["Take my Sharingan... along with the optic nerve."]
["Transplant it into Kakashi's left eye..."]
In the Warring States Period, in the image that had suddenly appeared in the sky, the young kunoichi named Rin wiped away her tears. As an excellent battlefield Medical-nin, she buried all the pain and reluctance in her heart. In order not to betray Obito's feelings, she made the decision without hesitation.
["Come here, Kakashi. The surgery starts now."]
Minato Namikaze looked at Adult Kakashi and Adult Obito standing off to the side, his heart aching over the fate of his two students from another world.
The emotion Naruto was probably best at was empathy.
Watching the three members of Team Minato in the footage, he felt furious on their behalf!
Obito had only just awakened his Sharingan!
He should have finally taken one step closer to becoming Hokage!
He had only just made up with Kakashi-sensei from when they were kids! They had only just pulled off such a beautiful coordinated attack!
And he had not even officially confessed to Rin yet!
Young Obito looked at the indifferent Adult Obito on the other side, his heart full of complicated feelings.
Because of the mission scroll, he had avoided every turning point that led to that man's tragedy.
He had both Sharingan, Kakashi's own eyes were still intact, Rin was still by their side, and most importantly, he had not committed the series of evil deeds that came afterward.
Rin performed the eye transplant with steady precision.
Sakura and Rin, who were watching the footage, had tears in their eyes.
Unless they truly reached that point themselves, neither of them knew whether they would have that kind of courage. To push down all that pain and complete an eye transplant in a crude cave with almost nothing to work with.
The grief of parting between life and death...
She could not cry. Tears would keep her from clearly seeing the nerves behind their eyes.
Her hands could not shake. The slightest mistake might pierce and rupture an eyeball, which was made up of ninety-nine percent water.
She had to force everything down and concentrate completely on carrying out a request that neither she nor Kakashi could bear.
The eye transplant hurt, but for Obito and Kakashi at that moment, nothing hurt more than the grief of being separated forever.
In the Warring States Period, Medical-nins were extremely rare.
Seeing the brown-haired girl perform an eye transplant on a young Uchiha and a young ninja of the Hatake Clan right on the battlefield, many clans began to want a Medical-nin of their own.
But training a Medical-nin took time and money, so for most of them, it could only remain a thought.
In the footage, when young Kakashi was in unbearable pain.
At the height of that pain, young Obito had already had his eye removed, and his right side, face and body alike, was trapped beneath the boulder. With only darkness left in his vision, his voice was still gentle as he encouraged him.
["I'm... going to die..."]
["But I can become your eye and help you see the road ahead."]
Adult Kakashi was almost on the verge of breaking down.
In the footage, the pain tearing through young Kakashi's throat seemed even worse than the pain in the nerves behind his eye.
The young ninjas of Team Minato and Team Kakashi could no longer hold back their emotions.
Minato Namikaze and Fugaku Uchiha watched the live scene in the sky.
Even adults who had endured countless farewells from family and friends could only suppress and hide the sorrow in their hearts when faced with a scene like this. There was nothing else they could do.
In the footage, the eye transplant was complete.
Rin gripped Obito's hand tightly and told him she was right there beside him.
Young Kakashi used the Lightning Release ninjutsu he was best at to blast open the rubble cave created by the Iwa Ninjas.
"That kid... he's crying..."
One of the spectators who had come out of the gambling den muttered.
Adult Obito looked at Kakashi in the footage. His right eye was pitch-black and deathly still, while the Two Tomoe Sharingan in his left eye blazed bright, tears streaming uncontrollably from it.
He wanted to say something, but his voice came out hoarse.
"You said ninjas don't cry."
Because after the eye transplant that year, both of his eyes had been unable to see anything. He had never known Kakashi had cried then.
"Those were your tears, weren't they?"
For once, Adult Obito did not argue back. He only gave a bitter smile. "Maybe."
Without the rebuttal he had expected, Adult Kakashi instead felt a little uncomfortable and regretted saying something he did not really mean.
Although he seemed to have changed a great deal, perhaps deep down, he had never truly changed at all.
The sorrowful BGM from before grew restless and ready beneath young Kakashi's resolute gaze in the footage, like the calm before a storm. A nuclear explosion was being compressed, waiting for the chance to burst outward all at once.
How could the people of the Warring States Period know the importance of BGM?
They only felt that the moment the music began, something about the boy named Kakashi had changed.
Even the enemy who had brought them to this point had no choice but to become cautious.
["Kakashi..."]
["I'll leave Rin... to you."]
["Yeah."]
In the footage, young Kakashi drew the ninja blade White Fang. Tears scattered from his left, vermilion Two Tomoe Sharingan as he charged swiftly toward the enemy.
All the feelings he had kept buried, the resentment he had suppressed in his heart ever since his father's death, erupted in that instant because of Obito's loss.
["Clang."]
The ninja blade White Fang, left by Sakumo Hatake of Konoha to his son, shattered in that moment under young Kakashi's excessive force.
The blade broke into countless shards of cold light, and the largest fragment reflected that Sharingan.
He had finally stepped out of the shadow of what happened to his father, only to immediately shoulder Obito's death, the entrusted Sharingan, and the responsibility of protecting Rin.
Without a moment of hesitation!
That speed left many of the ninjas from the Warring States Period dazzled.
["Obito... this Chidori is the move you helped me complete..."]
Ox, Rabbit, Monkey.
["Screech!"]
A Lightning Release ninjutsu that sounded like a thousand birds crying out together.
It successfully killed the Iwa Ninja whose strength should, by all rights, have far surpassed theirs.
["Kakashi, take Rin... and go..."]
["The enemy's... reinforcements... will be here soon..."]
Naruto, Young Obito, and the others from Team Kakashi and Team Minato watched as Obito in the footage pulled his hand free from Rin's grasp and urged her to hurry up and leave with Kakashi.
The music in the footage changed again, becoming the sort of heartbreaking, despairing melody that made people's chests ache.
Watching this scene and listening to that tune, many people felt their throats go tight and their eyes sting.
["Earth Release: Tearing Earth Turning Palm!!"]
"It's the enemy's reinforcements!"
"Are they all going to die here?!!"
"What exactly is that thing in the sky?! Can anyone go save them?!"
Naruto heard the voices around him. They were civilians watching the footage, shouting in panic.
The sorrowful, despairing melody rose and fell, climbing toward the height of emotion. It truly made people want to cry.
The civilians present could no longer bear to watch.
The ninja clans pressed their lips together and kept watching.
This was their fate.
When could such a fate be changed? Perhaps only if some god of ninjas heard the prayers buried deep in their hearts and ended this cursed world.
["Rin! Take my hand!!"]
["Rin! Hurry and go!!"]
The girl who had restrained herself for so long, who had even completed an eye transplant under these circumstances, finally turned her head away. Tears slipped past her hair as she grabbed the hand her companion reached out to her.
"Obito!!"
Rin and Young Kakashi had been drawn too deeply into the scene and cried out Obito's name as they watched the footage.
Even though Sasuke, Naruto, and Sakura knew Obito would not die here, they still found it hard to suppress the sorrow in their hearts.
Ōtsutsuki Obito had experienced the parting between life and death shown in the footage, and he had also experienced the pitying gazes people cast at him when this footage was exposed.
At this moment, he simply walked to a place where no one was around, plucked a blade of wild grass, and toyed with it.
Adult Obito was not so lucky. This was the first time his own death had been exposed, and it also forced him to see the pain and reluctance on Rin and Kakashi's faces back then. His heart rose and fell along with the music in the footage.
In the footage, as Obito Uchiha was gradually buried beneath the rubble, he remembered that smug Kakashi in the darkness.
["I'd only just started getting along a little better with that guy Kakashi..."]
He remembered Rin's gentle and accepting smile.
["In the end, I still never had the courage to confess to Rin."]
["I really..."]
["wanted to stay with everyone forever..."]
Sakura sobbed quietly. Rin cried until she choked. Young Kakashi watched with resentment and grief that had nowhere to go. Naruto and Sasuke both looked solemn, as if they were thinking about something.
Over there, Young Obito and Adult Obito felt as if a chicken bone had gotten stuck in their throats for eight hundred years.
They wanted to say something emotional.
But that line about "not having successfully confessed to Rin yet" made them restless and awkward, too embarrassed to even look to the side.
As for actually confessing.
Ōtsutsuki Obito: "Three years minimum, death penalty maximum." He could not be the only one to suffer the agony of Shisui Uchiha's red-card warning.
In short, their hearts felt like they were about to explode.
Young Obito especially felt that having Kakashi and Rin in his life made him far too lucky.
He felt that his other self from another world was hateful to the extreme, yet also so tragic that it made people sigh.
Because of the angle, Minato Namikaze could see Adult Kakashi over there desperately trying to keep his emotions under control.
"This isn't your fault, Kakashi."
"Obito is still alive," Adult Kakashi murmured.
Minato patted his back, signaling for him to relax a little.
But Adult Kakashi did not improve. Instead, in front of the teacher he trusted most, he let out a hysterical, self-blaming growl. "If I hadn't given up on him back then! If I'd realized Obito could still be saved back then! None of this would have happened!!"
"No. Without Hashirama-sama's cells and the White Zetsu components to neutralize them, Obito might not have survived." Minato sighed and comforted Adult Kakashi. "Even if he had been lucky enough to live, that half-crushed body would have kept him away from the path of a ninja forever."
In essence, the usual Kakashi Hatake was not someone who listened to advice.
At this moment, his emotions were running too high, and not even Minato Namikaze could do anything about it.
He growled, "That would still be better than being saved by Madara Uchiha! If his body couldn't move, I could have taken care of him! I wouldn't have cared if it was for the rest of my life!! But because he was saved by Madara Uchiha, Obito's life was completely ruined! He can't even die and leave without a burden! Even after reaching the Pure Land, he still can't face the people he once knew with an easy conscience!!"
Adult Kakashi, whose emotions had suddenly slipped out of control, seemed to have forgotten.
Madara Uchiha was standing right beside them.
Madara Uchiha: ...So I'm the only bad guy here?