Gen stood at the old South Street Entrance and waited for a long time.
He was not waiting for an enemy.
Nor was he waiting for the Memorial Monument to be unveiled.
He was only checking whether he would still instinctively wait for that voice.
On the Night of the Nine-Tails, flames had burned from here all the way to the Clan District.
A woman had fallen with a child in her arms.
The Uchiha had still been waiting for orders.
Gen had broken ranks to save someone for the first time, and had seen space distort in the distance for the first time as well.
Back then, the system had told him that the Uchiha would suffer years of suspicion because of the Nine-Tails Incident, ultimately leading to their extermination.
The mission had required him to preserve valid evidence of rescue efforts, the investigation into the true culprit, or the protection of villagers.
Every objective had been clear.
Every deviation had received a response.
Gen had once needed those answers.
A thirteen-year-old boy from a branch family could not have known out of nowhere that Shisui would lose his eyes.
He could not have known how far Itachi would be pushed between his clan and the village.
Much less how the masked man, Madara, Black Zetsu, and the Lunar Surface Sealing would connect into a single path.
His memories of the future and the system had let him see where the blade would fall before anyone else.
They had also accustomed him to calculating how far a step would deviate before other people made their choices.
The system had been gone for a long time.
Before leaving, it had offered Gen one final choice.
Keep every node of the original fate that had yet to occur.
Or turn off