The Truth of That Year

Kakashi had finally seen the two people he had yearned for in his dreams, the people he had believed he would never see again. His feet seemed nailed to the ground, unable to move.

"Obito... Rin..." The two names spilled from his throat.

Nohara Rin stood not far away, looking exactly as she had in his memories. A thirteen-year-old girl with neat short hair—the Rin Kakashi knew best. She had remained frozen at the final moment of her life, at the moment when, for the sake of the village and to prevent the Tailed Beast from going berserk in Konoha, she had chosen to run into his Lightning Cutter.

But when Kakashi shifted his gaze to the other person, he froze. That face was familiar. He recognized it at a glance—it was Obito.

But it was not the Obito he knew.

Not the boy who was always late, always grinning, always following behind him and shouting, "Kakashi, you bastard." The one standing there was a man around Kakashi's age, an adult Obito. There was even that deep scar on his face—the mark left when he had been struck by the boulder during the battle at Kannabi Bridge.

Yet his demeanor had changed completely. He no longer looked like that hot-blooded idiot, but carried the weathered air of someone who had been through far too much.

Kakashi could not understand what was happening.

His father had told him that in the Pure Land, aside from elderly people who had died of old age and returned to the healthiest state of their bodies, everyone else remained as they had been at the final moment of their lives.

Rin had remained thirteen. Then what about Obito? Shouldn't he also have been thirteen when he died?

Seeing the dawning realization, excitement, guilt, and uncertainty