Sakura had been waiting to see how their surprisingly profound "debate" would continue. She never could have imagined that Sasuke would, without the slightest warning, use the most direct and brutal form of violence to bring it all to an end!
Meanwhile, after the initial agony and shock, the humiliation and fury building inside Naruto erupted like a volcano!
He suddenly raised his head and roared at Sasuke, his voice trembling with both pain and anger.
"Damn it, Sasuke! What gives you the right to hit me?! If you've got the guts... if you've got the guts, let's settle this fair and square! What kind of man sucker-punches someone?!"
Sasuke merely stood calmly where he was. He even tilted his head slightly. There was neither pride nor guilt on his face after throwing that punch—only the detached calm of someone observing an experiment, along with a faint trace of... mockery.
He spread his hands in an innocent yet vaguely provocative gesture.
Then, looking at Naruto, who was baring his teeth in pain and glaring at him furiously, Sasuke calmly asked a question. Every word was like an icy needle, piercing straight into Naruto's impassioned speech about ideals from moments ago.
"Naruto..."
"Why don't you use that theory of yours about 'mutual understanding between people' to convince me to stop? Why don't you make me 'understand' your pain and anger?"
He leaned forward slightly, his gaze sharp as a blade.
"Since you firmly believe... that the ideals you want to carry on are right, and that 'understanding' can solve everything..."
"Then..."
"When I use my fists because I don't 'understand' you—and even hurt you..."
Sasuke lowered his voice, yet his words carried even more clearly to Naruto and Sakura's ears. There was a cruel interrogation in his tone, one aimed directly at the heart of the matter.
"Why... are you still angry?"
"Why do you still feel pain and humiliation?"
"Why do you want to challenge me to a fight and retaliate through another form of conflict?"
"Where did your 'understanding' go... when you needed it?"
"Can it... really resolve this most immediate and real instance of 'misunderstanding' and 'conflict' right in front of you?"
Sasuke's cold questioning twisted the ideal of "understanding" into an absurd extreme, wrapping Naruto in an invisible web.
The anger and pain had yet to leave Naruto's face, but now an even deeper layer of confusion and frustration clouded it.
He clenched his fists, his fingernails digging deeply into his palms as if the physical pain could somehow suppress the turmoil in his heart. His voice squeezed through gritted teeth, carrying the chill of someone who felt deliberately misunderstood and provoked.
"What... does that have to do with you hitting me?!"
He simply couldn't understand how Sasuke's act of violence could be directly connected to his belief that people should try to understand one another.
Or even become an argument for rejecting that belief altogether.
"Of course it has something to do with it!"
Sasuke nodded firmly, deliberately adopting an expression of utmost seriousness, as though he were genuinely explaining some profound truth.
He took a small step forward, closing the distance between himself and Naruto, whose body was still slightly hunched from pain and anger. His voice was clear and deliberate, as if he were patiently instructing a particularly slow student.
"I wanted to hit you."
Sasuke first stated this "fact."
"So, according to your belief that 'people should understand one another'..."
A cold, cunning light flickered in Sasuke's eyes.
"You should... try to 'understand' my desire and impulse to hit you."
"Then you should convince me and make me understand you, so that I won't hit you again."
Sasuke deliberately dressed up the malicious desire to hurt someone as a personal feeling that simply needed to be "understood."
"So how can you be angry?"
He asked with feigned confusion, his voice dripping with mockery.
"Isn't being angry proof that you don't 'understand' me?"
"Doesn't that mean you're betraying the very ideals you claim to believe in?"
Sasuke continued developing his absurd "logic."
"What you should do is follow my feelings and 'understand' me."
"Look, all I did was... want to hit you."
He reduced a malicious attack to nothing more than a simple matter of personal desire.
As though any negative emotion Naruto felt in response was itself a betrayal of the ideal of "understanding."
"You—!!"
Naruto was completely speechless!
A suffocating mixture of absurdity, anger, and grievance rushed straight to his head!
His face turned bright red, the flush spreading from his neck all the way to the tips of his ears. His body trembled uncontrollably, his chest rising and falling violently, yet...
He couldn't find a single convincing argument to refute Sasuke's twisted but internally consistent sophistry!
He wanted to shout. He wanted to strike back with even harsher words. He even... wanted to do exactly what Sasuke had done and punch him right back!
But the moment that thought arose, Naruto forcibly suppressed it.
He was afraid... afraid that if he really struck Sasuke, he would fall straight into the trap Sasuke had set for him.
It would prove that his belief in "understanding" was fragile in the face of conflict. It would prove that he, too, could be controlled by anger—that he was no different from Sasuke.
Wouldn't that only confirm Sasuke's mockery?
So Naruto could only stand there rigidly. His tightly clenched fists trembled, his knuckles turning white from the force, but he couldn't bring himself to throw a punch.
An unprecedented sense of helplessness and frustration pinned him in place, leaving him completely at a loss.
Seeing Naruto in such a miserable state—so angry that he could barely contain himself, yet unable to vent that anger anywhere—
The corner of Sasuke's mouth finally curled into a clear and infuriating smile of triumph.
He gave a derisive snort and mercilessly delivered the cruelest blow of all, one that struck directly at Naruto's sorest spot.
"See..."
"A dead last will always be a dead last."
That familiar, contemptuous insult carried even greater force in the present circumstances.
Before Naruto could recover from the double blow or suppress the fury that was nearly bursting from his chest, Sasuke apparently decided that his "experiment" still wasn't thorough enough.
Slowly, in an even more teasing and amused tone, he delivered the final blow.
"Oh, right, Naruto..."
"According to your ideals, now..."
"You should also 'understand' my desire to call you a dead last."
"You can't get angry, got it?"
"You have to... go along with me and understand me."
"Understand?"
Having said that, Sasuke no longer looked at Naruto's eyes, which seemed ready to spit fire yet were desperately suppressing their rage. The overwhelming collision of emotions had left Naruto looking almost stunned and lost.
It was as though this "debate of ideals"—whose rules Sasuke had defined entirely on his own, and which he had declared a complete victory—was already over.
Naruto remained standing there stiffly.
The pain in his left eye had yet to fade.
The anger in his heart churned like molten lava.
But more painful than either of those was the profound confusion, grievance, and doubt that came from having the very thing he believed in turned against him—leaving him unable to respond.
His own ideals had even been turned into a weapon used to hurt him.
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