But he did not have any close friends now, let alone one he would ever lead down such an evil path.
He would absolutely never become like that person.
The second piece of good news was that he had found another member of the Uchiha Clan. Even if that person did not bear the Uchiha name now, Uchiha blood truly flowed through his veins. That way, even if Kaede 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 seen for the first time what the genuinely powerful ninja 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.
He could stay at the Ninja Academy for another hundred years and still never obtain Kage Level combat power. That only made him look forward even more to life after graduation.
If Uchiha Itachi could do it, then so could I!
Kitahara Kaede had no idea that his diary had directly caused Hatake Kakashi and Second Pillar to spend the entire night sleeplessly analyzing the enormous amount of information it contained.
He slept until dawn, then submitted the mission report he had written overnight the next day.
No new mission had been assigned, either.
After all, this was not wartime. There were not that many missions, and there was not a mission every day.
Especially not for a cannon fodder squad like the Kitahara Kaede Squad, whose members all appeared quite ordinary in strength. They were hardly the focus of the village leadership's attention.
As for Kitahara Kaede, he was happy to take advantage of this time to hone his own strength.
In particular, the application of the Sharingan was an entirely new subject he had never explored before.
What puzzled Kitahara Kaede slightly was that he had been running into Second Pillar rather often lately. Sometimes, he encountered him two or three times in a single day. Though Konoha was administratively classified as a village, its actual scale was that 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 ninja for so long, he still possessed a basic level of vigilance.
Aside from Second Pillar, he had also run into Hatake Kakashi several times. In the past, he would see that guy only once or twice a year at most.
It left Kitahara Kaede somewhat unable to make sense of things.
But these two were undoubtedly protagonists of the story. Second Pillar in particular was a focal point, whether as a protagonist or in terms of the Konoha leadership's attention.
At present, Second Pillar might not receive as much attention from the Konoha leadership as Uzumaki Naruto, the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox Jinchuriki, but because of Uchiha Itachi and his status as the last descendant of the Uchiha Clan, the entire village still paid him considerable attention.
Several times, Kitahara Kaede had even vaguely sensed someone following Second Pillar from beyond his field of vision.
According to Kaede's guess, it was either Anbu or Root!
Before he possessed enough strength to flip the table, Kitahara Kaede had no desire whatsoever to attract attention. So recently, he had become even more reclusive.
Even though he could sense that Second Pillar's occasional looks toward him were quite friendly, he simply could not understand where that inexplicable friendliness came from.
After all, shouldn't Second Pillar at this stage have had his heart completely filled with hatred?
After resting for several days, Kitahara Kaede finally received another mission. It was still the sort of basic mission involving catching cats and chasing dogs, but Kaede did not find it boring in the slightest.
Because the time for his second draw was about to arrive.
The genuine Uchiha Clan bloodline he had drawn last time had greatly boosted his strength.
That evening, after completing the mission and finishing dinner with his team, Kitahara Kaede returned home. After washing up, he sat back down at his desk and began writing in his diary.
[I've been running into Sunny Sasuke a little too often lately. I should keep my distance. Sunny Sasuke is currently a key subject of the Konoha leadership's attention. As the last Uchiha descendant, he would be the center of attention anywhere, only slightly less so than Uzumaki Naruto.]
At the same time, Second Pillar and Hatake Kakashi reached the right moment and sensed that the diary had updated.
Sunny Sasuke?
Second Pillar's forehead was covered in black lines. At that moment, he deeply felt Kitahara Kaede's wicked sense of humor and understood the speechless feeling Hatake Kakashi must have had when Kaede called him Hatake the 50/50.
Though he did not know the precise meaning of Sunny Sasuke, judging from Kitahara Kaede's teasing tone, it was definitely not a good nickname.
Still, Second Pillar was not surprised by Kaede's claim that the Konoha village leadership was watching him. After all, he was the last descendant of the Uchiha Clan.
As the final member of what had once been the strongest clan, anyone in Konoha who was not foolish would keep an eye on him.
In Second Pillar'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 slaughtered when he was still very young. Even if the Uchiha Clan still had educational material introducing the Senju Clan as their former greatest rival, there had been no time for it to be taught.
When Hatake Kakashi saw this entry, he habitually recorded his evaluation.
Vigilant. Kitahara Kaede held a deeply ingrained wariness toward the Konoha leadership. It was not particularly obvious in ordinary circumstances, but on certain crucial matters, it was clear that he had a deeply rooted distrust of the Konoha leadership.
Whenever information might clearly expose his unknown origins, he tended not to reveal it before the Konoha leadership.
Although every ninja had secrets, and even Kakashi himself had many personal secrets he had not reported, Kitahara Kaede's vigilance was obviously not the same as protecting one's own secrets.
Thus, even being noticed slightly by the Konoha leadership simply because he appeared beside Second Pillar was unacceptable to Kitahara Kaede.
He truly had rather too many secrets. And even more of them could not see the light of day.
Was it because of this diary?
Or because he carried the Uchiha Clan's bloodline?
Hatake Kakashi had seen the village's dark side before. 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 soon be arriving. The legendary Konoha 12 will all graduate as well. Of course, a large number of cannon fodder ninja like me will graduate alongside them. I just wonder how many of them will survive until the future Fourth Shinobi World War.
But faced with a battlefield where gods fought one another and mecha ran rampant, I don't know whether living until then would be fortunate or unfortunate.]
Before you continue