Persuasion, Mirror Flower, Water Moon

The air suddenly froze.

Hatake Sakumo's eyes narrowed slightly, his sharp gaze turning cold as a blade.

"Something foolish?" He repeated the words, his tone giving nothing away. "What do you think I'm doing that's so foolish?"

Liuyu did not look away.

"You're planning to kill yourself," he said bluntly.

"With that White Fang Short Blade, you're going to end your life.

Because you think that will atone for your sins, quiet the public criticism, and give the village an explanation."

Hatake Sakumo fell silent.

A few seconds later, he suddenly laughed.

It was a bitter laugh, as if he'd swallowed something unbearably bitter.

"Atone... heh." He lowered his head and looked at the short blade before him. "Maybe. But mostly... I'm tired."

He reached out and gently ran his fingers along the blade.

"I've been a ninja for thirty years.

I've completed seventeen S-rank missions and a hundred and four A-rank missions. I've killed more ninjas than I can remember." Sakumo's voice was calm—frighteningly calm.

"I've never doubted my choices.

A mission is a mission. Rules are rules.

A ninja can sacrifice anything to complete a mission, even his own life."

His fingers stopped at the blade's edge.

"But this time... I chose my comrades."

He raised his head and looked at Liuyu. "Do you know why?"

Liuyu shook his head.

"Because one of them was a student I trained myself," Sakumo said.

"Three years ago, when he went on his first mission, I told him: As long as you're under my command, I won't leave you behind."

He paused, his voice growing quieter. "I broke my promise. Three years ago, I couldn't protect his little sister. She died on a mission.

This time, if I just watched him die again..."

Hatake Sakumo did not finish.

But Liuyu understood.

Guilt had made him change.

"So you saved them," Liuyu said.

"I saved them, and the mission failed." Sakumo tugged at the corner of his mouth. "The trade agreement between the Land of Fire and the Land of Wind was delayed, and the village suffered heavy losses.

The people I brought back are blaming me now too... saying I shouldn't have saved them, that I made them into sinners in the eyes of the village."

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Do you know, kid?

The most frightening thing isn't an enemy's blade. It's the blade of someone you protected, stabbing you in return."

Silence fell over the training hall again.

The lamplight seemed to grow dimmer.

Liuyu looked at the man before him.

He could feel the "deathly intent" surrounding Sakumo growing stronger.

"Lord Sakumo," Liuyu said, his voice calm. "Do you think you were wrong?"

Sakumo opened his eyes and looked at him.

"Wrong?" He smiled bitterly. "Does right or wrong even matter anymore?

The result is that I caused losses for the village, brought disgrace upon my comrades, and put Lord Hokage in a difficult position... Maybe I should never have made that choice in the first place."

"If you could do it all over again," Liuyu asked, "would you watch them die?"

Sakumo fell silent.

For a long time.

So long that the wick of the oil lamp was almost burned out, its light wavering wildly.

"I don't know," he finally said. "Maybe... I'd still save them."

He lowered his head and looked at his hands. "But this time, right after saving them, I'd use this blade to end my life.

At least then, things wouldn't have turned out like this."

Liuyu understood.

Hatake Sakumo didn't regret saving his comrades.

He regretted... not using his own death to take responsibility immediately afterward.

What a tragic thought, and one so perfectly in keeping with a ninja's logic.

"Lord Sakumo." Liuyu took a step forward.

Hatake Sakumo immediately raised his head, his gaze icy.

"I didn't come here to lecture you," he said. "I just wanted to tell you something."

"What?"

"Kakashi is still outside."

After he spoke, a long silence settled over the training hall.

Before long, the candle burned out.

The training hall sank into darkness.

For about ten seconds.

Then Hatake Sakumo slowly rose to his feet.

The oil lamp had gone out. Only moonlight filtered through the paper door, casting shifting shadows across his face.

"Uchiha kid," Hatake Sakumo began, his voice still hoarse, but with something else in it now. "Did you come here to laugh at me? Or..."

He paused, his lips twisting into a bitter smile. "Did the village send you to deal with me, the 'sinner'?"

Liuyu remained where he was and did not answer.

He could feel that the "deathly intent" surrounding Hatake Sakumo hadn't completely faded. It had only been suppressed for the moment.

The weariness and despair in those eyes were still too deep to dispel.

"For the criticism of those people, for the so-called rules," Liuyu repeated his earlier question, "you're going to abandon your son?"

Hatake Sakumo closed his eyes.

"I've tarnished the honor of the Hatake Clan," he said quietly, each word forced through clenched teeth.

"If I stay alive, I'll only bring shame on Kakashi.

If I die... at least I can preserve the last shred of my dignity."

"Dignity?" Liuyu laughed, the sound cold.

"To preserve some so-called dignity, you'd leave your six-year-old son without a father and make him live in the shadow of 'his father was a failure' from now on—is that what dignity means to you?"

Hatake Sakumo's eyes flew open.

In the moonlight, anger flashed in his eyes, but there was more pain than anything else.

"What do you know?!" he growled. "How old are you? Have you ever been on a battlefield?

Do you know what it feels like to live with 'disgrace' hanging over you?!"

"I don't," Liuyu said calmly. "But I know that tonight, when Kakashi was surrounded on the training grounds and called a 'failure's son,' he didn't cry or run away. He just stood there."

He looked at Sakumo. "He's waiting for you.

Waiting for an explanation, waiting for an answer.

Waiting for his father to tell him."

Hatake Sakumo's breathing grew ragged.

"And the answer you're giving him," Uchiha Liuyu said, enunciating each word, "is a cold corpse and a blade stained with his father's blood."

"Shut up!"

Hatake Sakumo's hand closed around the hilt.

The pressure of a Kage Level fighter loomed like a mountain.

But it wasn't killing intent directed at Liuyu. It was an emotional outburst, repressed to the breaking point and on the verge of collapse.

That pressure spread through the training hall like something solid. The air grew thick, and the temperature plummeted.

An ordinary Genin would likely have collapsed to the floor by now.

But Uchiha Liuyu merely pushed up his glasses.

Behind the lenses, his eyes were as calm as a deep pool.

"Reasoning with you won't work, will it?" he said softly. "Then I'll let you see for yourself what kind of future your 'honor' will bring Kakashi."

The instant he finished speaking—

Uchiha Liuyu's hand closed around the hilt at his waist.

His draw triggered a preset "switch."

"Shatter, Mirror Flower, Water Moon."

The silent release command sounded in his heart.

It hadn't just begun now. It had... begun long ago.

From the moment Liuyu had stepped into the Hatake Residence, Shikai had already enveloped the place.

Their conversation and confrontation had all taken place within this "domain."

And now, Liuyu wasn't going to "activate" the illusion.

He was going to "show" it.

Hatake Sakumo moved the instant Liuyu drew his sword.

The White Fang Short Blade flashed from its sheath!

How fast was a Kage Level fighter?

Uchiha Liuyu's retinas couldn't even capture the full trajectory. He saw only a snowy-white flash of steel tear through the darkness, thrusting straight for his throat!

It was a single killing stroke forged from thirty years of combat experience and honed through countless brushes with death.

But—

The blade stopped three inches from Liuyu's throat.

It wasn't that Hatake Sakumo had stopped.

It was his "perception" that had stopped.

In Sakumo's eyes, the scene before him began to twist.

The walls of the training hall melted away, and the floor turned into flowing liquid.

The moonlight shattered into scattered flecks.

Liuyu's figure blurred, stretched, and reassembled...

Then he "saw"—