Even now, Kazuko could not forget what Shingetsu had said back then.
"Whatever we're going to do, we really ought to make sure people have enough to eat first."
Those words still echoed faintly in Kazuko's ears. The utterly sincere tone, without a trace of hypocrisy or empty courtesy, had been blurred and embellished countless times by memory until it seemed like an unshakable truth, firmly etched into her heart.
Hunger was a greater truth than any words.
Kazuko knew the taste of hunger all too well. If people could not eat their fill, if they went hungry like birds, then they would eventually die chasing food like birds, too.
Hunger was terrifying. No matter how badly someone was wounded, physical exhaustion and pain would eventually send them to sleep, but hunger kept them awake. Pushed to its limit, it was an urge that made them want to gnaw even on stones. What Kazuko found still harder to bear was that hunger shrouded the heart in an inescapable layer of shame.
Hunger clearly hung over everyone's head, yet in the past, those at the top had refused to look it in the eye. Whether nobles and royalty or shinobi and samurai, they preferred to live for empty words and abstract ideals.
Or rather, the former would never be troubled by hunger and would never care whether their extravagance starved the lowly masses to death, while the latter happily used those nebulous beliefs to deceive others. Whether deceiving other people or themselves, shinobi had always excelled at it.
But Shingetsu was different from all of them. If anyone could truly bring lasting peace to the shinobi world, it had to be Uchiha Shingetsu.
Even now, Kazuko remembered Shingetsu's smile from that day.
Sunlight filtered through the treetops, dappling the girl's sweet,