In the dim underground passage, leather boots splashed through puddles, their footsteps echoing dully.
"Move! Stop dawdling!"
The dog-masked ANBU shoved him hard. Baishi stumbled forward and fell, his knees slamming into the rough stone slabs and sending muddy water splashing.
"Sirs... please, go easy..." Baishi lay on the ground, his hands locked in heavy chakra-suppressing cuffs. The iron edges had rubbed his wrists raw, drawing thin streaks of blood. His voice trembled with tears. "I'm really just a Genin. That scar really came from a wandering ninja..."
"Shut up." The dog-masked ANBU hauled him up like a chick and dragged him deeper into the passage.
Baishi kept his head down, his disheveled bangs hiding his half-broken mask.
To anyone watching, he looked scared to the brink of collapse. But beneath the mask, his eyes were as still as stagnant water.
I barely got through Minato's test, Baishi thought, calmly reviewing what had happened.
When the Flying Thunder God Kunai grazed his cheek, he had forcibly suppressed the muscle instincts granted by Max-Level Lightning Release. Taking the Kunai to the face, coupled with his airtight explanation of the "underlying logic," had been enough to plant a seed of doubt in Minato's mind: perhaps Kushina really had gone mad.
But he knew the danger had only begun. Konoha's interrogation procedures were ruthlessly strict. What awaited him was no simple questioning, but an examination that would reach into his soul.
I have to look even more useless than a nobody. Baishi tasted the blood at the corner of his mouth and kept his trembling at just the right rhythm for a natural fear response.
At the same time, in a top-floor private ward at Konoha Hospital...
The sharp smell of Lysol filled the air. Outside the window, the setting sun over the Konoha Training Ground glowed blood-red, casting an oppressive orange light across the room.
"Beep—beep—"
The heart monitor sounded its monotonous rhythm. Namikaze Minato sat beside the bed, gripping half of a bloodstained ANBU mask. His knuckles trembled faintly from the force of his grip.
He kept replaying the moment Baishi had dodged the Kunai.
It had been too stiff. Not the stiffness of someone who couldn't dodge, but of someone who had... forced himself to stop.
"Minato..."
A hoarse murmur from the bed broke his train of thought.
Kushina's eyes flew open, her crimson pupils bloodshot. She gasped for air like someone who had just surfaced after nearly drowning.
"Kushina, you're awake." Minato quickly put away the mask and gave her his familiar gentle smile. He reached for her forehead. "How do you feel? The Nine-Tails' chakra has already—"
Smack!
Kushina slapped his hand away. She bolted upright, ignoring the sting as the IV needle tore from the back of her hand. Blood dripped onto the pure white sheets.
"Where's Baishi?!" She stared him down, her voice frighteningly hoarse. "Where's the ANBU called Owl?!"
Minato's smile froze. He took a deep breath, his tone still soft. "The ANBU took him in for a routine investigation. Kushina, calm down. The Nine-Tails' violent emotions affected you and caused a hallucination. That rainy night five years ago, I followed your red hair—"
"Shut up!"
Kushina clutched her head in pain, digging all ten fingers into her red hair.
A hallucination?
She closed her eyes, and two utterly different scenes surged through her mind.
In one, Minato held her hand beneath the moonlight and told her how beautiful her red hair was.
In the other, a young ANBU stood drenched in blood. Lightning tore through a Cloud Hidden Jonin's chest before he collapsed into her arms and whispered, "I'd gladly die for you."
The timeline made no sense!
Five years ago, she had been a Genin. How could she possibly have known an ANBU?
But if it really was a hallucination, why did she remember the scorched smell of flesh eaten away by deadly poison and the warmth of blood spraying across her face so vividly?!
"That scar..." Kushina murmured. Her vacant eyes gradually focused, and her body began to shake violently.
"What?" Minato frowned.
"That scar!" Kushina jerked her head up and seized Minato's collar, tears spilling from her eyes. "The wound through his side! Even the shape of the cuts where the dead flesh was carved away was exactly the same as in my dream! If a wandering ninja did it, how could the location match perfectly?!"
Minato's breath caught.
He had seen the wound too. It bore the marks of a brutal attempt to save his own life—nothing a Genin who had never even left the village could have done.
Kushina let go of Minato and slumped onto the bed.
An absurd theory, yet one that fit together perfectly, took root in her mind and grew unchecked.
"He lied to me..." Kushina covered her mouth as tears fell in heavy drops onto the back of her hand. "The one who really saved me five years ago wasn't you. It was him!"
"Kushina, what are you saying?" A crack finally appeared in Minato's voice. "I brought you back myself!"
"Then how do you explain his wounds?!" Kushina shouted, as fierce as a lioness protecting her cub. "He's a low-ranking ANBU with no background and no one to rely on! If he'd revealed that he saved me, what would the higher-ups have thought? Would Danzo have left someone capable of killing a Cloud Hidden Jonin alone?!"
The more Kushina spoke, the more certain she became. It felt as if an invisible hand were crushing her heart, leaving her unable to breathe.
"So he altered my memories... He used some Forbidden Jutsu to erase them and gave you all the credit! Meanwhile, he carried those life-threatening injuries into some sunless corner and lived as expendable cannon fodder!"
"If I hadn't torn his clothes open today, was he planning to take this secret to his grave?!"
The ward fell deathly silent.
Minato stood beside the bed, his blond bangs hanging over his eyes.
He listened as his fiancée spun a heartrending tale of love and suffering for another man. He listened as she wept for a Genin named Baishi.
Crack.
Minato's right hand clenched at his side, crushing the half-mask in his palm to powder. The smile that had always been perfect and warm as sunshine finally went rigid. A chilling darkness churned in his eyes.
Underground in the Hokage Building, in the first interrogation room...
Clang!
The heavy steel door slammed shut, cutting off every sound from outside.
A powerful searchlight flicked on overhead. Its stark white beam stabbed at Baishi's eyes. He was pinned to an interrogation chair, his wrists and ankles bound with chakra chains.
The air carried the old smell of blood and the bitter reek of burning tobacco.
Baishi narrowed his eyes and looked through his half-broken mask at the three men standing in the shadows.
At the center, smoking a pipe, stood the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen.
To his left was Shimura Danzō, the one-eyed leader of Root, leaning on a cane.
Directly in front of Baishi stood a stern man with long blond hair: Yamanaka Inoichi, head of the Konoha Intelligence Division.
"Don't be afraid, Owl." The Third Hokage exhaled a ring of smoke. His voice sounded kindly, yet sent a chill down the spine. "It's just a routine mental examination. Once we confirm that an enemy spy hasn't put you under genjutsu, the village will compensate you."
Baishi did not struggle. He only stared in terror, tears and snot running down his mud-streaked face. "Lord Hokage! I really don't know anything! Please don't kill me!"
Deep inside, however, Baishi's soul was stretched taut.
The Yamanaka Clan's Mind-Reading Technique!
These old foxes had not believed a word he said. They had gone straight to the highest level of Soul Search! If they discovered the Life Script Simulator, they would cut him to pieces on the spot.
"Forgive me."
Yamanaka Inoichi wasted no words. His hands flashed through signs, a ghostly blue chakra light rising from his palm before he pressed it firmly against Baishi's head.
"Ninja Art: Mind Body Switch Technique!"
A vast mental force stabbed into Baishi's mind like a blade, trying to force its way through his memories.
But the moment Inoichi's mental force touched the depths of Baishi's soul—
Buzz!
A cold, immense mechanical voice, carrying an authority beyond the laws of the entire Shinobi World, exploded in Inoichi's mind.
[Warning: Low-dimensional mental entity intrusion detected.] [Counterattack mechanism activated.]
"Argh—!!!"
Yamanaka Inoichi let out a bloodcurdling scream and snatched his hands away from Baishi's head as though electrocuted. He reeled as if struck by a sledgehammer, blood bursting from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. After stumbling back several steps, he collapsed onto the floor.
"Inoichi!" The Third Hokage's face changed, and he shot to his feet.
Killing intent flashed in Danzo's lone eye. His right hand had already closed around the sword hilt hidden in his cane.
Yamanaka Inoichi convulsed. He pointed in terror at Baishi, who sat bound to the chair wearing the same expression of "bewildered fear," and rasped in a voice that barely sounded human:
"Inside... inside his mind... there's a god!"