Father and Son Meet

Kakashi stared blankly at the broken blade in his hands. It took a moment for him to snap out of his daze, and when he looked up at Shiraishi, his eyes were filled with a mix of anticipation and nervousness.

"Senior, did it work?"

"Of course!"

Shiraishi watched Kakashi with a smile and instructed, "Focus your spirit. Imagine yourself entering the ninja blade."

Kakashi gripped the hilt tightly with both hands. After taking a deep breath, he focused his mind just as he did during meditation, staring intently at the blade.

His consciousness blurred, and Kakashi felt as if he had fallen into a dark abyss.

When his consciousness cleared, he found himself in a void. The surroundings were filled with endless darkness, save for a bonfire blazing with light ahead of him.

"Kakashi? You've come so soon?" Hatake Sakumo, Kakashi's father, sat beside the bonfire. He looked at his young, underage son who had suddenly appeared, a bitter smile tugging at his lips.

"Father!" Kakashi's body trembled slightly. His eyes turned bloodshot, and he called out with intense emotion.

Before the words had even finished echoing, Kakashi had already rushed to Sakumo's side, tears streaming down his face uncontrollably.

Sakumo stood up and looked at Kakashi, his face filled with concern as he said self-reproachfully, "Kakashi, living alone must have been very hard, right?"

"I'm sorry! It's all because of this irresponsible father of yours that you had to face life all on your own at such a young age."

Kakashi wiped the tears from his face with the back of his hand. He tilted his head back, his heart full of grievances, yet he forced a strong smile and said, "It wasn't hard. I took good care of myself. I learned to cook, I ate on time every day, and I trained diligently. I... I..."

As he spoke, Kakashi's voice grew choked with emotion. He said in a trembling tone, "It's just that I really missed you, Father."

Sakumo, a powerhouse renowned throughout the ninja world during his lifetime—a man who had reaped countless lives with his blade and never once made a mistake—felt his right hand, which had never trembled while wielding a sword, shake uncontrollably at this moment.

He reached out with a trembling hand and pulled Kakashi into his embrace. "I've let you suffer, Kakashi."

At this moment, Kakashi could no longer hold back. The longing that had accumulated since his father's suicide, the guilt over Obito sacrificing himself to save him, the nightmare of killing Rin with his own hands—all that endless pain and remorse erupted in an instant.

Kakashi clutched his father tightly, tears pouring from his eyes as his body shook with silent sobs.

Sakumo held Kakashi's head with one hand and gently stroked his back with the other. He didn't speak, his eyes filled only with concern and self-reproach.

This warm and touching scene lasted for an unknown amount of time. Only when his tears had finally run dry did Kakashi slowly look up, his eyes red and swollen.

"Kakashi, how did you get here? Did you encounter some kind of crisis during a mission?" Sakumo asked while wiping his son's cheeks with his hand.

"I..." Kakashi looked at his father. After the initial surge of emotion passed, he realized his father seemed to have misunderstood something.

"I'm not dead, Father. It was me who summoned you," Kakashi explained.

Hearing that his son was still alive, Sakumo let out a long sigh of relief. There was no better news than that.

But soon, Sakumo began to worry about something else. He looked at Kakashi with concern and asked, "Kakashi, you didn't learn some kind of forbidden jutsu just to see me, did you?"

As a top-tier powerhouse of Konoha, Sakumo was privy to many secrets. He knew that the use of any forbidden jutsu required a price to be paid.

Kakashi shook his head hurriedly. "I didn't, I..."

"Why don't you let me explain, Kakashi?"

Just as Kakashi was about to explain, Shiraishi's voice rang out from not far behind him.

Shiraishi's consciousness had entered the blade at the same time as Kakashi's, but he had remained hidden in the darkness, choosing not to interrupt the touching reunion between father and son.

"Senior Shiraishi." Kakashi turned his head. Seeing Shiraishi, his eyes were filled with gratitude, the dead-fish look from their first meeting completely gone.

The moment Shiraishi's voice sounded, Sakumo looked over. "Are you a ninja of Konoha?"

"Father, he is a friend of my sensei, Minato. The reason I can see you today is entirely thanks to Senior Shiraishi's help," Kakashi said, taking the initiative to introduce him.

Hearing this, a gentle smile appeared on Sakumo's face, though there was a hint of vigilance deep in his eyes.

It wasn't that Sakumo didn't trust his son, but in the eyes of most ninjas, any jutsu that broke the boundaries of life and death to manipulate the souls of the deceased was considered an evil forbidden art.

"Senior Sakumo, my name is Shiraishi. I am a ninja of Konoha," Shiraishi said as he walked toward them.

"The summoning Kakashi mentioned just now is not a ninja jutsu, but a technique passed down from a profession called 'Spirit Mediums' that existed even before the Warring States period."

"The execution of this summoning technique..."

Shiraishi repeated the explanation he had given Kakashi earlier to Sakumo.

After listening, the vigilance in Sakumo's heart eased slightly. He took the initiative to express his gratitude: "Shiraishi, thank you for your help, allowing us father and son to meet again."

"You're welcome. As I said, this is a gift I'm giving to Kakashi as his elder," Shiraishi said with a smile.

Having said that, Shiraishi looked at Kakashi and continued with a tone of emotion, "Besides, in my opinion, this child Kakashi is a natural-born Spirit Medium."

"A natural-born Spirit Medium?" Sakumo looked at Shiraishi, puzzled.

Kakashi, standing right next to his father, also looked at Shiraishi with curiosity, not understanding why this senior would describe him that way.

"As I just said, to summon the soul of the deceased, one must find an object that anchors the deceased's obsession, and it is best if the summoner has some connection to the deceased."

Shiraishi paused here, raised a hand to point at Kakashi, and said with a hint of sympathy, "In this child, I have discovered three existences related to the obsessions of the dead."

"Three..." Kakashi whispered to himself, already knowing where those three obsessions came from.

With images of Obito and Rin flashing through his mind, Kakashi raised the right hand that had killed Rin and slowly touched the Sharingan Obito had left him.

Obito, Rin, I miss you both so much too!

Sakumo watched his son's actions in silence. Although he didn't know exactly what had happened, he had a rough guess in his heart.

What a cruel ninja world! His son must have lost the friends he cherished most over these past few years.

"The Sharingan on your left, your right hand, and the ninja blade left behind by Senior Sakumo—all of them retain intense obsessions," Shiraishi said slowly.

Kakashi's body trembled instinctively. As if struck by a sudden realization, he jerked his head up to look at Shiraishi, asking with agitation, "Senior Shiraishi, does this mean I can see them again?"

Standing to the side, Sakumo heard his son's words and hesitated, wanting to speak up and stop him. He wanted to tell his son that recklessly breaking the boundaries between life and death to disturb the peace of the departed was not the right thing to do.

But looking at the gaze of his son, now filled with a mix of agitation and anticipation, he simply could not bring himself to say it.