Late at night, Shira lay in bed. The day's exhaustion had given way to a cold, almost angry clarity.
His thoughts once again turned uncontrollably to the man who controlled Sunagakure and Gaara's fate-the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa.
As he spent more time with Gaara, what he remembered of Rasa's actions from before his transmigration was no longer a vague backstory. It had become a series of concrete details that churned over and over in his mind.
Rasa, that lunatic... Shira murmured silently to himself, his fists clenching in the dark.
He tried to understand Rasa from a Kazekage's perspective, but the conclusions he reached were even more absurd.
First, the sealing.
What was Sunagakure good at? Puppet Technique and poisons.
And Sealing Jutsu? It had never been Sunagakure's strong suit. Sealing the unstable One-Tail Shukaku inside a baby had been a huge gamble in itself, with a fragile vessel that was flawed from the start.
And the result? Rasa had given Gaara a defective seal that would gradually fail as he grew and Shukaku grew restless! Whenever Gaara fell asleep, Shukaku could go berserk.
It was like a craftsman forging an extremely unstable sword that could injure him at any moment, then blaming the sword every day for not stabilizing itself instead of questioning his own forging technique.
Second, the tests.
Rasa kept saying that he repeatedly sent ninja to assassinate Gaara to "test his value as a weapon."
The thought almost made Shira laugh with anger. A child only a few years old, growing up under the shadow of the ultimate betrayal-"my beloved uncle came to kill me on my father's orders"-threatened by death day and night, unable to sleep peacefully, with a monster living inside him that wanted to devour him at every moment.
In those extreme circumstances, if any normal person-no, any living creature-didn't become deranged, paranoid, and filled with the desire to destroy, that would be the real miracle!
Rasa had personally created a test subject bound to develop mental problems, then declared the subject a "failure" because he developed mental problems?
The logic was outrageously absurd!
Third, Yashamaru's assassination attempt.
This was what chilled and angered Shira most. Of all the people he could have sent, he chose Yashamaru, the uncle who was the only person Gaara trusted at the time, his emotional support, to carry out the ultimate assassination attempt?
And he even made Yashamaru say something as heart-wrenching as "I never liked you" before he died?
That wasn't a test at all! It was outright psychological destruction in the name of a "test"!
It was meant to completely sever Gaara's last lingering hopes of "love" and "bonds," turning him into a pure weapon that knew only how to kill and affirm his own existence!
And the result? Rasa succeeded. He drove Gaara into becoming a real monster. Then he was disappointed again, felt that this monster was hard to control, and turned to the idea of joining forces with Orochimaru.
"What a piece of work. The values in this whole Hokage world really are crazy..." Shira muttered under his breath.
He was immensely relieved that, thanks to his intervention, Yashamaru's assassination attempt had never happened. Gaara was still lonely and full of pain, but at least he hadn't been pushed into that final, irredeemable abyss.
A faint glimmer still remained in his eyes, and after training, he could still show a little emotion resembling "happiness."
But that also multiplied the pressure on Shira.
He was now facing a leader whose thinking was so peculiar, so cold and paranoid. Rasa's logic formed a twisted system of its own, one that ordinary reasoning could not shake.
The only reason he could "safely" stay by Gaara's side now was that Rasa's current assessment was: ① Shira's presence helped stabilize Gaara's emotions, reducing the risk of him going berserk; ② Shira himself was insignificant trash who could be eliminated at any time and posed no threat.
If that assessment lost its balance, the consequences would be unthinkable.
"I absolutely can't let him think Gaara is 'too well' and slipping out of control, and I absolutely can't let him think my influence is 'too bad' and needs to be eliminated."
Shira pondered the precarious balance. "This is like tickling a bomb while standing on the edge of a blade."
Ironically, to protect himself and that faint glimmer in Gaara's heart, he now had to do his best to keep Rasa's absurd "weapon testing system" from falling apart too quickly, lest he provoke Rasa into taking even more extreme measures.
It was a suffocatingly twisted feeling. He could clearly see the script of a tragedy and was trying hard to rewrite the ending, only to find that he first had to keep playing along with Rasa's absurd logic while he built up enough strength to overturn the stage.
"Strength. In the end, I still need strength..." Shira took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed his surging anger and contempt. After all, impotent rage was worth jack shit besides making him feel miserable.
Without enough strength, all his clear understanding was nothing but useless complaining. Only when he became strong enough that Rasa could not ignore him or easily eliminate him, and even had to be wary of him, would he truly have a say in protecting himself and those around him, or even changing this absurd set of rules.
Until then, he had to keep playing the contradictory roles of "useful trash" and a "steadying sedative."
At the same time, he had to train even more furiously, turning all his anger and unwillingness into motivation to temper his body.
He looked out the window at the boundless desert and the cold, starry sky.
Rasa, go ahead and keep judging everything with that supposedly brilliant logic of yours.
"Emmm, speaking of which, why don't I have a system?"