Gua and Kabuto walked farther and farther away.
Kakashi stood there alone, an overwhelming sense of helplessness weighing down on him. He was utterly exhausted.
What was wrong with choosing the village?
The village gave us a safe home!
Kakashi knew how cruel the outside world was. Outside the Land of Fire, people's lives in any country were almost unimaginable.
Gua had been to the Land of Grass, too.
He should have seen it himself.
He should have realized how important the village was.
But why?
Why had Gua reached the exact opposite conclusion?
That's right!
When everyone in the village had turned on his father, he had stayed silent. He had resented his father for not choosing to complete the mission. Completing missions was the foremost duty the village gave its shinobi!
In a sense, what his father had done went against the village's rules.
So he had chosen silence.
He had watched his father sink deeper into despair, yet he hadn't said a word.
He had thought about offering his father a few words of comfort, but he simply couldn't get them out.
He had felt that as long as he remained by his father's side, he was already standing with him.
It was as though another version of himself was roaring inside Kakashi's head.
He was furious, his face twisted. If you'd done something, said something, stood firmly-firmly-with Father, he wouldn't have died!
"He wouldn't?"
Kakashi staggered toward the riverbank.
The river was clear, but it couldn't reflect his heart.
In a daze, he saw Gua's eyes in the water.
Those dark pupils held something else, something Kakashi hadn't noticed earlier.
It was... disappointment.
Kakashi's heart clenched.
Gua had asked him to stop that Root shinobi, but Kakashi hadn't done it. He had hesitated. Gua hadn't blamed