Late into the night, Yahiko lay in bed, tossing and turning.
His mind was a whirlwind, constantly replaying the story Hatani had told them earlier. Thanks to Nagato's explanation, he finally understood how such a scenario would play out in the real world. Ever since then, he had been racking his brain, trying to find a solution that would satisfy both villages—a way to dissolve the hatred and maintain a lasting peace.
But clearly, even now, no answer had come to him.
"Nagato, are you awake?"
Since they had to mind the gap between boys and girls, Yahiko shared a bed with Nagato. After another restless roll, he finally whispered to his companion.
"With you making all that noise next to me, how could I be asleep?" Nagato's voice drifted back through the darkness, laced with a hint of annoyance.
In truth, Nagato wasn't just staying awake because of Yahiko's tossing. He, too, was grappling with the problem.
As the saying goes, one takes on the color of one's company. Yahiko's ideals were so moving and vibrant that Nagato, like his friend, yearned to see them realized—to see a world where war vanished and peace was permanent.
Unfortunately, like Yahiko, he had been hit with a massive reality check today.
Before lying down, a thought had even flickered through his mind—a thought that terrified him: If I just kill Namikaze Hatani, the problem goes away.
Of course, his reason told him that was mere escapism. This world was filled with similar conflicts; they had simply been too sheltered to notice them before. Now that the problem was staring them in the face, they were lost.
"Nagato... about that question... do you have an answer?" Yahiko's voice broke the silence again, interrupting Nagato's train of thought.
Knowing sleep was a lost cause for the night, Nagato didn't stay lying down. He sat up, leaning his back against the wall. In the shadows, the concentric circles of his Rinnegan seemed to deepen in intensity.
Sensing the movement, Yahiko sat up as well, leaning in close to his friend.
"If it were me..."
After a long silence, Nagato's voice finally rang out. It sounded strained, suppressed, and heavy with a sense of helplessness.
"If I had enough power—enough strength to single-handedly suppress both villages so that they wouldn't dare fight out of sheer terror—then I could act as their leader. I would command them to split the water equally."
Years later, after Yahiko's death and after he had finally witnessed the true, cruel futility of the world, this was exactly what he would choose to do.
"By using fear?" Yahiko frowned instinctively. As a firm believer in love and communication, he found Nagato's proposition difficult to swallow.
"It's the only way I can think of to stop them from slaughtering each other over a river." Nagato knew his answer wouldn't satisfy Yahiko. He let out a low, heavy sigh. "Perhaps, in the future, you'll think of a better way."
While Yahiko and Nagato remained wide awake, Hatani—the boy who had posed the problem in the first place—was also awake in a room not far away.
However, he wasn't losing sleep over the "answer." He was losing sleep because Jiraiya was pestering him.
Naturally, Jiraiya was there to talk about the story.
Having received the prophecy from the Great Toad Sage, Jiraiya had originally believed that Nagato, the wielder of the Rinnegan, was the Child of Prophecy meant to change the world. But after hearing Hatani's story at dusk and that poignant maxim Hatani had given Yahiko, his conviction had been shaken.
Yahiko had always talked about changing his country to achieve peace, but Jiraiya, who had seen the true ugliness of the world, knew that Yahiko's vision was ultimately just a dream. He simply hadn't had the heart to crush the boy's peace-loving spirit by pointing it out.
He never expected that Hatani—a child roughly the same age as Yahiko—would be the one to see through the world's cruel reality so clearly.
Solving a problem is important, but identifying the problem is often harder. Only those who can see the cracks in the world can call them out; only then can a solution even be discussed. If one is blind to the issue, how can they ever hope to fix it?
Moreover, Jiraiya desperately wanted to know if Hatani had a solution of his own. He had spent hours reflecting on it and hadn't found a perfect answer either.
"The story you told... is there a way to solve it?" Jiraiya looked at the visibly exhausted Hatani, his voice soft but brimming with suppressed anticipation.
Beside him, Nawaki stared at Hatani with equal parts excitement and hope, waiting for the answer.
"Yes, and no," Hatani replied.
The two listeners looked delighted for a split second before their expressions froze in confusion.
"Solving the problem between two villages is actually quite simple," Hatani began, explaining before they could jump down his throat with questions. "The reason they fight is because there isn't enough water to irrigate all their fields. So, you just need to acquire more water. Widen the river, dig it deeper, or even build a dam to store water when the fields don't need it and release it when they do. Or, heck, just pay two Water Style shinobi to do some artificial irrigation."
Jiraiya and Nawaki blinked, looks of realization and slight embarrassment crossing their faces.
The answer was so simple, yet they had been so blinded by the concept of "conflict" that they hadn't even considered the most basic method of increasing the resource itself.
But then, they grew puzzled again. If the problem was solved so perfectly, why did Hatani say there was "no way" to solve it?
"That solution works because we are 'artificially' injecting resources from the outside into two villages that lack them. But what happens when you scale that up from villages to nations?" Hatani continued, sensing their confusion. "What happens when all the nations have already divided every scrap of resources available? At that point, where are you going to find the extra resources to satisfy everyone's needs?"
He let out a long, tired yawn and rubbed his eyes before delivering the cold, hard truth.
"So, your initial instincts weren't wrong, either. In the end, someone loses."
Hatani's voice was blunt, almost ruthless. "Furthermore, even if you do provide enough water for both villages' current fields, you've only solved the fight temporarily. As time passes, they will start fighting again."
"Why?!" Nawaki blurted out, finally beating Hatani to the punch.
"Greed. Development. There are many reasons," Hatani said, falling back onto his bed. "Look at Amegakure. After twenty years of development following the First Shinobi World War, they decided they were qualified to be the Sixth Great Shinobi Village. Hanzo decided he was qualified to be the sixth Kage. So, he started a war. That is the result of development—as Amegakure grew stronger over twenty years, they needed more space and more resources. That need, combined with growing greed, made war inevitable."
Hatani stopped there, closing his eyes.
"So, while I deeply admire the First Hokage... I firmly believe that war will never disappear."