Fallen Leaves Wither on the Ground

At the end of the 36th year of the Konoha Calendar, the situation in the ninja world gradually deteriorated.

Sunagakure accused Konoha of maliciously seizing mission shares that rightfully belonged to them, while Konoha accused Sunagakure of crossing through the Rain Capital to raid the borders of the Land of Fire.

Friction between Konoha and Sunagakure was constant, the attitudes of Iwagakure and Kumogakure remained ambiguous, and Kirigakure was also secretly mobilizing its armed forces.

Meanwhile, the Rain Capital, situated between the three great nations of Earth, Wind, and Fire, was forced to become a buffer zone and a sacrificial lamb for the warring powers.

Lead-colored clouds had spread across the entire sky, making this weeping nation feel even more desolate and sorrowful.

Only the homeless wild dogs remained, crouching low beside rotting flesh to tear at their meal.

"Konan, keep up..."

"Woof!" The wild dogs pricked up their ears in alarm, baring their teeth at the misty fog.

In the distance, the sound of footsteps seemed to approach, accompanied by low, muffled murmurs.

Until a bolt of lightning forked through the dark clouds, painting the world in shades of gray and white.

In the desolate scene ahead, two gaunt figures stumbled out from the rain and mist, their faces as pale as ghosts illuminated by the light.

"Yahiko, I'm so cold..."

"Just endure it a little longer... if we can't find anything, we'll head back."

The tattered, oversized raincoats concealed their thin, small frames, yet the eyes beneath the shadows remained sharp, set in young, sallow, and bedraggled faces.

One was an orange-haired boy called "Yahiko," the other a blue-haired girl called "Konan."

The two children's eyes scanned their surroundings incessantly.

But the houses on either side were mostly dilapidated; amidst the broken walls and sludge, one could vaguely see corpses—perhaps men and women, perhaps the elderly and children—rotting and stinking as they soaked in the mire.

Clearly, this settlement had already been slaughtered.

White bones lay exposed in the fields, and for a thousand miles, not a single rooster crowed.

Whenever they saw the broken, decaying bodies, Konan would tense her face and subconsciously press her lips together, while Yahiko's eyes revealed sorrow and fear.

The pale faces, still frozen in terror, were gradually etched deeply into his mind.

"Yahiko, look there..."

It wasn't until Konan tugged at his sleeve that Yahiko snapped out of his trance and looked in the direction she was pointing.

He saw an alley, and he saw a figure within it.

It was a strange corpse wearing a gray flak jacket, lying with its head tilted back.

"We actually found one!"

Joy lit up Yahiko's face. Confirming that no one was around, he quietly slipped into the alley.

The moment he stepped into the alleyway, the rain that had been pressing heavily on his shoulders seemed to be suddenly cut off.

"Hah!"

Yahiko let out a breath of relief instinctively.

Konan, however, looked up toward the top of the alley and subconsciously touched her throat.

She didn't know if it was just her imagination, but she felt a chill.

Looking up, there was only the raging wind and the dimness covered by tarpaulins; she couldn't even see the light of the moon.

"It's the corpse of a Sunagakure Chunin!"

The irrepressible exclamation beside her interrupted Konan's inexplicable distraction.

She withdrew her gaze from above and looked down at the figure.

The corpse, wearing a Sunagakure forehead protector, lay face-up; a kunai had been driven into its left eye socket, exposing the texture of the muscle and the ruptured, scarlet blood vessels.

Blinding blood flowed down the cheek to the ground, forming a pale red mirror that reflected the blurry scene of the alley.

"There has to be something!"

Yahiko was squatting in front of the corpse. He felt no disgust for the stinking body; instead, he reached into its clothes with a look of anticipation.

It was clear that this was not his first time doing such a thing; he was as skilled as those wild dogs scavenging for meat.

In fact, what he was doing was no different from the wild dogs.

If they could find something valuable on a ninja's corpse, they could trade it for food in the Rain Capital; if they couldn't, they would have to steal...

Konan stood quietly to the side, watching the corpse in silence.

"...It's so scary," she whispered after a long silence.

Seeing the corpse, which had maintained a look of bewilderment mixed with ferocity even in death, Konan could almost imagine how the person had been killed.

Was the force that pierced the skull achieved through a stabbing motion?

To penetrate a head, one would at least need a heavy strike, right?

First, stabbing a short blade into the eye socket, then using a fist or a foot to force it all the way through.

The Sunagakure ninja even still had a look of vigilance on his face, which meant he had stepped into the alley cautiously, only to be killed by someone before he could even react.

Thinking of this, Konan felt a sense of unease and glanced around, yet she could find no source for her anxiety.

A cold chill mixed with the scent of blood was drawn into her lungs, and the weak, flickering moonlight cast shadows upon the ground.

The walls on both sides of the alley were mottled, covered in damp water stains and moss, while a spider waited on its dark web as if expecting prey to fall into its trap, its compound eyes reflecting two small figures.

The entire alley had fallen into an extreme silence, as if they were the only two people left in the world, and the curtain of rain at the alley entrance acted like a door, locking the two lost little beasts inside a cage.

Yahiko did not notice Konan's unease; he was busy rummaging around with his head down when his eyes suddenly lit up.

"Found it!" he whispered in surprise, pulling out a ninja tool pouch. "Konan, look! There are still Shuriken and Exploding Tags in here... Huh, why aren't there any of those special steel wires? Those things are quite useful..."

Yahiko was speaking with an excited expression.

But before he could finish, he was interrupted by Konan's trembling voice:

"Ya, Yahiko! Did you hear that?"

"...Hear what?" Yahiko couldn't help but pause, looking up to ask.

He saw Konan staring blankly at the howling wind and torrential rain outside the alley.

It seemed she had heard some sound, hidden within the wild roar of the wind and rain.

It sounded like...

Click-clack... click-clack...

No, that wasn't right—it wasn't just "like" something; there was definitely a sound.

The very moment this thought crossed Yahiko's mind.

The sky was suddenly dyed a searing white by a flash of lightning that tore through the dark clouds.

In the rain and mist in the distance, the blinding white light cast three shadows onto the ground, long and thin like ghosts.

Clack-clack! Clatter!

They could hear it more clearly now; the eerie sound was drawing closer, and both of them were instantly swallowed by a tide of overwhelming fear.

BOOM!!

A thunderclap exploded immediately following the lightning strike.

Konan and Yahiko were both jolted awake, their youthful faces turning deathly pale in an instant.

They heard it clearly, and they realized.

What did that familiar sound represent?

"A Sand Ninja Puppet Master!!"

Yahiko realized what was happening, grabbed Konan's clothes, and turned to run.

But just as he stood up and took a step.

Swish!

In his peripheral vision, a flash of black, cold light suddenly streaked past his face.

In that instant, Yahiko could even smell a faint, fishy stench.

Clang!

But in the next second, a subtle, crisp metallic sound rang out, and the Kunai, gleaming with cold light, suddenly veered off its original trajectory.

It flew past Yahiko's face by a hair's breadth, embedding itself into the wall beside him and cracking the stone.

"Ya, Yahiko..." Konan's small face was deathly pale, her hands clutching tightly to the corner of Yahiko's shirt.

"Gulp!"

Yahiko froze in place like a statue, his mouth slightly agape, his throat bobbing as his breathing stalled completely.

A crystal-clear liquid—whether sweat or rain—traveled from his temple down his cheek to his jaw, finally dripping onto the ground and shattering into a splash.

"I... I'm okay..." He raised a trembling hand to touch his nose.

Feeling the stinging pain and the dampness on his fingertips, his pupils trembled slightly, every hair on his body stood on end, and he even felt a sudden urge to urinate.

That was close!

He had almost died!

This was the first time he had felt the terror of death from such close proximity.

However, that sound from just now...

Clack-clack!

Clack-clack, click-clack!

Before Yahiko could recover from his daze, accompanied by the increasingly clear and strange noise, two figures emerged from the curtain of rain.

Both wore conical hats; one of them had long yellow hair and was still spinning a blood-stained Kunai on his finger, the blood and rainwater gathering at the tip of the blade before flicking off.

The other had a hideous scar on his face and carried a humanoid object wrapped in a waterproof cloth on his back, and it was from behind him that the strange sound originated.

"What is this?" Seeing the thin, small Yahiko and Konan, the yellow-haired Sand Ninja was also taken aback, then frowned and complained, "So they're just two brats."

"Did you only just realize there were two brats?" the other Sand Ninja with a scarred face asked, looking surprised. "I thought you had seen them and were just holding back so you wouldn't hit them."

The yellow-haired Sand Ninja's expression turned ugly, and he cursed, "Bullshit! I was aiming right for his head!"

The scarred Sand Ninja simply assumed he was making excuses, chuckled, and looked at the corpse in the alley.

"To think that idiot actually died here..." he muttered, then turned his gaze toward Yahiko and Konan, saying indifferently, "I recall the Kazekage saying we should try not to harm civilians?"

Hearing this, Yahiko and Konan froze, a glimmer of hope rising in their eyes.

"Don't joke around," the yellow-haired Sand Ninja sneered dismissively. "Don't forget, the first time you carried out an A-rank mission, you slaughtered a whole group of Land of Rain civilians."

"For all you know, their parents might have been among the civilians you killed..."

With that, he whipped his head around and instantly threw the Kunai in his hand.

In an instant, Yahiko and Konan, who had been shifting their feet, froze in place as the Kunai embedded itself precisely beside their feet.

"Be good now," the yellow-haired Sand Ninja said with a playful grin, like a cat batting at a mouse with its claws, as he began to walk slowly toward the two.

The scarred Sand Ninja didn't stop him; he merely rubbed the scar on his face, which seemed to ache faintly, and coldly instructed, "Make it quick. We still have to clean up after that idiot."

Hearing the two men speak without a shred of mercy, the hope in Yahiko and Konan's eyes was extinguished, replaced by despair.

The shadows of the trees nearby seemed to sway like human figures, mocking the two as they struggled in vain.

Even the feeling of the cold wind slipping into their collars became more profound; a chill that seeped into their very bones made Yahiko's hands, gripping his collar, turn white, his chest heaving violently like a broken bellows.

"Why?" he whispered in a trembling voice.

He did not understand why the battles of Ninja had to involve civilians, nor why the wars between great nations had to drag the Land of Rain into the flames of conflict.

The Land of Fire and the Wind Country, Sunagakure and Konohagakure, all seemed to be fighting for their own "justice."

And the reason Sunagakure gave for starting the war was to promote fair resource distribution.

"Fairness"—what a "just" and "correct" reason that was.

But they only wanted to live; was that wrong? If that was wrong, then who was right?

"Is that your last word?" Hearing the brat's whisper, the yellow-haired Sand Ninja, who had reached the mouth of the alley, raised an eyebrow, looking somewhat troubled. "Pity, even if you ask me, I don't know how to answer you."

As his voice fell, the yellow-haired Sand Ninja took another step, his feet crossing into the curtain of falling rain at the alley's entrance.

Plop.

Konan, her face drained of all color, suddenly froze, her gaze fixed on the pool of blood beneath the dead Ninja.

From her angle, the blood-stained water acted like a mirror, reflecting a pair of deep blue eyes.

It was as if a predator were quietly stalking its prey from beneath the depths of a dark pool.

In a daze, Konan even thought she saw those eyes curve slightly, as if... smiling?

Smiling?

Who was smiling?

Before she could look up to see clearly, her vision was blocked.

In front of her was Yahiko, who had spread his arms to shield her, and the Ninja with his raised Kunai and a savage grin on his face.

"Heh, brat, in your next life, pray you aren't born in a small country."

The words fell, but the moment he tried to swing his arm down, nothing happened.

There was no spray of warm blood as there usually was, nor the satisfying sensation he craved.

The situation made the yellow-haired Sand Ninja pause subconsciously, his eyes shifting to look at his own arm.

He saw that the sleeve of the arm holding the Kunai was slowly tearing open, and the skin beneath was splitting into a circular red line...

As fresh blood sprayed, the arm slid off, separating from the shoulder and revealing a smooth, clean cut where the texture of bone and muscle was visible in every detail.

Pain is generated in the cerebral cortex, so after a person receives a direct injury, how long does it take for the pain signal to reach the cortex and for a reaction to occur?

The answer is, less than a second.

In a state of high nervous tension and distraction, it takes less than a second to react.

But to transition from extreme stillness to extreme motion takes only the briefest of moments.

Before anyone could react, the black shadow had already descended like a falling maple leaf from the darkness above, landing behind the prey, its toes creating ripples in the pool of blood.

When the predator hidden in the shadows was exposed to the moonlight, the first thing one noticed was not his face, but the cold glint of a blade reflecting the moonlight as it descended.

Slash!

The strike was fast; there was no pain as it passed, only cold death.

Almost instantly, the yellow-haired Sand Ninja's head flew into the air, tumbling to the ground like a bowling ball with a crisp sound like a watermelon hitting the floor, leaving a trail of blood as it rolled.

The head still held a trace of confusion, rolling into the stagnant water with eyes wide open, reflecting the two stunned children.

From the severed neck, blood erupted like a fountain, causing a rain of blood to fall upon Konan and Yahiko.

But soon, they were shrouded in a shadow, and the foul-smelling rain of blood ceased to fall.

"Asking 'why' is a good habit, but unfortunately, you chose the wrong target."

The voice that came from above was somewhat youthful, yet the first impression it gave Konan and Yahiko was one of gentleness.

"..."

Seeming unable to recover from that scene, the two raised their heads in a daze, meeting a pair of deep blue eyes.

"Most people in this world are like falling leaves, helpless to drift, tumble, and tremble in the air, only to eventually wither upon the ground and become nourishment for the next generation."

"Only a few are like stars moving along a fixed orbit; the winds of fickle fate cannot sway them, for their hearts hold a predetermined path."

It was a young man wearing a Black Robe, holding an umbrella in his hand with clearly defined knuckles, his eyes carrying a smile.

For a moment, Konan could not tell if the deep blue light reflected in those eyes was the stars or the rain.

She only felt the gloomy, rainy night grow bright; the torrential downpour and surging emotions felt like a sealed valley suddenly thrown open, with the wind blowing in without end.