph of three people.

The blond young man in the middle wore an exceptionally radiant smile, one arm around each of their shoulders as he pulled them close.

The young woman on the right had fiery red hair and an equally brilliant smile. The blond young man on the left, however, had turned his head away with faint disdain, trying his best to lean as far outward as possible.

Before Namikaze Minato got married, he had lived here with his brother and sister-in-law.

That life continued until Minato married Kushina, when he had no choice but to move out.

After all, living with his brother and sister-in-law all the time would invite gossip.

"Come to think of it, I've been back for quite a few days now, but I still haven't come to see you."

As if recalling something, Namikaze Mirai's voice turned wistful.

Konoha Cemetery.

Every ninja who died in Konoha was buried here. Like monuments stretching as far as the eye could see, they stood alone in a corner of the village.

Namikaze Mirai placed the lilies in his hand before the gravestone.

This was the grave of Namikaze Minato and Kushina. Once the Fourth Hokage, heroes who had saved the entire village—

Yet after death, they had been buried here in obscurity, with no one paying them any heed.

Looking at the gravestone before him, Namikaze Mirai's eyes suddenly turned melancholy as he recalled the scenes of his arrival in the Ninja World.

In his previous life, he had been a corporate drone.

After suddenly dying from overworking late into the night, without even having time to delete his browser history, he had transmigrated to this place called the Ninja World.

Namikaze Mirai had panicked.

In his memories, this seemed to be a very popular kind of Japanese film.

But in his previous life, he had never dabbled in that sort of thing.

Even after racking his brains, all he could recall were scattered phrases like "five villages in a brawl" and "Gundam saves mother."

They had been memes he had happened across on social media.

Fortunately, when God closed a window for you, He would rip off your ceiling instead.

Within Namikaze Mirai's mind resided an Electromagnetic Tree that towered over heaven and earth. It could absorb any form of energy and raise the level of his Electromagnetic Force.

And so—

Trash of the Ninja World, behold your electromagnetic emperor! During the Third Great Ninja War, with the Railgun, Electromagnetic Propulsion, and Simple Gundam he had developed by hand...

Namikaze Mirai successfully made a name for himself as the Magnetic Field Madman... the Blue Flash! Together with Minato's Yellow Flash, he was known as Konoha's Dual-Colored Flash.

During the Third Great Ninja War, he had even fought Magnet Release Rasa, standing in the sky and beating Rasa so badly that he once doubted whether he had cultivated a fake Magnet Release.

After the war ended, Minato became the Fourth Hokage and began living a shamelessly intimate life with Sister-in-law Kushina.

Watching Kushina's belly grow larger day by day, Namikaze Mirai thought that things could not go on like this.

So he left the village to do that thing.

He had never expected that once he left, three years would pass!

"Come out!"

Without turning around, Namikaze Mirai spoke calmly.

Behind him, a figure stepped out of the shadows.

Standard Anbu attire, a Ninja Sword, a cat-faced mask, and white hair.

"Mirai-nii, I knew you'd come here."

Kakashi's gaze was complicated.

"Minato has been dead for three years. As his student, is this how you treat his orphaned child?"

Namikaze Mirai did not turn around, but a trace of chill entered his voice.

Kakashi fell silent.

Over the past three years, he too had been unable to pull himself out of his inner torment.

His father's suicide, his best friend's death, killing a comrade with his own hands, the deaths of both his teacher and teacher's wife...

The succession of blows had plunged his world into utter darkness.

He could only bury himself in the Anbu's cold-blooded missions, living like a machine.

That continued until the day Namikaze Mirai stormed into the Hokage Office with Naruto, striking his frozen heart like a heavy hammer.

That was also why he had come to find Namikaze Mirai today.

He could not forgive himself for turning a blind eye to Naruto.

"Tell me what happened that night."

Namikaze Mirai's eyes narrowed into slits.

Since returning, he had investigated Minato's death, but the intelligence he obtained had been extremely limited.

It seemed that everyone avoided speaking of that night.

"That night..."

Kakashi's gaze passed over the rows of gravestones in the cemetery as he pondered for a moment.

"That was the day Kushina-sensei gave birth. At the time, I was..."

Kakashi slowly recounted all the intelligence he knew.

As an Anbu squad captain, the intelligence he could access far surpassed that of ordinary shinobi. Moreover, after the Nine-Tails Attack, he had deliberately used his resources to investigate the truth of that night.

It could be said that his understanding of what had happened was hardly any different from that of higher-ups like Sarutobi Hiruzen and Danzo.

"The Sharingan, the Nine-Tails' rampage, traces of Wood Style..."

Namikaze Mirai's eyes gradually narrowed.

The matter was even more complicated than he had imagined.

"The higher-ups suspect it may be connected to the Uchiha Clan. That's also why the Uchiha are now viewed with such suspicion by the village."

"It probably wasn't them," Namikaze Mirai said calmly. "Minato had always worked to resolve the conflict between the Uchiha and the village while he was alive. Those people had no reason to do something so foolish."

Kakashi pondered inwardly. That was also what he found unreasonable.

After hearing Namikaze Mirai's words, he became even more convinced that the village's investigation had gone down the wrong path. The truth was definitely not as simple as it appeared.

Someone who could infiltrate the village without alerting the barrier, fight Minato, who wielded the Flying Thunder God, and very likely possess both Wood Style and the Sharingan...

Whoever you are, I will never let you go.

Namikaze Mirai stared at Minato's gravestone.

"Before that, my foolish Brother, leave Naruto to me!"