Shocking News of the Fourth Shinobi World War

But he had no close friends now, let alone one he would ever follow down such an evil path.

He would absolutely never become like that guy.

The second piece of good news was that he had found another member of the Uchiha Clan. Even if that person no longer bore the Uchiha name, Uchiha blood still flowed through his veins. That way, even if he died in the future, and Itachi died as well, the Uchiha Clan would not completely vanish from the shinobi world.

This had also been what worried him most before.

At the same time, he had truly witnessed for the first time what the genuinely powerful shinobi standing at the pinnacle of the shinobi world were like.

It made him feel even more strongly that his days at the Ninja Academy had truly been a waste of time.

Even if he stayed at the Ninja Academy for another hundred years, he would never obtain Kage Level combat power. That made him look forward even more to life after graduation.

If Uchiha Itachi could do it, then so can I!

Kitahara Kaede had no idea that his diary had caused Hatake Kakashi and Uchiha Sasuke to stay up all night, constantly analyzing the enormous amount of information hidden within it.

He slept straight through until dawn, then submitted the mission report he had written overnight the next day.

No new missions came down, either.

After all, this was not wartime. There were not that many missions, and it was not as though there were missions every day.

Especially not for a Cannon Fodder squad like the Kitahara Kaede Squad, whose members all appeared rather ordinary in strength. They were hardly the focus of the higher-ups' attention.

For Kitahara Kaede, this was just the chance to properly hone his own strength.

In particular, how to use the Sharingan was an entirely new subject he had never encountered before.

What puzzled Kitahara Kaede somewhat was that he had been running into Uchiha Sasuke rather often lately. Sometimes they even crossed paths two or three times in a single day. Though Konoha was administratively a village, it was actually the size of a small town, and it would become even more urbanized in the future.

So meeting this frequently was somewhat strange. Especially since Kitahara Kaede had been a shinobi for so long, he still possessed basic vigilance.

Besides Uchiha Sasuke, he had also encountered Hatake Kakashi several times—someone he had previously seen at most once or twice a year.

Kitahara Kaede could not make sense of it.

But there was no doubt that both of them were protagonists of the story. Uchiha Sasuke in particular was a focal point, whether from the perspective of being a protagonist or from the perspective of Konoha Higher-ups' attention.

At present, Uchiha Sasuke might not receive as much attention from the Konoha Higher-ups as Uzumaki Naruto, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox Jinchuriki, but because of Uchiha Itachi and because he was the last descendant of the Uchiha Clan, the entire village still paid him considerable attention.

Kitahara Kaede had even vaguely sensed several times that someone was following Uchiha Sasuke from beyond his line of sight.

According to Kitahara Kaede's guess, it was either the Anbu or Root!

Before he possessed enough strength to flip the table, Kitahara Kaede had no desire whatsoever to stand out. So lately, he had become even more reclusive.

Even though he could sense that the looks Uchiha Sasuke occasionally gave him were quite friendly, he could not understand where that inexplicable friendliness came from.

Shouldn't Uchiha Sasuke's heart at this stage have been completely filled with hatred?

After resting for several days, Kitahara Kaede finally received another mission. It was still just basic cat-catching and dog-wrangling work, but Kitahara Kaede did not find it boring at all.

Because the time for the second lottery draw was almost here.

The genuine Uchiha Clan bloodline he had drawn in the last lottery had greatly boosted his strength.

That night, after completing the mission and finishing dinner with the others, Kitahara Kaede returned home. Once he had washed up, he sat down at his desk and began writing in his diary.

[I've been running into Sunny Sasuke a little too often lately. I'd better keep my distance. Sunny Sasuke is a key subject of the Konoha Higher-ups' attention right now. As the last descendant of the Uchiha Clan, he's the center of attention wherever he goes, only slightly less so than Uzumaki Naruto.]

At the same time, Uchiha Sasuke and Hatake Kakashi reached the appointed time and sensed the diary update.

Sunny Sasuke?

Uchiha Sasuke's forehead was covered in black lines. At that moment, he keenly felt Kitahara Kaede's wicked sense of humor, and understood the speechless feeling Hatake Kakashi must have had when Kitahara Kaede called him Hatake the 50/50.

Though he did not know the specific meaning of "Sunny Sasuke," judging by Kitahara Kaede's teasing tone, it was definitely not a flattering nickname.

Still, Uchiha Sasuke was not surprised by Kitahara Kaede's claim that he was being watched by the Konoha Higher-ups. After all, he was the last descendant of the Uchiha Clan.

As the final survivor of what had once been the strongest clan, anyone in Konoha with half a brain would keep an eye on him.

In Uchiha Sasuke's understanding, the Uchiha Clan was the strongest. As for the Senju Clan, which had once beaten the Uchiha Clan into submission, he had never even heard of it.

For one thing, by the time he was born, the Senju Clan had already faded into obscurity. For another, his entire clan had been massacred when he was still very young. Even if the Uchiha Clan still had educational materials introducing the Senju Clan, their former greatest rival, there had been no time to teach him.

Hatake Kakashi saw this entry and habitually recorded his assessment.

Vigilant. Kitahara Kaede possessed a deeply rooted wariness toward the Konoha Higher-ups. It was not very obvious in ordinary circumstances, but on certain key issues, it was clear that Kitahara Kaede had a deeply rooted distrust of them.

Whenever information that could clearly expose his unknown origins was involved, he tended to avoid revealing it before the Konoha Higher-ups.

Though every shinobi had their own secrets, and even he himself had many personal secrets that he had not reported, Kitahara Kaede's vigilance was clearly not the same as simply protecting one's secrets.

Therefore, even being noticed slightly by the Konoha Higher-ups simply because he appeared near Uchiha Sasuke was unacceptable to Kitahara Kaede.

He truly had quite a lot of secrets. And even more that could not see the light of day.

Was it because of this diary?

Or because he carried the bloodline of the Uchiha Clan?

It was not as if Hatake Kakashi had never seen the village's dark side. He had not only joined the Anbu; he had also joined Root, known as the Anbu within the Anbu.

[Come to think of it, a new batch of Ninja Academy graduates will be arriving soon. The legendary Konoha 12 will all graduate as well. Of course, a large number of Cannon Fodder shinobi like me will graduate alongside them. I just wonder how many of them will survive until the future Fourth Shinobi World War.

But on a battlefield where immortals brawl and Gundams run wild, I don't know whether surviving until then would be fortunate or unfortunate.]