Jiraiya silently drained the porridge in his bowl, then suddenly remembered something.
"What about Teacher Yilong, then? Did he fake his death too?"
"Pfft... cough, he... cough, cough."
Watanabe Ichiro choked on his water and coughed for quite a while.
You brat, did you have to bring that up?
Faced with the three youngsters' expectant gazes, he answered with silence.
The three understood and lowered their heads to continue eating, disappointed but not particularly grief-stricken.
After all, Uchiha Ichiro had died fighting in Konoha. First had come the warning from Dan Katō's Spirit Transformation Technique, then the full funeral proceedings. They'd had plenty of time to prepare themselves and had already accepted Yilong's death.
Bringing it up now had just been a spur-of-the-moment thought, a little attempt to test the waters.
"Although your Teacher Yilong really did die, no matter how far we travel, where we go, or which side we stand on... we'll all meet again at the end of our journey."
Watanabe Ichiro wiped his mouth with a tissue and spread his hands, revealing a tiny corner of his plans to them.
"So enjoy the lives you have now!"
The end of the journey... death?
That's right. We'll all die eventually. We have to live earnestly while we're still in this world, so we won't have regrets when we reach the Pure Land.
Wasn't death another kind of reunion? If we wallowed in the past and kept wasting away, how could we face Teacher Yilong after we died?
The children pondered his words, their expressions showing that they'd taken the lesson to heart.
He had no idea what exactly they'd imagined, but as long as their spirits had lifted, it counted as a successful lecture!
Or so Watanabe Ichiro thought.
Once they'd eaten and drunk their fill, they