Madara Uchiha's history lecture

At that moment, Tobirama Senju was falling apart inside.

Just moments earlier, while Tobirama was buried in a sea of paperwork and government affairs, the informant he had planted at the Ninja Academy urgently delivered a piece of news that nearly gave him a heart attack-

His most prized student, Hiruzen Sarutobi, had actually confessed his love to Uchiha Shingetsu in public!

After reading the report, Tobirama sat in silence in the otherwise empty Hokage's office. Then he suddenly covered his face with both hands and laughed under his breath.

"Heh, hahahaha!"

There wasn't a trace of joy in Tobirama's low, restrained voice. Instead, it dripped with bitter mockery and self-derision. The laughter seemed to squeeze through his clenched teeth, sounding chillingly cold.

Wonderful. After saddling me with a bastard of an older brother who sides with outsiders, that hateful thing called fate has now handed me a bastard of a student who does the same!

"Uchiha. Shingetsu!"

Tobirama Senju muttered that loathsome name as though he meant to swallow both it and its owner whole. His red eyes looked ready to bleed.

Her again, that inherently evil Uchiha brat! Ever since she showed up, she's done nothing but work against me!

After suffering so much at Shingetsu's hands, Tobirama no longer dared underestimate this seemingly harmless, weak little girl.

She was far too much like Uchiha Izuna: meticulous in her thinking, yet bold in her actions. To possess such cunning at her age made it hard to imagine just what sort of person she would become as an adult.

Even Tobirama Senju, who despised the Uchiha, had to concede that she truly was the daughter of his former nemesis, Uchiha Izuna. She was every bit as difficult to deal with as he had been.

Given her relationship with Madara Uchiha, she would surely become the brains of the Uchiha Clan, just as Izuna had, once she grew a little older.

At that thought, Tobirama's face paled. He simply couldn't imagine how difficult an Uchiha with both strength and brains would be to deal with!

But his biggest headache right now was undoubtedly that wretched student of his, Hiruzen Sarutobi. No matter how hard Tobirama racked his brains, he couldn't understand why Hiruzen had fallen for Uchiha Shingetsu of all people.

It wasn't as though there were no other girls around him. Whether it was his childhood friend Biwako Sarutobi or his classmate and friend Utatane Koharu, Tobirama wouldn't have found it strange or upsetting if Hiruzen Sarutobi had fallen for either of them. He would even have been pleased that the boy had finally caught on to romance. Yet he had to fall for Uchiha Shingetsu, that evil Uchiha. Was he trying to drive his teacher to an early grave?

I'm done with him. I can't keep this student anymore.

Hashirama Senju was, after all, his own older brother, born of the same parents and bound to him by blood. He couldn't throw him out of the house like garbage. But that rotten monkey Hiruzen Sarutobi, who sided with outsiders, wasn't his son. Keeping him around was an eyesore. He might as well get rid of that bastard of a student!

With a sharp smack, Tobirama angrily swept the documents off his desk. That hateful older brother of his had dumped every last bit of work on him, then run off to teach at the academy with Madara Uchiha. What had he even been doing there? How had he failed to stop Hiruzen Sarutobi from making a public spectacle of himself?

And as for Hiruzen Sarutobi, setting aside the confession itself, why couldn't he have chosen somewhere private to confess in secret? Why had he done it in front of everyone-and gotten caught by Madara Uchiha, no less?

Hiruzen Sarutobi, you wretched, rotten monkey!

At the same time, in a different place, Shingetsu-the object of Tobirama's resentment-was also quietly cursing Hiruzen Sarutobi.

Thanks to him, everyone in the class kept staring at her even during a lesson-and one taught by Madara Uchiha, at that.

The students' curious gazes kept darting back and forth like boomerangs between her and the rotten monkey Madara had banished from the classroom. Even Madara Uchiha's knife-sharp glare from the lectern, terrifying enough to look as though it might carve holes into them, couldn't stop their furtive glances.

Newborn calves had no fear of tigers. These children had yet to experience how frightening Madara Uchiha could be, so they weren't particularly afraid of him yet. In a few days, though, they would understand just how foolish they had been.

Forced to experience what it was like to be the heroine of a romantic rumor, Shingetsu gritted her teeth in fury. She wanted to drag every last one of them out and give them a good beating. But she didn't dare act up during Madara's lesson, so she turned all her attention to the book in her hands, quickly leafing through the textbook Tobirama Senju had supposedly written in half a month.

The last time she had attended school, she had dropped out without taking a single class. She hadn't so much as seen a book, let alone read one.

Unlike the brainwashing manual full of the Will of Fire she had imagined, the book in Shingetsu's hands could be called a basic guide and encyclopedia for a shinobi's career.

Alongside information on wilderness survival and concealing one's identity, it contained basic introductions to various ninja tools and ninjutsu, and even some explanations of the major shinobi clans and bloodline limits.

Perhaps it was because space was limited, but to Shingetsu, all of it seemed extremely basic and superficial. The ninjutsu section contained nothing but the Three Body Technique-a pitifully small selection. As for records of shinobi history, well, there were essentially none.

"..."

With a snap, Shingetsu closed the textbook, her face expressionless. An unpleasant suspicion suddenly occurred to her. Surely this lousy village isn't going to keep using this same set of textbooks forever?

Considering how Sakura had known only the Three Body Technique when she first graduated, and how the younger generations of the future generally knew next to nothing about history, Shingetsu thought it was entirely possible.

At the lectern, Madara Uchiha also frowned as he quickly flipped through the textbook. Then he casually tossed it out the door like garbage, despite Tobirama supposedly having stayed up late to compile it.

"In this lesson, I will tell you the history of shinobi, so you can understand what a shinobi truly is."

"Huh? Seriously...?"

Almost every student present except Shingetsu was startled by this sudden turn of events. Soon, disappointment appeared on nearly all their faces, and they began complaining under their breath.

When these children thought of shinobi, the first things that came to mind were cool ninjutsu and flashy moves. Rather than dull, boring history, they wanted Madara Uchiha to teach them a ninjutsu technique.

But however unwilling they were, students still had to follow their teacher's instructions. Combined with Madara Uchiha's domineering nature and refusal to brook disagreement, this soon brought the somewhat noisy classroom to silence. In his deep, resonant voice, Madara calmly recounted a history that was not actually so distant-the thousand years of warring states, filled with endless strife and war, suffering and despair.

The history of shinobi was, in truth, a chronicle of slaughter soaked in blood.

Organized by clan, the shinobi of the Warring States Period were forever risking their lives for meager mission fees. Reconnaissance, assassination, theft, exterminating entire clans... all the work they did was dirty business that could never see the light of day.

As recently as six short years ago, shinobi had still been nothing more than an underclass.

They were useful attack dogs in the eyes of the daimyo and vicious demons in the eyes of ordinary people. For mission fees, they would do anything. There was nothing they weren't capable of. Sometimes, they didn't even need to be on opposing missions. A large enough bounty alone could drive two shinobi clans to fight until one was wiped out.

That brutality and ruthlessness had not come from nowhere. Stripped of most of their rights by the daimyo, shinobi could neither grow enough food through farming nor find a place in civilian society through trade. When a clan's entire income depended on the daimyo's bounties, its shinobi had no choice but to risk their lives for them, even to the point of abandoning their humanity.

It wasn't that no one in the past had tried to change this twisted state of affairs. Frequent warfare always gave rise to people who longed for peace. But without exception, every one of them had failed.

War gave birth to hope, then destroyed every last shred of it.

Whenever such dissenters appeared, the daimyo immediately ordered the shinobi to purge them, offering generous bounties to ensure that every one of them was slaughtered.

As this cycle repeated, the seeds of hope were destroyed again and again. With no one able to guarantee their own safety, every shinobi clan eventually devoted everything to war, even sending its children onto the battlefield.

As hatred and deaths piled ever higher, almost no one retained the ability to stop a war that had already spiraled out of control.

The thousand-year chaos of the Warring States Period had merely played out this same bloody drama over and over. Everyone longed for peace, yet no one could stop killing-until two men named Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha stepped onto the stage of history.

It actually took very little to end the wars-two hearts that yearned for peace, and two powers unrivaled throughout the world.

When Madara Uchiha finally reached the founding of the village, the academy children's hearts, stunned into stillness by the darkness and bloodshed of shinobi history, slowly began to beat again.

Before this, the vast majority of them had never learned about shinobi history, nor had they ever truly cared.

With an almost unspoken understanding, the adults who had lived through the Warring States Period had hidden that bloody, dark past from their children. As a result, these children born in Konoha had absorbed what they saw and heard around them and unconsciously come to believe that being a shinobi was a glorious, noble profession.

Becoming a shinobi was every child in Konoha's dream. But now, the children sitting in this classroom seemed to have begun to understand what becoming one would truly cost.

"Master really is honest."

Unlike the others, who knew nothing, Shingetsu understood the history of the shinobi. She could tell that Madara had concealed nothing about that past.

Some of these children will probably waver after hearing this and decide not to become shinobi, won't they?

As she thought this, she swept her gaze over the students' faces. All of them had turned deathly pale, and quite a few were even trembling. The fear was particularly clear on the faces of the children from civilian families.

Yakushi Chinatsu, sitting only a few seats away from Shingetsu, was especially frightened. Fine beads of cold sweat covered her forehead and the tip of her nose, and her gaze had become unfocused behind her black-framed glasses.

She looked particularly timid like this, but Shingetsu didn't think she was a coward. Chinatsu had so many younger brothers and sisters to care for, after all. Bonds always gave people plenty of reasons to worry.

Perhaps after this, Chinatsu would choose to withdraw from the Ninja Academy.

But there was nothing wrong with that.

Looking away, Shingetsu rubbed her chin and quietly considered it.

If Chinatsu chose to become an ordinary person and live a peaceful, unremarkable life in Konoha with everyone from the orphanage, that would be far better than stumbling into life as a shinobi and dying on a battlefield without even understanding why.

The same held true not just for Chinatsu, but for every child here. Whether they became shinobi or not, at least they now understood what shinobi truly were and could make their own choice. That was far better than drifting along, surrendering themselves to the village and fate, only to be toyed with by the complicated, dark world of shinobi.

"Master really is kind."

At that thought, Shingetsu understood Madara Uchiha's purpose in giving this lesson: to offer these children, blinded by the village's radiance and the might of shinobi, a chance to choose.

In any era and any place, a clear understanding of history was profoundly important.