Is He Really a Member of the Akatsuki?

Facing Aoi Rokushō's furious shout and the Sword of the Thunder God crackling with lightning, Hinata showed not the slightest fear. Instead, the storm brewing in those pure Byakugan eyes grew even more violent!

Menma's injury and collapse were like a sharp thorn lodged deep in her heart.

That feeling of watching the most important person to her fall into danger while she could do nothing had nearly ignited all the anxiety and self-reproach she had carried these past few days, ready to make it explode.

Ever since the "Limited Tsukuyomi World," she had experienced that pain.

After coming to this world, what she feared most was losing this feeling, and facing that heart-rending helplessness all over again.

Fragments of memory flashed unbidden through her mind: their first meeting as children, when she had saved Menma from being bullied by other children in the snow-covered park; the bond that had formed between them from then on; the six years at the Ninja Academy, during which their feelings had grown beyond ordinary friendship; after graduating, when they had entered different teams and could only see each other occasionally, that distance had only made the hazy ambiguity between them heat up all the faster.

But not long after they graduated from the Ninja Academy, Menma had begun muttering strange things all the time, things like "this world is fake," "there is no Black Zetsu," and "there is no Otsutsuki Kaguya."

When the two of them were alone on dates, Menma's mood and mental state had also become unstable.

Menma had started chasing power, working desperately to become stronger, even becoming somewhat unscrupulous.

Hinata had once tried to seek help from Konoha's medical ninja, thinking it might be a war sickness built up in ninja after long-term, high-pressure missions, but Menma had always