The gentle, warm sun suffused the spring day, filling every emptiness between heaven and earth. Tender willows sprouted new buds and danced gracefully in the breeze. Even the earth's hard shell had its icy chill melted away by the swelling breath of spring.
Facing the spring sunlight, Kato Osamu stepped out of the underground laboratory for the first time.
The slightly damp air and the somewhat muddy path beneath his feet spoke of time's passage. He stepped lightly, and before the mud could splash up, his figure vanished.
Following the familiar fluctuations in his perception, he quickly arrived before a large tree. Kato Osamu suddenly halted. The grove, nearly beyond Konoha's borders, was steeped in silence, broken only by the sound of melting snow becoming a babbling stream.
He looked around, and his gaze settled on a tiny white snake coiled around the branches.
"Orochimaru-sensei... it's been a long time."
"Osamu-kun's perception is still as sharp as ever..."
Orochimaru, whom he had not seen for a long time, emerged slowly from the depths of the shadows, wearing his usual faint smile and gloomy air. Yet Kato Osamu increasingly felt that Orochimaru no longer resembled a normal person—before him, Orochimaru extended a tongue like a snake's...
"Are you afraid, Osamu-kun...? Don't you think this is the beauty of evolution..."
Orochimaru drew closer and closer. An inexplicably twisted smile hung on his nearly pallid face, while his deep Snake Eyes showed not the slightest trace of human emotion.
Compared to himself, Kato Osamu had always felt that Orochimaru was more like someone struggling in Root's darkness, gradually sinking into the abyss.
"Not at all. It seems I should congratulate you, Orochimaru-sensei, on successfully developing the Soft-Body Modification Technique..."
"It was all thanks to Osamu-kun... Without your scroll, I might have wasted even