Obito noticed that the player he had been fighting had disappeared and assumed they had quit the game.
He looked rather helplessly at the person who had just appeared, only to freeze in shock.
"Are you... Rin...?"
When he saw that the ID above Rin's head read NPC, Obito fell silent.
"Obito..." Rin gave him a gentle smile. Though her lips were smiling, her eyes were filled with tears...
At the sight, Obito went completely rigid, and tears welled up in his eyes as well.
Still invisible, Naruto was taken aback by this. Did Obito figure out that Rin was a player?
Obito had indeed realized that the Rin before him was not an NPC, but not because of any difference between NPCs and players. It was because of the expression she wore as she looked at him.
In the Mini Theater, Obito had spent decades with a Rin who never grew up... He no longer felt anything for that Rin, who had been created entirely from his own imagination.
Because he knew she was nothing but an illusion.
As for NPC Rin? Just like the Rin in the Mini Theater, NPC Rin had merely been fabricated from Kakashi's memories. To put it bluntly, she was a string of data.
But the Rin before him was very different.
The way she looked at him made Obito's heart ache.
"Are you... Rin? Are you really Rin?"
Obito looked at Rin and asked, his voice trembling with emotion.
"Obito... It's me. I've come back to life."
Upon hearing that Rin had come back to life, Obito's first reaction was not joy. Instead, he asked nervously, "Um... um... Naruto and Sensei haven't shown you any strange videos, have they?"
The strange videos Obito was referring to were, naturally, Naruto's compilations