The higher-ups of Konoha were naturally unwilling to give up after failing to obtain any information from Naruto and Hinata. Yet no matter what methods they used, they could not extract a single piece of information from either of them. In the end, they could only abandon the effort.
The Anbu concluded that their condition had never been seen before. They had not been affected by any known ninjutsu, nor were there any traces of seals being placed on them. In short, they were in a state that no one could understand.
It was not that they were unwilling to speak, but that they could not...
Time was always the best medicine, capable of fading everything from the past.
Even if Konoha's higher-ups remembered this sudden upheaval and buried those memories deep in their hearts, to the ordinary villagers, it was merely another Nine-Tails Attack.
Moreover, because it had lasted such a short time, with only the area around the Konoha Academy destroyed and the death toll far lower than during the Nine-Tails Attack, it became little more than a topic of idle conversation after a while. A few more years later, it would not even be worth discussing, completely forgotten.
The Ninja Academy was rebuilt, and the ninja Konoha had sent out returned in batches. With the search yielding no results, even Konoha could not sustain such a large-scale ninja operation for long.
Once classes resumed, the academy returned to its former bustle. However, many children had died in that disaster, and the number of students had decreased considerably.
But Naruto did not care about that, because only a few of his classmates were gone. After returning to school, it took him just two days to return to his old carefree self, unchanged from before.
Still, he had changed