Cracks in trust

Shisui fell silent.

Just as Jin Uchiha had figured, Hiruzen Sarutobi had brainwashed him, but that didn't mean he was actually stupid.

He had his own sense of right and wrong.

Especially with the example Jin had just brought up—he could understand both sides all too well.

Had Hashirama Senju done anything wrong?

As far as the Hidden Leaf was concerned, no!

Even if the Nine-Tails behaved himself and had never done anything bad, his power to destroy everything around him made him a ticking time bomb out in the wild.

Never mind anything else.

Hadn't Madara Uchiha captured the Nine-Tails back then and used him to fight Hashirama Senju?

That alone was enough. Whether the Nine-Tails had done anything wrong or not, he at least had the power to cause trouble. Left outside, who knew who might capture him and use him as a weapon?

Looked at that way, locking him up wasn't unjustified.

Shisui understood Hashirama Senju's reasoning perfectly and had never thought the First Hokage had done anything wrong.

But there were two sides to the story.

From the Nine-Tails' perspective, was any of this fucking reasonable?

I haven't done anything wrong, and I have nothing to do with you humans.

You lock me up like livestock just because I'm powerful?

No living creature in its right mind would put up with that.

Not even Shisui himself!

So.

There was no right or wrong here. The two sides simply stood on different ground.

That was just an example.

But what if they applied that example to the Uchiha clan?

It was exactly the same!

Just like the Nine-Tails Hashirama Senju had captured, whether they had ever intended to rebel didn't matter at all.

What mattered was that they had the power to do it and refused to fall in line.

So that was what it all came down to!

He had spent years trying to turn around the Uchiha's miserable situation in the village, without making the slightest difference.

Only now, after Jin Uchiha's explanation, had he finally gotten to the root of it.

But by the same token.

Now that he had found the root, he finally understood that everything he had done before had been a fucking waste of effort.

At that thought, a dull despair seeped into his eyes.

"Is there really no way out?"

"No, that's not right!"

"I can still ask Lord Hokage when I get back. He'll definitely have a solution."

"Once this mission is over, I'll tell Lord Hokage about it. He'll definitely help us find a way."

"He's the Hokage. What could possibly stump him?"

Shisui kept muttering to himself.

Yes.

Even after everything Jin Uchiha had laid out, his faith in Hiruzen Sarutobi remained deeply rooted.

Jin Uchiha's brow immediately furrowed.

He hadn't explicitly spoken ill of Hiruzen Sarutobi, but everything he had said implicated the Hokage and the upper ranks around him.

Why was Shisui still like this?

No. Absolutely not!

If word of this reaches Hiruzen Sarutobi, that old bastard will definitely find a way to get rid of me.

I still couldn't keep my temper in check.

I shouldn't have laid everything out so plainly for Shisui!

What now?

His mind raced. After a brief pause, he suddenly asked a question.

"By the way, Shisui."

"What do you think about Sakumo Hatake's suicide?"

"Could you tell me your take on it?"

Shisui was a little bewildered.

He was agonizing over the clan's problems. Why had the conversation suddenly turned to Sakumo Hatake?

Still.

After their conversation, he had realized that this younger brother, whom he had once thought could only rely on his protection, understood things far better than he did.

So instead of objecting, he silently gave it some thought.

A little while later.

He drew a deep breath and spoke his mind.

"Sakumo Hatake was a real man."

"Whatever the people in the village said about him, I still respected him."

"It was just such a shame."

"He clearly could have gone so much further, but in the end, he hanged himself from a beam."

Jin Uchiha nodded.

Shisui's answer didn't surprise him.

Even after Sakumo Hatake's death, plenty of people in the Hidden Leaf still felt he had been wronged.

Wasn't it obvious?

Even after Sakumo Hatake was cold in his grave, hadn't Hiruzen Sarutobi arranged for Minato Namikaze—his chosen Fourth Hokage, a member of the Hokage faction firmly in his camp—to become Kakashi Hatake's Jonin instructor?

Why?

For one thing, it was to reassure people.

It was a public declaration that he wouldn't secretly make life difficult for Kakashi. Instead, he would bring him straight into the Hokage faction.

But more importantly.

He also wanted to use this opportunity to bring all of Sakumo Hatake's supporters under his own control.

After briefly turning those thoughts over, Jin Uchiha continued.

"There's something I can't figure out."

"That mission Sakumo Hatake went on back then was an S-Rank mission with the highest level of secrecy, wasn't it?"

"Under the rules, missions start being classified at B-Rank. For A-Rank, you can't even access them unless you're part of the upper ranks."

"So how did an S-Rank mission, with the highest possible classification, become common knowledge all over the Hidden Leaf?"

"What happened to the secrecy regulations? Did they feed them to the dogs?"

"Whose damned mouth leaked it? Why haven't they caught anyone even now?"

"To put it bluntly, did anyone even investigate?"

"Did the whole thing just get swept aside once Sakumo Hatake kicked the bucket?"

Shisui froze!

That's right.

How did a mission with the highest level of secrecy become the talk of the entire village?

It even spread everywhere in a single day. Even if someone had accidentally let it slip, it couldn't have traveled that fast, could it?

And there was something else.

Just as Jin Uchiha said, why hadn't there been so much as a sign of an investigation into such an enormous leak?

Vaguely.

Shisui began to sense a scheme at work.

All those inconsistencies made him realize that the Hidden Leaf's leadership must have known the truth behind the leak.

Yet they had suppressed any investigation.

That alone said more than enough!

Without his even realizing it, a crack had opened in his faith in the Hidden Leaf's leadership—and, on a broader level, in the "Will of Fire."

Remembering how Jin Uchiha had brought this up immediately after he said he would seek out the Hokage, he began to dimly grasp what Jin was holding back.

He drew a sharp breath, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and shook his head.

"Jin, stop beating around the bush."

"I do trust Lord Hokage, but I still have a mind of my own."

"Whatever you're trying to say, say it plainly."

At those words.

Jin Uchiha let out a long breath of relief inwardly.

Thank goodness.

Although Shisui belonged to the Hokage's camp, deep down he still had the Uchiha's interests at heart.

It was just that no one in the clan supported his ideas, and Hiruzen Sarutobi had offered him an olive branch at precisely that moment.

To put it plainly.

He'd had no choice!

In that respect, he was different from Itachi.

Itachi, that oh-so-filial son, had been led astray by Fugaku from childhood.

Then, steeped in the "Will of Fire," he had taken the notion of "doing what's best for the village" and gone straight to slaughtering his own family in the name of righteousness.

His was a textbook case of lacking a solid foundation.

If he had started at the bottom as a child and gradually learned how the world worked and what power really was, he might actually have become a revolutionary.

But unfortunately, luck hadn't been on his side.

He had only skimmed the surface of so many things. With Hiruzen Sarutobi meddling from the sidelines, his thinking had ended up completely warped.

After sorting all that out, Jin Uchiha's mind cleared.

"What I'm trying to say is exactly what I said earlier." Jin Uchiha's voice took on a strangely airy tone. "Nine-Tails, you're too powerful!"