The ink-dark night gently enveloped Konoha.
Unlike the bustle of daytime, the village was quiet and peaceful now, with only the faint sounds of patrolling ninja occasionally passing over rooftops and the chirping of insects punctuating the stillness.
The murmuring waters of the Naka River, like a lullaby unchanged since time immemorial, lingered beside a warmly lit house on its bank.
This was Uchiha Shinichi and Tsunade's home, and the old place where they had played and roughhoused in their youth, filled with countless memories.
Inside the bedroom, a faint, familiar fragrance filled the air, soothing and reassuring: the incense Tsunade often used, mingled with the fresh scent of sun-dried bedding.
Without warning, space warped slightly, like an invisible ripple spreading across still water after a pebble fell into it.
The next instant, Shinichi appeared beside the bed.
There was no earth-shaking spectacle, nor any deliberately suppressed fluctuation of chakra. He simply appeared without warning, as though he had been there all along.
Yet now, he looked nothing like his usual self, always a little teasing, a little lazy.
He still wore his loose loungewear carelessly, but it carried a trace of invisible cosmic dust, along with a faint, lingering chill and desolation belonging to another world, another plane of existence.
His naturally curly silver hair lay somewhat disheveled across his forehead, hiding those perpetually half-lidded, dead-fish eyes.
Now, those eyes were tightly closed. His long lashes cast faint shadows beneath his eyelids, concealing every spark within them, whether his usual teasing glint or the sharpness they had held when he faced a god not long ago.
His face was far too pale, as though every drop of blood had been drained from it, leaving only the weakness of utter exhaustion.
The languor in his expression, that air of not