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The next morning, Konoha knew only one piece of news.
Jiraiya had appeared in the manga!
Or at least, that was what Jiraiya himself was determined that Konoha should know, for the man left no street, no café, and no bridge uncrossed that morning — striding along with his chest puffed out, holding Volume Ten up in his hands the way banners are raised on festival days.
"The Legendary Sannin! There he is — look how majestic he is!"
he said to a vegetable vendor who hadn't asked him anything.
"Atop the toad Gama! A presence that shakes the very page!"
"And right outside the women's bath."
added a small boy passing by, without even slowing his pace.
Jiraiya froze in place for three full seconds.
'This village does not know the value of legends.'
But the truth was that the noise Jiraiya was making through the streets was not all pure swagger.
Part of it was the kind of loudness a man produces on purpose so he won't have to hear the other voice — the quiet one that had been working away inside him since the night before.
He finally stopped atop a wall near the Academy, sat down, and opened the volume to that same page.
His future self. The long white hair. The heavy confidence in the way he sat. He still sighed in admiration every time he looked at his future counterpart…
"And then there's this boy."
Uzumaki Naruto.
'Out of all the shinobi of Konoha…'
Jiraiya thought, every trace of clowning gone from his face.
'The page chose to place me in front of this particular kid.'
He didn't know the reason yet. But he had read enough chapters to know that this manga never placed anyone in front of anyone else by accident.
Orochimaru had stepped out of the shadows toward Sasuke… and then his own counterpart had appeared in the very next volume, standing atop a toad, right between that boy and the days to come.
'A hand extended at exactly the right moment.'
'…That's what Lady Mito said.'
Jiraiya closed the volume slowly and gazed from afar at the Academy courtyard, where the little ones were practicing shuriken throwing.
"Well then, future…"
he murmured, a smile on his lips that, this time, was not entirely a joke.
"Let's see exactly what you have in store for me."
…
Konoha was not the only village that spent those days digesting Volume Ten.
In Kumogakure, the discussions in the Art Store were closer to heated debate.
The shinobi of Lightning had not been shaken by Orochimaru's scenes so much as by something else entirely: a boy with thick eyebrows and a green jumpsuit — no ninjutsu, no genjutsu — who had brought an entire arena to its feet.
"Show me the page where he takes off the weights. Again."
said a massive jonin for the fifth time, slamming his palm on the table.
"That is no genin. That is a hurricane wearing a jumpsuit."
"You're right! He's Konoha's Green Hurricane!"
…
And in Iwagakure, the Tsuchikage, Onoki, contented himself with reading the battle chapters twice, then delivered the line that the councils would pass around long after him:
"A village that produces, from its own ranks, a talentless beast who opens the Gates, a genius of the Hyuga, another of the Uchiha, and a jinchuriki… all in a single genin class."
Then he slowly lit his pipe.
"This manga is either a blessing upon Konoha… or a curse upon us all."
But the village that truly lost all taste for sleep after that volume… was Sunagakure.
…
In a closed chamber near the Kazekage's headquarters, Volume Ten had been lying open on the table for hours, and no one had dared to close it.
The page where Rock Lee slams Gaara down out of the sand itself.
"Once more."
said the Kazekage with cold calm.
"Explain to me, once more, how a child who cannot even mold chakra nearly killed the jinchuriki of the Ichibi."
How did they know Gaara was the jinchuriki of the Ichibi before it was ever officially revealed?
Well, quite simply: the current jinchuriki of the Ichibi — the Suna priest and successor of the first jinchuriki, Bunpuku — had been able to recognize that Gaara was the jinchuriki from his very first appearance.
In any case — no one answered right away, because the answer was right there in front of them on the pages: the Eight Gates. Speed that outpaced the eye of the sand. Kicks that pierced the Absolute Defense upon which Suna had built its entire concept of the "Ultimate Weapon."
'The Absolute Defense…'
thought one of the jonin, staring at the image of Gaara with the sand armor cracking away from his face.
'Pierced by a boy we were told had no talent.'
But old Chiyo had not been looking at Rock Lee at all.
From the very beginning, her eyes had been on the other boy. The red-haired one. The one who stood in the middle of the sand and never slept, who spoke of killing others the way people speak of breathing, and who bore on his forehead a character meaning "love" while nothing in his eyes knew that word.
'What is this child's story… what kind of environment did he grow up in, to become this savage…' she thought to herself.
…
And a week later came the day that all the villages now awaited the way one awaits a festival.
The day of the weekly episode of the Naruto anime.
As sunset approached, the giant screens mounted above the Art Stores in the five villages lit up at the very same moment, and the crowds gathered beneath them in the squares as they had grown accustomed to every week: merchants who had closed their shops early, shinobi back from missions who hadn't even changed their clothes, and children who had claimed the front spots since mid-afternoon.
And this week's episode was… the conclusion of the Land of Waves arc.
In Kirigakure, the gathering beneath the screen was larger than any before it.
Because the people of the Mist had already read this ending on paper. They knew it page by page. They knew that Haku would stand in the path of the lightning, that Zabuza would grip the kunai in his teeth with both arms dead at his sides, and that snow would fall at the end.
They thought they were prepared.
They were not.
For when Zabuza moved across the screen toward Gato and his army, the kunai between his teeth, the blood carving a path of blades open across his back, the silent pages were pages no longer. The footsteps had sound now. The ragged breathing had sound. And Haku's name — when it finally broke, shattered, from the mouth of the Demon of the Mist — had sound.
"I read it…"
whispered a woman in the crowd, pressing her hand over her mouth.
"I read it three times… so why…"
She never finished. No one around her was capable of finishing either.
Then the snow fell.
Over the bridge, over the bodies, over Haku's sleeping face, the snow drifted down across the screen, slow and white, and someone in the anime said that the sky was weeping… and all of Kiri wept with it.
The Village of the Bloody Mist. The village that taught its children that tears were shameful, that killing was graduation, that hearts were tools. That same village stood in the square beneath the screen and let the water fall from the eyes of jonin before children, and no one dared mock anyone.
Because everyone was weeping over the same thing: a tool that discovered it had been human all along… and a human who only learned it as he was dying.
And in the front row of the crowd stood a small child.
No older than seven. Thin, with eyes too sharp for his age — a boy the neighbors knew as one who never cried when he fell, never screamed when he was struck, and resembled the other children of the district in nothing at all.
His name was Zabuza.
He had come in the past weeks like everyone else, slipping between people's legs to see the screen, ever since he'd heard the adults whispering that in that story there was a man from Kiri who bore his name, who carried a great sword, and whom they called the Demon of the Hidden Mist. And every time, he had stood here with his head held high, staring up at his grown self on the screen the way children stare at their heroes.
A demon. A giant sword. A name that made enemies tremble.
That was what he believed he would become.
But tonight, the screen was not showing him the demon.
It was showing him a man with both arms all but severed, dragging what remained of his body toward his own death — not for a village, not for money, but so that he could finally lie down beside a boy he had kept calling his tool… who had, in truth, been the only thing he ever loved.
On paper, when little Zabuza had read these pages months ago, he had been able to convince himself they were only drawings. Still ink. A story about a man who shared nothing with him but a name.
But now…
Now the man was moving. Breathing. Coughing blood in a sound that filled the whole square. And his face, when he turned to Haku for the last time, was so close, so alive, so clear, that the child felt he was not watching a story at all.
'This…'
His small hands trembled at his sides.
'This isn't a drawing…'
It was as if someone had opened a window onto the future itself, sat him down in front of it by force, and said: Look. This is you. This is your end. This is the snow that will fall on you twenty years from now, on a distant bridge.
"If I could…"
said the grown Zabuza on the screen, tears falling from eyes that no one in Kiri would ever have believed knew how to weep.
"I'd want to go to the same place you've gone…"
And there, something broke in the child's chest.
He tried to do what he always did. To clench his jaw. To stare at the ground until it passed. To remind himself that the children of Kiri do not cry.
But the tears did not ask his permission.
They came all at once, hot and heavy, down a small face that did not know how to stop them — because he had never once trained at stopping something like this. And he stood there, in the middle of a crowd that was weeping so completely that no one noticed him, staring up at his grown self dying beneath the snow, and crying as he had never cried in his entire short life.
He did not run.
He stayed until the very last shot. Until the screen faded into white, and the snow covered the whole bridge, and the music fell silent, and Kiri fell silent.
Then the child raised his arm, wiped his face roughly, and gave the black screen one final, long look.
He said nothing.
But something, somewhere deep in that small chest, was no longer the same as it had been before this night.
And above Kirigakure, as though the sky itself had watched the episode alongside its people…
the rain began to fall in silence.
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Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 202: System Level 8!
Chapter 203: Volume 11 of the Naruto Manga Is Here!
Chapter 204: The Training Begins, and the Snake's Seal!
Chapter 205: Volume 11 Reaches the Four Villages!
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