Under the Memorial Stone

There were less than three days left until the night destined to be stained with blood.

At dusk, before the Konoha Memorial Stone, the autumn wind whipped up a few withered leaves, swirling them past row upon row of cold tombstones.

In this silent graveyard, a youth with messy silver-white hair and an Anbu mask stood in quiet stillness.

"Obito... Rin..."

Kakashi Hatake gently placed a bouquet of white bellflowers before a tombstone. His right eye, the one not covered by his forehead protector, was filled with a weariness and dead silence that seemed impossible to ever resolve.

Clearly, Guy's treatment had not achieved the slightest effect.

Guy's failure count +1.

"Sensei Minato is going to have a child."

Kakashi's voice sounded exceptionally hoarse in the empty graveyard.

He muttered to the tombstone for a long time, as if pouring out his unplaceable guilt to the ghosts of the past.

Not until the sky turned completely dark did Kakashi pull his mask back down and turn to leave with heavy steps, his lonely silhouette resembling a stray dog that had lost its way.

However, Kakashi did not know.

Just ten steps away in the shadows, or rather, in his blind spot, a pair of scarlet eyes hidden beneath an orange spiral mask were watching everything with cold indifference.

Obito Uchiha.

This "hero" who should have been dead was currently standing in the rift of the Kamui Dimension.

He watched Kakashi's painful back, his eyes beneath the mask devoid of even a shred of sympathy, holding only endless mockery for this fake world.

Meaningless self-reproach, Kakashi. In this hell that is worse than trash, death is the only release, Obito coldly pronounced in his heart.

Not until Kakashi's chakra had completely vanished from his sensory range did Obito's body, hidden in the void, slowly solidify amidst a faint distortion of space.

He walked with stiff steps to Rin's tombstone and stood in silence for a long time.

Afterward, he extended his right hand—covered in the pale traces of Zetsu—from beneath his wide black robe and gently placed a small bunch of white flowers, picked from who knows where and still bearing a few dewdrops, beside the bouquet of bellflowers Kakashi had left behind.

Just as Obito set down the flowers and prepared to activate Kamui once more to leave this heartbreaking place that he both loathed and could not let go of—

"This chakra signature, is it Obito Uchiha? You are actually still alive?"

A curious voice rang out behind Obito without the slightest warning!

What?!

The pupils beneath Obito's mask contracted to the size of needlepoints, and his muscles tensed to the limit in that instant!

How is this possible?!

With his current sensory perception, fused with Hashirama cells and the Mangekyō Sharingan, not even Sensei Minato could get this close to him without triggering a spatial fluctuation!

He spun around violently, the red glow of his Sharingan carving a dangerous afterimage into the night.

But the moment he saw who it was, the fatal strike Obito had been preparing to launch froze mid-air.

Standing behind him were two figures, one large and one small, draped in black trench coats.

Yue Uchiha, who had used the ultimate Kyōka Suigetsu combined with Yagokoro Omoikane to perfectly shield all five senses and chakra fluctuations, was holding Hikari Uchiha's hand, watching him with a relaxed posture.

Yue... Senior?

Obito's mind went blank for a fleeting moment.

Even though Obito had completely severed himself and locked his heart in endless darkness, the sight of that familiar face caused a beautiful memory—one buried deep in his heart and nearly covered in mold—to surge up uncontrollably.

That was back in the days before he had "died," when he was still the one who loved to be late and was mocked as a dead-last.

Yue Uchiha was one of the very few in the cold and arrogant Uchiha Clan who had ever shown him kindness.

Every time he was scolded by the clan elders for being late because he had helped an old lady cross the street, Senior Yue would always smile, hand him a skewer of three-colored dango, and gently ruffle his hair, saying, "Kindness is the rarest quality in the Uchiha, Obito. Don't lose it."

In a childhood filled with denial and cold stares, if Minato Namikaze was the beam of light that illuminated him, then Yue Uchiha was the only warmth he had ever felt within his own clan.

He had even saved his life during the Battle of Kannabi Bridge...

The lips beneath Obito's mask trembled slightly.

But soon, the warmth of that memory was swallowed by a deeper, more profound coldness.

In this fake world, all warmth was merely sugar-coating for deadly poison!

Senior Yue was the same; he was just another part of this illusory hell!

This hell!!! Should not exist!!!

Watching Obito's posture tense up instantly as he radiated cold killing intent, Yue did not make any defensive moves, simply watching him quietly.

"Why not return to Konoha?" Yue asked softly, his tone carrying the sigh of an old friend reunited, as if he were merely talking to a child who had run away from home in a fit of pique.

Obito remained silent.

The night wind blew through the graveyard, sweeping up the fallen leaves between them, the atmosphere stifling to the point of suffocation.

Hikari stood behind Yue, her hand already resting quietly on the hilt of her blade. She could feel that the chakra within the masked man before her was twisted and insane.

As for Yue Uchiha, this seemingly casual "chance encounter" was actually a high-stakes gamble and experiment he had been planning for a long time.

He was testing the boundaries of the "World Correction Force."

In this script known as "Naruto," the Night of the Nine-Tails was an absolute main plot node, an ironclad rule that could not be tampered with.

However, Obito sneaking away to visit Rin's grave on the eve of the Night of the Nine-Tails—a small, private act driven by personal emotion—was definitely not within the mandatory surveillance range of the "core plot."

If he attempted to use "Talk no Jutsu" here to change Obito's mind, the Correction Force would likely not immediately descend with divine punishment.

Yue had already sensed the tolerance for non-main-plot events back in Rōran.

Even if he failed, he had nothing to lose.

Of course, success would be ideal; he wanted to see the tolerance level of the "Correction Force" regarding "main plot deviations"—just how far could it shift before the "Correction Force" would intervene "openly and aboveboard"?

Yue waited.

He was attempting to use the bonds of the past to pry at this stubborn rock, a man thoroughly brainwashed by Madara and completely shattered by Rin's death.

After a long, dead silence.

The Mangekyō Sharingan beneath the Masked Man's mask finally stopped trembling.

The beautiful memories that had flashed for a brief moment just now were obliterated by his own cruel rationality, crushed like withered leaves.

"I am not Obito."

The Masked Man's voice turned hoarse and hollow, permeated with a dead, icy chill that kept everyone at a distance.

"You have mistaken me for someone else."

Accompanying these emotionless words, the Mangekyō Sharingan in Obito's eyes slowly rotated.

Spiral ripples of Kamui surged through the air once more.

His body, as if being pulled away by an invisible vortex, twisted bit by bit and vanished into the void.

From beginning to end, he never looked at the bouquet of flowers on the ground again, nor did he spare Yue Uchiha another glance.

Watching the space that had returned to complete stillness, Yue Uchiha tilted his head slightly, a trace of helpless relief flashing in his eyes beneath his mask.

Failed, then... As expected, a few memories alone aren't enough to pull back a man whose heart is already dead.

There was not much sense of frustration in Yue's heart.

Obito Uchiha's psyche had been thoroughly destroyed and reshaped long ago on that bloody, rainy night meticulously designed by Madara.

Wanting to make him abandon the obsession of "creating a world with Rin" with just a few words was nothing short of a fantasy.

He didn't know how that blockhead Naruto had managed to convince Obito.

As for him, the former mentor of Obito, he hadn't even been given the chance to say a second sentence.

Of course, he was a rogue ninja now too, so neither of them had room to talk.

"Yue, he is clearly the Obito you spoke of. Why won't he admit his identity?"

Uchiha Hikari walked to Yue's side, her clear, beautiful eyes filled with confusion.

In her understanding, what is, is; what isn't, isn't. This act of self-denial seemed extremely contradictory.

"Because he doesn't dare to face it, Hikari."

Yue turned around, looking at the lonely little white flower before the tombstone, and took one from his own robes to place beside it.

"There are always people who like to discard their weak, pathetic past selves, and the best way to discard oneself is to put on a mask and play someone else."

Yue reached out and gently ruffled Hikari's soft black hair, his gaze seemingly piercing through time and space to see that boy who had once wept bitterly in the rain.

"Even though the past self is an indispensable part of one's own life, we shouldn't blame our past selves..."

Yue's voice carried a kind of compassionate clarity that had seen through the vicissitudes of the world, as if he were speaking to Hikari, and also to himself.

"Because he, too, was lost at the time. In that painful moment, he didn't know what to do to earn a beautiful ending for himself, or for everyone else."

"Obito is like this, and the Uchiha of the past were the same."

Yue withdrew his hand and pulled his black trench coat tighter.

"Let's go, Hikari. We've seen our old friend."

"Since he has chosen to act as the 'Masked Man' to turn the gears of fate, then we... should also go prepare our own script for the 'mantis stalking the cicada.'"