Naruto said that he truly couldn't understand Sasuke's hatred.
At the same time, Naruto Uzumaki, who was lying on the ground while Rin Nohara treated his injuries, slowly regained a bit of consciousness. He vaguely felt as though he could hear himself speaking, yet his body was so weak that he couldn't move at all, leaving him unsure whose voice it really was.
Was it something he was hearing in a dream? Or something else entirely?
At the Valley of the End, Naruto from the mission scroll world looked at Sasuke Uchiha and continued, "Just like you said, I can't understand your hatred. So I won't, and I never once thought about stopping you from taking revenge."
"Naruto…"
Sasuke looked at the Naruto beside him.
It was true. Just as Naruto said, he had never tried to stop Sasuke's revenge plans even once.
Naruto turned his gaze back to this world's Sasuke and went on, "But if you keep throwing away everything important just for revenge, even after it's over, will you still be the same Sasuke? And don't you want to restore the Uchiha Clan? If you become a Missing-nin for the sake of revenge, what kind of Uchiha are you planning to rebuild?"
"Breaking away from Konoha and going independent? Can a Uchiha Clan that's only just recovering really stand up to the other villages? And that special Kekkei Genkai that can even control Tailed Beasts… do you really think no one would covet it?"
He admitted that he didn't know much, but there were still some things he understood.
"I've heard that it was precisely because other clans feared the Uzumaki Clan's sealing techniques that the Uzumaki became a target. That's why multiple clans joined forces to wipe them out. That's why my mom, Karin, and her mom lost their clan and their country. That's why the survivors had no choice but to change their names and scatter across the world, right?"
Sasuke, who also came from the mission scroll world, glanced sideways at Naruto. Normally he acted pretty foolish, but he had actually thought this far ahead?
This world's Sasuke Uchiha had never even heard of the Uzumaki Clan. Driven by hatred, he couldn't care less about any of that right now. All he wanted was to kill Itachi Uchiha and avenge his clan.
"I really don't get you," Naruto said, staring hard at the Sasuke lying on the ground, his brows drawn tight. "Are you really taking revenge for the Uchiha Clan?"
Compared to the Sasuke beside him, the Sasuke in front of him seemed different. His fixation on Itachi felt far too deep.
"Are you avenging the clan, or are you just trying to kill Itachi because he betrayed you?"
Naruto didn't know that in this world, after seeing Itachi again and learning that Itachi intended to capture Naruto Uzumaki, Sasuke's sense of his own weakness had deepened even further. He was terrified that Itachi would once again appear and erase Naruto, Sakura, Kakashi, and the others from his side…
That was something even Sasuke himself hadn't realized.
Faced with Naruto's question, Sasuke roared back, "What difference does it make?! He slaughtered the entire clan! He killed my father! My mother!! As the last survivor of the Uchiha, shouldn't I bear the clan's honor and responsibility?!"
"Bear the Uchiha's honor and responsibility?"
For some reason, those words stirred a wave of helplessness in Naruto. He suppressed it before speaking, then calmly said to the Sasuke across from him, "Until not long ago, I didn't even know I had parents…"
Neither Sasuke Uchiha, nor Sasuke beside him, nor anyone else understood why Naruto suddenly brought this up.
Naruto continued, "But not long after I found out who my father and mother were, I learned something else…"
Something else?
Sasuke Uchiha, who had just fought Naruto at the Valley of the End, instinctively treated the Naruto in front of him as that same Naruto and asked without thinking, "What is it?"
He had a strong feeling it must be important. Otherwise, Naruto wouldn't bring it up at a time like this.
Meanwhile, the Naruto Uzumaki lying on the ground, still not fully conscious, finally understood what was happening.
It was someone with a voice exactly like his, speaking.
He said—
"My father and mother…"
"…were both killed by someone from the Uchiha Clan."
The instant those words left Naruto's mouth, Sasuke Uchiha's eyes flew open in stunned disbelief.
"!!"
His pupils shrank sharply as he stared at the Naruto across from him, utterly unable to believe what he'd just heard.
Behind Naruto, young Obito Uchiha lowered his head slightly. Sorrow filled his eyes, along with shame and guilt for the miserable fate of this world's version of himself.
Sasuke, who came from the same world as Naruto, looked at him with a blank expression, waiting to see what he would say next.
Lying on the ground, this world's Naruto Uzumaki was clearly conscious. He heard every word perfectly. But what he heard was so shocking that, at that moment, he chose not to wake up and instead continued listening.
The only one who noticed he had already woken up was Rin Nohara, who was treating him. She judged it from the subtle movement of Naruto Uzumaki's eyeballs beneath his closed eyelids.
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting?! Do you even know what you're saying?! Naruto Uzumaki!!!"
Sasuke from this world roared at the Naruto from the mission scroll world.
"What he said is all true," Obito Uchiha said calmly. "The one who killed Minato-sensei and Kushina-nee in your world, the one who made the entire Konoha fear the Nine-Tails, the one who turned Naruto into the most special existence in the village, making everyone hate him and resent him…"
"It was someone from the Uchiha clan."
What Obito wanted to say was that the true culprit behind all of this was himself in this world.
But to Sasuke Uchiha of this world, the unspoken meaning sounded like something else entirely—
If you want to shoulder the honor and hatred of the entire Uchiha clan, then the first thing you must bear is the hatred born from Naruto Uzumaki, and even all of Konoha's fear of the Nine-Tails.
Adult Kakashi understood what Obito meant, yet the way he interpreted it aligned perfectly with Sasuke's understanding.
"You know this place," Kakashi said. "This is the Valley of the End, where the First Hokage, Hashirama Senju, fought Madara Uchiha."
He lifted his head, looking at the two towering statues. "Do you know why the First Hokage chose to fight Madara to the death here?"
The heavy rain had come quickly and was now just as quickly fading, the downpour gradually weakening.
Sasuke Uchiha's eyes widened. His pupils shrank violently, trembling in their sockets like an earthquake. He could no longer comprehend what these people were saying.
Adult Kakashi continued, "Because Madara Uchiha used the Sharingan to forcibly bind the Nine-Tails as his summoning beast and attacked Konoha with it. To reduce civilian casualties, the First Hokage lured him here. They fought for an entire day and night, and in the end, the First Hokage killed the rogue ninja Madara Uchiha right here."
"But it didn't end there. Madara Uchiha faked his death and hid in the shadows for decades. Then, when Obito was critically wounded during the Kannabi Bridge mission, Madara saved him, but in doing so, rewrote his entire future. He turned a boy who once dreamed of becoming Hokage into someone who hated Konoha, hated the Hokage, and hated the entire world, all to carry out a plan that even Madara Uchiha himself didn't fully understand."
Kakashi's words sounded somewhat biased in Obito's favor, yet every single sentence was the truth.
Cause and effect had never been as simple as one cause leading to one result. Sometimes many causes shaped a single outcome, and sometimes one factor could branch into countless futures.
Those words collided violently inside Sasuke Uchiha. The pressure of the atmosphere, the resentment with nowhere to go, made it feel as though his lungs were about to burst. He spat out another mouthful of blood and lay there, coughing uncontrollably.
"Sasuke!"
Naruto told Sakura and Rin to tend to his injuries first.
He told this world's Sasuke that his parents had died under the schemes of Black Zetsu and the Uchiha, hoping to make him understand that hatred was never something so simple.
Just like Sasuke's brother had once said, sometimes Sasuke was even more naïve than this idiot, pure like a blank sheet of paper.
Exactly.
Like an explosive tag. Stick it anywhere, and it detonates there.
At the very least, he needed to first figure out what had really happened between the Uchiha and Konoha back then, what had happened between his brother and the masked man, and how much Danzō Shimura had done behind the scenes before choosing revenge.
They didn't know the full details yet, but judging from the information his dad had brought back from the future—that Sasuke didn't return to Konoha after killing Itachi, but instead joined Akatsuki—there were definitely many secrets hidden. Maybe even joining Akatsuki had been him being used as an explosive tag by that world's masked man.
He couldn't let Sasuke pursue revenge at any cost, sinking deeper and deeper into darkness.
After losing everything, Sasuke would truly be like Obito, turning around to find nothing left behind him.
Only to discover in the end that it had all been a deception orchestrated by Black Zetsu…
Although Naruto certainly hated the Obito Uchiha from his own world, he couldn't deny that Obito—chosen by Madara to inherit the plan, who personally destroyed everything after losing Rin—was infuriating and hateful, yet also pitiful. Of all people, it was him who had been chosen by Madara Uchiha and Black Zetsu.
Naruto couldn't help but think that if this role had been taken by the Sasuke beside him, it would have been even more heartbreaking.
"I really can't understand your hatred, but…"
He was about to continue speaking to this world's Sasuke—
About how watching him lose himself in the vortex of hatred, even going so far as to throw himself at Orochimaru, knowing full well that Orochimaru only wanted his body and his life, still caused him unbearable pain.
Orochimaru clearly wanted to use Sasuke's body as a vessel for Living Corpse Reincarnation. He never truly intended to help him get revenge. If revenge was the goal, why not stay with Team 7? As companions, they would have been willing to shoulder that burden together.
—Those words never made it out.
"This is the place!!" Pakkun's voice suddenly rang out from the distance.