"I'll have to think about it some more."
The moment Minato thought of Kushina, his resolve to graduate early and serve the village wavered—though he couldn't quite put his finger on why.
Was it because he liked her? He wasn't sure. There hadn't been any real "spark" between him and Kushina yet. Minato told himself that he simply wanted to witness the moment she truly integrated into the village.
Admittedly, compared to when she first arrived in Konoha a year ago, she had made a few friends. However, they were mostly girls from specific shinobi clans—like Tsume Inuzuka or an Uchiha girl from the upper grades.
The boys in class who had bullied her (or been bullied by her), along with their friends from other classes and grades, still maintained a cold, exclusionary attitude toward her.
Minato worried that if he left the Academy, he wouldn't be able to step in if Kushina ran into trouble. Of course, for the past year, he had mostly just stood on the sidelines watching. But that was only because he felt the situations were always under control—at the very least, Kushina was never the one losing the actual fistfight.
Wrestling with his indecision, Minato arrived at the crossroads with Tatsuma. They exchanged their bags of rice and other ingredients before heading to their respective homes. As usual, they planned to meet later for night training.
The two of them had stopped braiding their hair. The exercise no longer served a purpose; their chakra control had reached a high level of proficiency.
Unless they pursued Medical Ninjutsu or Puppetry—disciplines that demanded an even more granular level of precision—their current control was more than sufficient. Any further basic training would yield diminishing returns.
They had already "learned" Needle Jizo and the Wild Lion's Mane Technique. While they were still a long way from being able to apply them flexibly in the heat of battle, they lacked the proper environment to practice combat applications anyway.
Beyond those two, Jiraiya had brought back another hair-related jutsu during his last visit: Needle Hell. Unlike the defensive Needle Jizo, this technique involved hardening the hair and firing it like a volley of senbon.
It bore a resemblance to Jiraiya's future Sage Art: Kebari Senbon, but without the enhancement of Senjutsu chakra, its power was average at best. It was, however, excellent for providing cover fire.
Both boys had technically mastered it, but due to their limited chakra reserves and a lack of deep training in Shape Transformation, its lethality was underwhelming—it didn't even pack the punch of a hand-thrown senbon.
Unfortunately, Tatsuma had never managed to "pick up" any talents related to Shape or Nature Transformation. It seemed these weren't innate "talents" the system could easily grab, but rather essential skills every ninja had to grind through themselves.
It was similar to Ninja Tool Projection. Tatsuma had never picked up a general "throwing" talent from anyone else. The talent he got from Minato was a specific, limited edition meant to complement the Flying Raijin.
Over the past year, Tatsuma had also considered trying to develop the Rasengan, as he was intimately familiar with its principles and training steps.
Sadly, he ran into the same wall: insufficient chakra volume and a lack of mastery in Shape Transformation. He simply couldn't "knead" the sphere into existence. Nevertheless, he insisted on spending a little time every day trying to form the ball, using it as a supplemental exercise to train his Shape Transformation.
That evening, after finishing dinner, the two met at the training grounds as if by clockwork. Lately, the training grounds had become quite lively. Many shinobi stationed in Konoha and awaiting orders had begun frequenting the area to sharpen their skills.
Clearly, Tatsuma and Minato weren't the only ones who noticed the shifting tides of the world. Shinobi, who had greater access to intelligence from outside the village, were even more sensitive to the coming storm.
After completing their daily routine, Tatsuma and Minato began their sparring session. Compared to their first year where they relied solely on Taijutsu, their combat style had become increasingly versatile.
Both were exceptionally proficient in Ninjutsu, Taijutsu, Genjutsu, and Tool Projection—at least by Genin standards. The E-rank and D-rank scrolls Jiraiya had gifted them were easy to learn and had long since been mastered.
Naturally, they didn't use the three hair jutsu during these spars. For them, the chakra cost was too high and the payoff too low for a friendly match.
As midnight approached, the two finally called it quits, both panting heavily. Recently, their win-loss ratio—especially in pure practical combat—had been successfully pulled back to a 50/50 split by Minato.
Having secured a victory today, Minato finally allowed himself his first smile of the evening. He looked at Tatsuma, who was wearing a look of mock regret, and asked, "Tatsuma, why do you think wars exist?"
"That's a heavy question," Tatsuma replied, rubbing his backside where Minato had landed a solid kick. "But the way I see it, war is just a tool summoned by a manipulated collective will."
"Collective will? What's that?"
Minato, who was used to hearing strange terms and theories from Tatsuma, immediately tapped into his "ask if you don't know" spirit.
Tatsuma felt a sense of relief that Minato was no longer dwelling on the heavy nature of war itself. To be honest, he didn't really know why war existed either. Was it profit? A means for a small elite to gain power? Or a bit of everything? The reasons were too complex to unpack, and Tatsuma knew his own conclusions weren't necessarily the ultimate truth.
Seeing Minato shift the topic was a welcome change. Tatsuma looked at him and explained, "The collective will is the shared emotion of a large group of people. Whether it's stirred up by someone with an agenda or if it grows spontaneously, once emotions like anger, hatred, and greed become the shared—or even dominant—sentiment of the crowd, war is inevitable."
"Then how do you guide that collective will?" Minato asked. "Can't we make them feel happiness and joy instead? Or help them maintain their reason? After all..."
Before Minato could finish, Tatsuma shook his head. "Minato, in a crowd, how would you rank the speed and intensity at which anger, sadness, joy, fear, and reason spread?"
Minato fell into deep thought. He didn't lack the answer; he just realized his own idealistic thoughts were far from reality. He looked to Tatsuma to confirm his suspicion.
Tatsuma understood the look. "If I had to rank them, it would be: Anger, then Joy, then Fear, then Sadness."
"And what about reason?"
Minato noticed a certain option was missing from the list. Tatsuma gave him a look that said 'You're still too young.'
"No, Minato," Tatsuma said. "Within a crowd, there are rational individuals, but the crowd itself is always irrational. Think of our own desires—neither of us wants a war to happen, nor do we want to make enemies of anyone. But once a war breaks out and we are drafted into the front lines, will our individual will be given any weight in the face of the collective will?"
Minato opened his mouth to argue, but ultimately nodded in a dejected, helpless fashion. It wasn't that he took everything Tatsuma said as gospel, but he truly couldn't find a way to refute the logic.
After a moment, he asked again, "But why... why is anger the easiest emotion to trigger in a crowd? Why not joy? And... is there really no way to end war?"