It was an utterly ordinary afternoon in Konoha.
An old woman suddenly collapsed in the middle of the road.
The bag of eggs she had been carrying slipped from her hand and smashed across the ground, yolks spilling everywhere.
The bright yellow mess mixed with dirt and dust, making it look especially filthy.
"What happened to her?"
A young man nearby instinctively stepped forward, about to help the old woman up.
But the companion beside him suddenly grabbed his shoulder.
"Look at the crest on her clothes."
The young man focused his eyes.
There, on her sleeve, was the unmistakable fan crest of the Uchiha Clan.
His urge to help died instantly.
"So it's an Uchiha…"
His expression twisted.
"So it's one of those damned Uchiha…"
He glanced toward a stretch of Konoha's wall in the distance, still wrapped in scaffolding from repairs, and thought of the cousin he had lost.
Then he looked back at the old Uchiha woman with naked disgust.
Those damned Uchiha.
They had produced a traitor like Uchiha Madara, who had attacked Konoha itself.
During the Susanoo Incident, the young man's cousin had been killed by a White Zetsu.
If the Uchiha Clan had merely produced a missing-nin, that would have been one thing.
Every ninja clan had skeletons in its closet. Every large clan produced one or two malcontents eventually.
But during the Susanoo Incident, the entire Uchiha Clan had practically vanished.
They hadn't gone to fight Madara.
Why?
Was it because they couldn't bring themselves to strike down their former clan leader?
Or worse—
had they actually wanted to defect to him?
The entire Konoha Military Police Force had done exactly one thing that night:
Evacuate civilians.
And they'd done it like they were full of gunpowder.
Their attitude toward civilians had been abysmal.
An enemy missing-nin was attacking Konoha from outside.
The village had been thrown into an emergency evacuation in the middle of the night.
People had already been panicking, disoriented, unable to find their way.
And the Uchiha ninja of the Police Force had responded with brutal impatience.
That single night, more than twenty Konoha civilians had died in stampedes alone.
Getting crushed to death by Madara's Susanoo was one thing.
But over twenty people dying because of poor evacuation and chaos among civilians themselves?
How could people not hate the Uchiha Police Force for that?
Afterward, the Hokage Tower had even posted an official notice announcing disciplinary action against the Police Force.
The statement said that Uchiha Kagen, as head of the Police Force, bore heavy responsibility for the failure of Konoha's civilian evacuation.
And every responsible ninja under his command had received formal punishment.
A full month had passed since then.
During that time, certain forces had quietly fanned the flames.
By now, the villagers' dissatisfaction with the Police Force had reached a boiling point.
So at a moment like this, seeing an old Uchiha woman collapse in the street…
If someone didn't walk over and stomp on her a couple times, they'd practically have to praise themselves for their own good morals.
At first, the old woman lay there groaning faintly.
Then, after a while…
she made no sound at all.
Her spine seemed to have broken in the fall.
A few Konoha villagers stopped at a distance and frowned while watching.
Most simply walked away.
Serves her right.
Seeing an Uchiha suffer?
That felt pretty damn satisfying.
When Uchiha Obito was walking home after school, he saw the old woman lying in the middle of the road.
He immediately rushed toward her, shouting as he ran:
"What are all of you standing around for?! Why isn't anyone helping her?!"
But after taking just over ten steps, Obito suddenly froze.
She…
Wasn't that his grandmother?
The person he was trying to save wasn't some stranger.
It was his grandmother.
And the person everyone else was standing around ignoring…
was also his grandmother.
Obito broke into a full sprint and dropped to his knees beside her.
The moment he saw clearly that it really was her, his pupils contracted violently.
"Grandma! Grandma!"
He tried to lift her—
but the angle of her waist was wrong.
Horribly wrong.
Her lumbar spine looked broken.
"Somebody help me!"
Obito turned desperately toward the crowd.
"I can't lift her by myself!"
His voice cracked.
Then he saw a woman in the crowd and shouted toward her:
"Auntie! I've watched your kid for you before—please, help me! Please!"
For a single instant, the woman softened.
Then she remembered her own aunt, who had died in the stampede.
And she didn't move.
Obito's heart sank.
He turned to another man.
"Uncle! I helped hold your ladder before! Please, help me!"
That man did know Obito.
One time, when he'd been fixing his roof, it was Obito who had stood there holding the ladder for him—
and even ended up late for school because of it.
But when he thought of the Uchiha Clan's current reputation, anger surged up in him instead.
Obito's heart sank further.
Then he turned toward an elderly woman.
"Grandma, I've helped bring your milk home lots of times before. Please… please help me, okay?"
The old woman was just about to step forward—
when her daughter-in-law stopped her.
That younger woman stared at the Uchiha fan crest on Obito's clothes with open hatred.
She used to sell dango along the street.
And her pushcart had once been violently confiscated by the Uchiha Police Force.
Obito slowly looked around.
This time, he didn't look for anyone in particular.
He simply swept his gaze across the entire crowd with hollow, unfamiliar eyes.
These… are the neighbors I always treated so warmly?
On the road between home and the Academy, his eyes had always been like radar.
He could always spot someone who needed help.
How many people on this road had he helped before?
He couldn't even remember anymore.
He had honestly thought…
that he mattered to the people here.
But now…
Now he realized it had all been fake.
His helping hand had been fake.
His self-satisfaction had been fake.
Everything had been fake.
A weak voice came from beside him.
"Obito… Obito…"
Obito immediately dropped down again.
Then he heard his grandmother's final words.
"Obito… you have to live on…"
Her voice trembled, faint and fragile.
"You never got to meet your father and mother…
But they loved you…
They loved you just like I do…
They just had bad luck…
They died in the Great Ninja War…
They never had the chance to love you themselves…"
Her breathing grew weaker and weaker.
"Obito… you have to keep living…"
She was still collapsed awkwardly on the ground, half-kneeling, half-prone, her body twisted at the waist.
Blood rushed into her head.
A cerebral hemorrhage.
And there, in the middle of the street—
she died.
"Grandma! Grandma—!"
Obito's vision blurred with tears.
"Ah—! Grandma…! Please don't die…!"
A long time passed before Obito finally accepted it.
His grandmother was really dead.
Slowly, gently, he laid her body flat on the road.
The wind blew a plastic bag toward them.
Then a piece of filthy paper, trampled and stained, drifted over and struck his grandmother's corpse.
Obito numbly reached out to stop it.
He didn't want dirty things touching her.
But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't block all the scraps and trash the wind kept carrying in.
Eventually, he rose to his feet.
By then, a circle of people had already formed around them.
Everyone simply stood there, frowning coldly, watching the Uchiha boy in the center—
watching the old woman's corpse on the ground.
And in that moment, Obito realized something.
His grandmother's cold corpse was the only warmth he had left.
At that instant, everyone around him suddenly felt impossibly far away.
The people in the ring around him seemed to recede.
Further.
Further.
Until it felt as though he were standing utterly alone in the middle of a vast, endless plaza.
Alone.
Helpless.
Terrified.
The people around him seemed tiny—
like ants.
But in truth, it wasn't that the people had moved farther away.
It was that he had become smaller.
Inside Uchiha Obito's eyes, something began to change at a terrifying speed.
The two-tomoe Sharingan spun—
and became three tomoe.
Then the three tomoe spun even faster.
The black markings fused together—
and transformed into a pair of Mangekyō Sharingan.
Between Obito's eyes, spiraling ripples of warped space began to appear.
Then—
both he and his grandmother's corpse vanished.
Six Uchiha Police Force ninja arrived only after everything was already over.
They rushed into the circular empty space in the middle of the road—
and stared in confusion.
Just moments ago, they had seen from afar that there had been an old woman and a child standing here.
Now both were gone.
One of the Police Force ninja immediately rushed into the crowd, seized a middle-aged woman by the arm, and barked:
"Talk! What happened here just now?!"
The woman struggled, but the Police Force ninja's grip was so rough it felt like he was about to break her arm.
"I don't know! It has nothing to do with me! Let go!"
Only after he squeezed harder—hard enough to make tears spring from her eyes—did she finally stammer out a rough explanation of what had happened.
An Uchiha child had seen his grandmother die…
And then later, he had vanished in some bizarre way?
When Uchiha Obito appeared again, he was already far outside Konoha.
He looked down at his grandmother's corpse.
There was nothing left in his eyes now—
except savagery.
No one knew how much time passed.
Then, slowly, White Zetsu emerged from the trunk of a great tree ahead of him.
Its gaze fixed on Obito's eyes.
Those beautiful, newly awakened Mangekyō Sharingan.
Then White Zetsu smiled.
"Obito… I've been looking for you for a very long time."
Its voice oozed like something damp and rotten.
"Come.
Come with me to see Lord Madara.
Lord Madara will answer your questions.
Lord Madara…"
Its smile widened.
"…will give you the power to take revenge."