"Kakashi, we finally found a hot spring with hardly anyone around. Are you really not going to take a bath?"
Kurenai Yuhi said.
Kakashi shook his head.
A bath?
It would cut into his training!
His mind was full of shaping the ball. Until he mastered it, he didn't want to think about anything else.
He could manage the basics now, but he still had a long way to go before he had mastered it.
He had to keep working!
Kakashi kept the ball going in his hand, but soon he couldn't maintain it, and it quickly fell apart.
He'd learned it.
But he hadn't quite mastered it.
Still, Kakashi had only been at it for a few days. This was already an incredibly fast pace.
Kyohiko watched from outside.
Seeing what was happening, he immediately walked in.
"Let's go together. The baths are right next door to each other, so if anyone attacks, we can watch each other's backs."
Kakashi hesitated for a moment. "What about them?"
He was referring, of course, to the two Mist Village shinobi.
"Teacher is watching them, so don't worry. Come on, let's talk and relax. Maybe you'll find it easier to master the technique that way."
As he spoke, Kyohiko didn't give Kakashi a chance to choose. He simply headed inside.
Kakashi hesitated for a moment, but in the end, he followed.
They grabbed their clothes and took off their masks.
As they soaked in the hot spring attached to the inn, they felt the day's exhaustion melt away.
But...
Kakashi glanced to the side, and the events of the day came back to him.
Just as Kyohiko and the others had said, many missions weren't all that important. Delaying one for a while wouldn't be a problem. But if Kyohiko had been like him in the past...
He couldn't do what Kyohiko had done.
Who was right and who was wrong?
He had no answer. He felt utterly lost.
Leaning against the stone rim, Kakashi gazed up at the stars and suddenly spoke.
"Kyohiko."
"Hmm?"
Kyohiko was stretched out in the hot spring, his body relaxed, but his mind remained alert to his surroundings. His chakra seeped through the mist, guarding against anyone lying in wait nearby.
As soon as Kakashi spoke, Kyohiko turned his attention back to him.
Kakashi was sitting upright now. Without his mask, his face looked rather delicate, but it was clouded with confusion.
"I don't know how to put it."
"Just say whatever comes to mind."
"If you had to choose between a mission and your comrades, which would you choose?"
Kakashi sounded casual, but his upright posture and tense expression showed that he wasn't nearly as calm as he seemed.
This question was a continuation of Hatake Sakumo's suicide.
Kyohiko had to take it seriously.
He thought about it for a long time.
He didn't entirely agree with the way Kakashi would see things in the future.
A splash came from next door.
Apparently, Kurenai Yuhi was curious too. She'd moved closer to listen in.
"I don't think there's a standard answer to this question. As the Second Hokage put it, a lot of things in this world don't have standard answers."
"What do you mean?"
Kakashi was confused, and even more surprised.
How could this question have anything to do with the Second Hokage?
The way he'd always seen it, there was only one answer—
The mission mattered more!
That was how he'd always done things.
But...
Recently, all sorts of things had given him a new perspective, one that clashed violently with his old beliefs.
That was why he'd been so unsettled.
Kyohiko answered.
"According to the Second Hokage, nothing is simply black or white. You have to make different choices in different situations. Take today's mission, for example. Should I really have abandoned my teammate?"
"..."
That was right.
Kakashi thought to himself.
By his own principles, someone who couldn't help with the mission and only held them back was obviously useless.
Even if that person was himself, he should have been abandoned.
"At the very least, shouldn't we avoid wasting our strength protecting them?"
"Our team could handle both without neglecting either one. So why abandon anyone?"
"..."
Kakashi was stumped.
He thought back over the various conflicts that had come up during his first two years after graduating.
That was right.
Why?
He'd been stumped right off the bat.
Kakashi was at a loss for words.
Next door, Kurenai Yuhi also found Kakashi's way of thinking strange.
Kyohiko's choice seemed perfectly ordinary to her!
Wasn't that how a shinobi was supposed to act?
Kakashi was silent for a long time before asking, "Then when should the mission come first?"
"If we're carrying out a mission to save more people, and we've all been prepared to make sacrifices before setting out, then if we reach a desperate situation where we can only choose one, I'll prioritize completing the mission."
Kyohiko leaned against the stone.
Missions had different levels of importance.
White Fang had indeed acted too impulsively, but when the public response afterward had unfolded, it was hard to believe there hadn't been some problems behind it...
Kyohiko didn't believe that either.
Kakashi's gaze dimmed.
"So the mission really should come first?"
"???"
Kyohiko tilted his head, completely bewildered.
Had everything he'd said before gone right over Kakashi's head?
He fell silent.
Kakashi had listened to him for ages, but the final sentence seemed to have made more of an impression than all the rest.
Were you Yuan Shao or something?
Unbelievable!
But Kyohiko couldn't say anything about "White Fang's suicide."
The higher-ups' official story was that White Fang had died on a mission, not by suicide. The Jonin naturally had ways of learning the truth, but Kyohiko wasn't supposed to know.
All he could do was stay silent.
"Kakashi, don't get stuck in a rut!"
Kurenai Yuhi's voice came from next door.
Kakashi came back to himself. After a moment of dazed silence, he remembered what Kyohiko had said earlier—
There was no absolute answer. He couldn't take things to extremes.
After a long silence, he said, "I'll tell you a story. Do you want to hear it?"
"Of course."
Kyohiko sat up a little straighter.
Kakashi said, "Once upon a time, there was a samurai..."
He retold Hatake Sakumo's story, setting it in the distant past and making the people involved samurai.
Then he carefully asked, "Do you think that samurai did the right thing?"
"He might not have been right, but there's one thing about the situation that puzzles me."
Kyohiko's tone was serious.
Kakashi paused. "What?"
"If that samurai's comrade really wasn't afraid of dying, why did he make it back to the village alive? If he really was ready to die, then when he learned that his comrade had come back for him, why didn't he kill himself and make the samurai give up on saving him? Maybe there was still time to go back."
Kyohiko asked, puzzled.
Kakashi was completely stunned.
This...
He'd never even considered that!
Kakashi sat there, his mind utterly blank. Until now, he'd only thought about whether his father had been right or wrong. He'd never considered what the person his father saved had been thinking.
That was right!
If he'd been so noble, why hadn't he killed himself then and forced his father to turn back?
"Especially since that person must have known what kind of man the samurai was, right? Otherwise, how would they have become partners?"
"..."
Kakashi blinked, unable to find any words.
Then Kyohiko got up and dried himself off.
"I can't figure out the deeper issues, but I think that samurai was remarkable."
"Why?"
"I've been reading some books lately. I'll borrow an idea from one of them and share how I understand it. The question that samurai faced was, at its core: was a samurai a tool or a person?"
As Kyohiko spoke, his voice filled with uncertainty. "I don't have an answer."
"A tool or a person?"
Kakashi murmured to himself.
So that was where the problem lay!
He felt as if he'd suddenly woken from a dream, only to fall into new confusion—
Which mattered more?
"Kyohiko, that's a really profound question. I never even thought of it that way."
Kurenai Yuhi's voice came from next door.
Kyohiko shook his head.
"I've just read a lot. There were similar questions in some of the books."
"So what did he do?"
"He established the village and the Ninja Academy, and ruled that children had to graduate at twelve before they could take on missions. That ensured missions could be carried out efficiently while protecting the children's lives."
Kyohiko answered.
Kakashi and Kurenai Yuhi immediately understood—
The Second Hokage!
"There's another example. When Lady Tsunade was younger, she pushed through the medical-nin system despite strong opposition, hoping to reduce casualties."
"Medical Ninja..."
Kakashi's gaze gradually cleared.
Kyohiko hadn't spelled it out, but Kakashi was beginning to understand what he meant.
Both missions and comrades mattered!
Shinobi weren't tools. Their lives deserved to be valued, too.
After all, Kyohiko's parents had also died in the war.
Before you continue