On his arm, the two remaining scarlet eyeballs turned weakly, like the final gasps of a dying beast.
The overwhelming terror sweeping through his body instead forcibly cooled Danzo's boiling mind.
Screaming and fleeing were meaningless.
Resisting with force would only bring humiliation upon himself.
His clouded single eye slowly, inch by inch, moved past Naruto Uzumaki, who was issuing orders expressionlessly.
His gaze, like a poisoned arrow, locked firmly onto Kakashi.
That was the only variable.
That was the only possible crack he could tear open.
"Kakashi!"
A hoarse roar was squeezed from deep within Danzo's throat, carrying the taste of blood and rust as it echoed through the enclosed space.
"Do you really think I alone could drive the famed Konoha's White Fang to his death?"
Those words, like a wedge, drove precisely into a crack in time.
Danzo's body stopped trembling. His hunched back actually tried to straighten at that moment.
Like a tragic man with nowhere left to run, deciding to reveal every secret before death, his face twisted with unwillingness, pain, and the sorrow of someone long misunderstood.
"Konoha's White Fang, Hatake Sakumo—what kind of man was he?"
"The Shinobi World feared him by name. Even the Sannin paled before him."
"Would a hero like that really kill himself over a few rumors? Don't you find that laughable, Kakashi?"
He no longer looked at anyone else. In his world, only Kakashi remained—the masked man whose full face could not be seen.
"I admit it. I spread those rumors."
"I admit that I used the ignorance of the villagers and the jealousy of his comrades to push him onto the judgment stand."
"But I was only a vicious dog pushed to the front by its master!"
Danzo's voice rose higher and higher, carrying a crazed air