Menma is Very Popular

In Tazuna's home, the atmosphere was solemn and sorrowful.

Miss Tsunami held her son, Inari, and led everyone into a room that had been tidied cleanly and neatly, though its furnishings were simple.

Against the wall stood an old wooden table. On the tabletop, a small oil lamp cast a dim yellow glow, illuminating the framed photograph placed right in the center.

In the frame was a young man with a hearty smile and bright eyes, two scars of different lengths on his chin, and skin tanned a healthy bronze from years spent at sea—Kaiza.

Yuto and several young people around his age silently walked up to the table and lined up in a row.

They looked at that vivid face in the photograph, and their eyes reddened in an instant.

Yuto was the first to bend deeply at the waist, his forehead nearly touching the cold tabletop. His voice choked, filled with endless self-reproach and pain.

"Big Brother Kaiza... I'm sorry! We... we're back! We were useless..."

The other young people also bowed one after another and began to sob quietly.

Through Yuto's halting account, interwoven with painful memories, a past story about the struggle and sacrifice of the Land of Waves' lowest people slowly unfolded before everyone.

Several years ago, not long after Kaiza first arrived in the Land of Waves, he was still a young fisherman full of ideals and unwilling to be manipulated by fate. Then a tide of thought from the distant Land of Stars quietly flowed into this island nation through merchant ships and travelers.

It was the books and ideas known as the Will of the Star.

The vision described in those books—a society without noble oppression, where ninja power served the people and everyone could earn dignity through hard work—was like a