Amegakure.
After discovering that the Sage of Six Paths had tried to "sneak into" Engraved Tsukuyomi and promptly dealing with him, Uchiha Hikari told Makoto what had happened.
The two of them checked the Engraved Tsukuyomi data again and, in the process, discovered Kakashi's plan to change Naruto.
Whether Hikari had caught Hagoromo too quickly or Kakashi's original setup simply aligned too closely with what Hagoromo wanted to do, there was currently no trace that the Sage of Six Paths had managed to modify anything inside Engraved Tsukuyomi.
After watching Naruto agonize over the character-selection screen for a long time before finally choosing the Uzumaki Menma template, Makoto decided it was safe to broadcast Naruto's session publicly.
Naruto was different from Obito.
Obito had completely lost his mind trying to escape Engraved Tsukuyomi and complete his quests.
He was willing to throw away every last shred of dignity or restraint, which made his footage far too dark and liable to corrupt children.
Naruto's side would, at worst, be a little questionable.
And children in the shinobi world matured early anyway.
There weren't exactly many laws restricting this kind of thing either.
Otherwise, Kushina would not have needed to spend her dying moments reciting the Three Shinobi Prohibitions to Naruto.
If Konoha had actual regulations for those things, she could have simply said:
"Naruto, don't break the law."
Besides, according to the Questionable Paradox, the moment you recognized that something was questionable, it meant you already understood what made it questionable.
Which meant you were questionable too.
A truly innocent and pure person would not be affected in the first place.
Of course, just in case Naruto did something painful to look at, Hikari added her usual automatic censorship function to the broadcast.
Better safe than sorry.
And so, the people of Amegakure suddenly felt as though they had returned to that night when everyone gathered together to watch Limited Tsukuyomi.
The Land of Snow produced all kinds of movies.
Some of their plots had even been personally designed or filtered by Makoto, so the quality was genuinely high.
Yet everyone still felt like something was missing.
It really was easy to go from poverty to luxury, but difficult to go back.
After experiencing the sheer insanity of Limited Tsukuyomi, ordinary stories simply struggled to excite them anymore.
Especially now that the shinobi around them had grown stronger and broadened their horizons.
But the moment the Engraved Tsukuyomi: Naruto Live Edition appeared, everyone's enthusiasm immediately returned.
Limited Tsukuyomi was still ultimately an illusionary world.
No matter how many connections it had to the real shinobi world, the people inside it were fake.
This was different.
The Naruto inside Engraved Tsukuyomi was the real Naruto.
One after another, people came to Hikari to collect monitoring tablets.
Some even took personal ones despite planning to watch with friends.
After all, they couldn't stay together every second of the day.
What if someone needed to use the bathroom or take a shower?
They couldn't risk missing an important scene.
"I remember we watched a movie not long ago called The Truman World."
After coming over to collect her tablet, Hanabi looked toward Makoto.
"Doesn't Naruto feel a little like the protagonist, Truman?"
"Not really."
Makoto shook his head.
"Naruto knows this is an illusionary world. He entered voluntarily because he wanted to run wild inside it.
"The only real similarity is that neither of them knows everyone else can actually watch everything they do."
"That's true."
Hanabi nodded.
"When you put it that way, Naruto actually has it pretty good.
"He isn't a prisoner.
"You could say he's the first person getting the complete Engraved Tsukuyomi game experience."
Makoto gave her a look.
"You clearly have something else to say. Just say it."
Hanabi had already received her tablet, yet she was still hanging around making small talk.
There was obviously something else she wanted.
"Hehe. You noticed."
Hanabi scratched her head awkwardly.
"Actually, I wanted to ask for one more.
"I want to take it back to Konoha and give it to my sister so she can watch too."
"Uh…"
Makoto hesitated briefly.
"Fine."
He took out another tablet and handed it over.
For a moment, even Makoto could not tell what Hanabi's true intentions were.
Was she trying to help Hinata?
Or was she trying to win Hinata back?
Given Hanabi's intelligence, it shouldn't be difficult for her to guess that Naruto would almost certainly behave rather recklessly inside Engraved Tsukuyomi.
And Makoto had already told her when giving her the device that this whole thing was part of Konoha's attempt to solve its bullying problem by changing Naruto first.
But if Naruto really did change…
Would he still be Naruto?
Whatever.
Makoto couldn't be bothered getting involved.
After saying goodbye, Hanabi personally carried the tablet meant for Hinata and used the Flying Raijin network to return to Konoha for the first time in quite a while.
Konoha had barely changed.
Tsunade had indeed pushed through reforms after taking office, but those reforms targeted the entire Land of Fire rather than Konoha alone.
Once she discovered that the closer an area was to Konoha, the worse the bullying problem became—and the more unreasonable the villagers seemed to be—Tsunade had simply decided to leave Konoha itself largely unchanged.
Improve their living conditions?
They complained.
Don't improve them?
They still complained.
In that case, why bother?
"Where did this Byakugan freak come from—OWWW!"
Hanabi was walking down the street when an insult suddenly came from behind her, followed by the whistle of something cutting through the air.
Without even thinking, Hanabi spun and used Eight Trigrams Air Palm.
The stone flying toward her was blasted straight back.
And because Hanabi's current fighting style combined both hard and soft principles rather than relying purely on Gentle Fist, the returning strike punched clean through the arm of the child who had just been preparing to demonstrate the Will of Bullying.
Hanabi completely ignored the child clutching his arm and screaming.
Instead, she fell into confusion.
Then concern.
There was actually a child in the middle of Konoha openly shouting "Byakugan freak" at her?
Had the Hyūga clan somehow been wiped out like the Uchiha while she was away?
Otherwise—
Where were these people getting the courage?
With that thought in mind, Hanabi quickened her pace and hurried home.
Everything was perfectly fine.
In fact, the moment she entered the compound, she saw her father, Hyūga Hiashi, calmly drinking tea in the courtyard.
"Hanabi?"
Hiashi froze when he saw her.
"Has the three-year deadline already arrived?"
Hadn't they said every day would feel like a year?
Why did time suddenly seem to be flying?
Had three years really passed that quickly?
"No, no. I'm just here to bring something to my sister."
Hanabi shook her head.
"Actually, Father, something happened on the way back and I wanted to ask you about it."
She told Hiashi about the child calling her a Byakugan freak.
"…"
Hiashi sighed helplessly instead of getting angry.
"There's nothing we can do about that."
"Your sister experienced something similar once.
"Afterward, I sent people to demand an explanation, but the Third Hokage stepped in as a mediator and the matter was quietly dropped."
Hiashi took another sip of tea.
"Then later, similar incidents happened to the Uchiha clan.
"And after that, the Uchiha were exterminated."
His expression turned grave.
"So my conclusion is that Konoha's leadership must be deliberately provoking us.
"If the Hyūga retaliate and make a mistake, they'll gain an excuse to move against us."
"…"
Hanabi opened her mouth.
She badly wanted to tell her father that no, this was probably just Konoha's ordinary bullying problem.
But then she remembered how Hiashi had previously tied himself in knots playing political chess with the Third Hokage based on his own assumptions.
She suddenly felt that explaining would probably accomplish nothing.
"…Forget it."
Hanabi turned away.
"I'm going to find my sister."
And with that, she darted off.