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In the five halls, the next page was waiting.
And everyone knew what it carried.
A lone shinobi of Konoha, holding a secret worth his village's fate… and a shadow that had begun to move behind him.
[— Manga Scene —]
In the darkness, the two shadows exchanged their final words.
"I'll test what kind of person he is…"
said Kabuto, his glasses gleaming.
"No — I will."
Baki cut him off, his single visible eye narrowing.
"As a soldier of the Hidden Sand, I must assist my comrade from the Sound."
Then he added, with the coldness of a man appraising merchandise:
"Besides… there is one rat."
"He'll be easy."
Above them, the full moon shone… and Baki's shadow shot off across the rooftops like a silent blade.
And atop another roof, the pursued shinobi finally stopped retreating.
For ahead of him, the Sand jonin dropped down out of the darkness and cut off his path.
"Hmm… the honorable examiner, here. What are you doing here all alone?"
The man with the sword did not answer right away. He swept the area with a single quick glance: the rooftop was exposed, the path was cut, and there was no way to escape with the secret he carried.
"There is no other choice."
he said at last, quietly, his hand sliding toward the hilt of his sword.
Then he moved first.
His body dropped low, his silhouette splitting under the moonlight into three shadows moving as a single body, and the sword rose in a flashing silver arc.
"Konoha Style… Dance of the Crescent Moon!!"
Three crescents of steel descended upon Baki from three angles at the very same instant.
The Sand jonin's eye widened.
"Is this Konoha's technique — the Dance of the Crescent Moon? To be able to use it at such a young age…"
"This village truly does have fine ninja."
But the blade stopped.
In mid-air, a hand's breadth from Baki's body, the examiner's sword halted as if it had struck an invisible wall.
"What…? I can't pull my sword free…"
Blood was running down his face from a gash on his forehead, and his arms trembled on the hilt wedged fast in the thickened air.
"An excellent sword technique."
said Baki, with the calm of a man who neither flatters nor gloats.
"But it is only natural for the blade to stop."
Then he finally raised his hand, and the air gathered around it into a razor vortex whirring like a thousand tiny blades.
"After all… no one can stop the Blade of Wind."
Hayate's eyes went wide.
"What?!"
[— End Scene —]
"That's… that's the examiner!"
"Gekko Hayate! The proctor of the preliminaries!"
Konoha's hall had erupted from the scene's very first panels. For the man cornered atop the roof was no nameless shinobi to be sacrificed cheaply in a story, but a face the readers had come to know chapter after chapter: the sickly examiner who had judged the new generation's matches fairly, and whose endless coughing had been joke material in the halls for volumes.
"Easy?! That's a certified examiner of the village! A jonin! Don't underestimate him, you Sand bastard!"
Then came the Dance of the Crescent Moon, and hope flared.
"He got him! There's no way he can dodge all three!"
"Good heavens — look at that execution!"
The readers had forgotten, in the heat of the moment, that they were reading events that had happened — or would happen — in another time. The sick man atop the roof had become one of their own, a son of their village, standing alone between a dangerous secret and two enemies. And in the back rows, Konoha's kenjutsu instructors had straightened in their seats without realizing it.
And in the quiet corner, Minato was staring at the page with shining eyes.
'Three real afterimages through pure speed… no clones, no genjutsu. Just two feet, a sword, and the moon.'
'A beautiful technique… truly beautiful.'
But Jiraiya, seated not far away, did not share the hall's hope for even a single moment.
The man was reading with a rigid face — and his eyes were not on the sword…
but on Baki's hand, which had never once risen to defend.
"Tsk."
He clicked his tongue once, softly — heard by Minato alone.
And Minato understood.
Then came the scene's final page — the wedged blade, and the vortex of air whirring like a thousand blades — and hope died in the hall's throats before it could finish forming.
"The Blade of Wind… no…"
"Turn the page."
someone finally said in a low voice.
"I don't want to."
his neighbor answered.
And they turned it.
…
[— Manga Scene —]
Daylight. The bank of the hot spring.
"I see you've finally burned through most of your chakra…"
said Jiraiya, smiling at his exhausted student.
"I'll teach you the technique now."
"WOOOH!! I've been waiting for this!!"
The sage bit his thumb until it bled, whipped his hand through a lightning-fast string of seals, then slammed his palm to the ground.
"Summoning Jutsu!!"
A massive explosion of smoke… and beneath it appeared an enormous striped toad, atop which the sage stood with the confidence of kings.
"WOOOAH! Awesome!"
Then Jiraiya unrolled the enormous summoning contract scroll before his student.
"Passed down to me from generation to generation… write your name in your blood, and press your fingerprints."
Naruto wrote his name in the blood of his thumb, drilled the hand seals — boar, dog, bird, monkey, ram — then stood, clasped his hands, and struck the ground with everything he had.
"Summoning Jutsu!!"
Poof!
The small cloud of smoke cleared…
and in the middle of it, wriggling on the stones, was…
a tadpole.
"…"
"…"
Naruto stared at the tadpole.
And the tadpole stared at Naruto.
As for Jiraiya, he put his hand over his face.
'He has no talent whatsoever…'
And far from the riverbank, atop a building's roof, beneath a sky just beginning to whiten with the first light of dawn…
"Caw… caw…"
The crows landed.
And among the crows, on the cold stones, Gekko Hayate lay in a pool of his own blood, his sword still in his hand, his eyes open toward a sky whose morning he would never see.
No final scream.
No final words.
Only a body, and crows, and a secret that died with its keeper.
[— End Scene —]
The five halls had exploded with laughter at the tadpole.
In Kumo, young A fell out of his seat, pounding the floor with his fist. In Iwa, Ōnoki spat out his pipe smoke for the second time that day. And in Suna, even some of those whose faces had been pale since the alliance chapter laughed — a short, desperate laugh that was closer to artificial respiration.
"A tadpole! He summoned a TADPOLE! The hero of the story, everyone!"
"From a toad the size of a house… to a tadpole! Hahaha!"
Then the readers turned the scene's final page…
and the laughter died in five throats at once.
From a tadpole wriggling on the stones… to their examiner lying in his own blood beneath the crows.
The transition was crueler than anyone had expected.
"They… they really killed him."
whispered a woman in the middle rows of Konoha's hall, her hand over her mouth.
"The man who used to cough… who stopped the matches before the children died…"
"He died alone. No one knew. No one saw him off."
And in his seat near the entrance, Hatake Sakumo closed his eyes.
Of everyone present, the White Fang knew that kind of death best: the mission's silent death, far from all eyes, where the only witness is the moon, and the only eulogy is the crows.
'You fought well, young man.'
the man thought quietly.
'The Dance of the Crescent Moon against a concealment-type jonin… that was not the fight of a man trying to flee. That was the fight of a man buying time for his secret.'
'But the secret…'
Sakumo opened his eyes slowly.
'…died with you.'
And that, precisely, was the thought that turned into words in the quiet corner.
"Do you realize what this means?"
said Minato, his calm voice cutting through the hall's murmur like a blade.
Those around him turned.
"The only man who knew about the alliance… died before delivering his report."
"Konoha, in those pages, knows nothing. Not about the Sand, not about the Sound, not about the plan to crush it."
The thirteen-year-old raised his eyes from the page and looked out at the silent hall.
"It is walking toward the finals… blind."
A heavy silence settled.
For the readers suddenly grasped the strange position the manga had placed them in: they — sitting in a reading hall twenty years before the events — knew more about the conspiracy surrounding the future Konoha than the future Konoha knew about itself.
They knew the trap.
And they could warn no one inside the pages.
…
And in Suna, no one laughed at the tadpole for long.
For the final page returned the hall to its heavy silence… and added to it.
"As a soldier of the Hidden Sand, I must assist my comrade from the Sound."
Chiyo read the sentence once more, slowly, like someone tasting the bitterness of medicine.
"Look at the choice of words."
she said to those seated around her.
"He did not say: I am following orders. He did not say: I am protecting the plan."
"He said: my comrade."
"A jonin of the Sand's elite calls Orochimaru's spy… his comrade. And he kills the host village's examiner, in the heart of its territory, during a joint exam that is supposed to be the very symbol of the alliance."
The old woman shook her head slowly.
"And then, the Blade of Wind…"
Her eyes narrowed.
"A signed Sand technique. Any coroner in Konoha will know the source of the wound at a single glance."
"We killed their man… and left our signature on his corpse."
No one in the hall said anything.
But the Third Kazekage — for the first time since the alliance chapter began — closed the volume completely, set it on his knee, and stared at the cover for a long time.
And when he finally spoke, his voice was so low that only those seated closest to him heard it:
"In that future… we did not merely betray Konoha."
"We betrayed ourselves. We betrayed every bit of the name Suna built across three generations."
"And all of it… for what? And in exchange for what?"
No one answered him.
For only the coming volumes held the answer.
…
And in Konoha, as the chapter drew toward its end, Hiruzen Sarutobi rose slowly from his seat.
He gave no speech. He ordered nothing.
He simply stood, closed his volume quietly, and said — in a voice that reached the far ends of the hall despite its softness:
"Gekko Hayate."
"Remember this name well."
"In those pages, a man of Konoha died alone, carrying a warning that never arrived."
The Third Hokage looked out at the hall — at the young faces and the old, at an entire generation reading its own future.
"But look around you."
"His warning arrived. Not to that Konoha… but to this one. And to the entire world, at the very same moment."
Then he looked down at the volume in his hands, and spoke his final sentence with the calm of a man closing a report that had finally reached his desk:
"Your report has arrived, Gekko Hayate."
"Twenty years too late for its own time…"
"…and twenty years early for ours."
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Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 208: A Decisive Meeting!
Chapter 209: Madara's Game!
Chapter 210: The Fourth Hokage!
Chapter 211: And Every Single Person in This Village!
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