Outside Kirigakure, in a long-abandoned training ground few even remembered existed—
That was where Kaguya Ren and Terumi Mei stood now.
"I'm just saying… it's not like we're discussing something that needs to be spelled out loud," Mei muttered, frowning as she took in the increasingly desolate surroundings. Old training equipment lay half-rotted beneath wind and rain, and faint specks of dried blood still clung to the ruined grounds. "Did we really have to come all the way out here, Ren?"
"It's about the atmosphere," Ren said lightly.
He stopped beside a humanoid target dummy with a fist-sized hole punched straight through its chest. He lifted a hand, brushing the battered wood as if greeting an old acquaintance.
"Some things… only sound like the truth if the place you say them matches the weight of what you mean."
Mei leaned against a scarred tree, tilting her head as she watched him. "So what truth are you planning to deliver, using this place as your stage?"
"Don't be so cold. Don't press so hard." Ren bit into the last warm piece of tri-color dango in his hand, then flicked the untouched skewer toward her. "Want something sweet? I heard sugar helps the brain think."
"Then you'd better say something worth spending sugar on," Mei replied.
She caught it and took a small bite.
The sweetness was almost excessive—soft, sticky, and cloying enough that it filled her mouth instantly. Oddly, it dulled the chill of the abandoned training ground, making the shadows feel less biting.
"So sweet…" Mei's brows knit. "How much sugar did you tell them to dump into this?"
Ren shrugged. "In this cold, suffocating village… only something this sweet can make me feel even a little warm."
He finished his last bite and looked up.
Mei's body had gone rigid without her noticing. Even her chewing slowed to a stop.
Ren's lips curved, half-amused. "What? You think because I said that, I'm about to start spilling treason straight from the heart? Come on, Mei. That reaction… you really don't trust me much."
"That's because ever since I met you, you've been someone I can't understand," Mei said bluntly, swallowing. Her gaze was steady. "So say it. What did you actually bring me here to tell me?"
Ren's expression flattened.
"The Third Mizukage's thinking…" he said quietly, "…is outdated."
A flash of lightning ripped across Kirigakure's heavy sky, turning gray clouds white for an instant. Thunder followed—deep, violent, the kind that made small children cower indoors.
But nature's roar couldn't compare to the shock of Ren's casual sentence.
"Ren…" Mei stumbled back two steps. Her breathing turned uneven. "What happened on that mission? What did you see—why would you suddenly say something like that?!"
"You think I got replaced?" Ren waved a hand. "Relax. Unless it's one of the Sannin, a Kage, or a jinchūriki-level monster, no one's swapping me out that easily."
He turned, slid his right hand into the hole in the target's chest, and spoke with a distant, almost nostalgic tone.
"Question. Do you know what this place is?"
Mei's eyes narrowed warily. "What is it?"
"This is where I took the graduation exam," Ren said. "The day I became a genin."
He closed his eyes.
Then he began walking through the broken training ground like he'd walked it a thousand times. His voice drifted like sleep-talk, soft and flat.
"Here… I killed a guy who'd hated me since the academy. Honestly, our grudge never should've reached life and death."
He stopped, as if seeing the past in the air.
"But he didn't see it that way. The moment the exam started, he came for me like a rabid dog—like killing me was the only thing left in his life."
Ren's footsteps continued.
"And then… his best friend came for me. He wanted my head as a ticket to graduate."
His voice didn't change.
"He died too. Not by my hand, but by the hand of my best friend at the academy."
Ren paused, and for the first time there was the faintest hitch—so small it might've been imagined.
"Yeah. She was a girl."
Mei's throat tightened.
"But the funny part?" Ren continued, indifferent again. "She didn't protect me because we were friends. She protected me because she wanted to make sure I died by her hand."
His fingers tightened slightly against the ruined wood.
"So she could become a 'proper' shinobi… and earn money to feed her little brothers and sisters."
Lightning flickered again, briefly illuminating Ren's face.
It was calm—too calm. Like a mask worn so long, it had become skin.
"I don't know if your graduation exam looked anything like mine," Ren said. "But since that day… I've believed it."
"The way Kirigakure is run now… is wrong."
Mei's lips parted. Her voice came out small. "But… that's Kirigakure's tradition, isn't it?"
"It wasn't like this when the Second was alive," Ren said at once, his tone unchanged. "After the First founded the village, Mist followed the Second's secret laws, didn't it?"
He turned his head slightly, voice clean and merciless.
"But when the Second governed, the academy didn't force students to kill each other in pairs just to graduate."
Mei bit down hard on her lower lip.
She couldn't refute him.
The Second Mizukage had laid foundations. The Third had built Mist into what it was now. Who was right? Who was wrong? She was still a teenager—how could she weigh something like that and pretend she had an answer?
So she grasped the one argument she could.
"Maybe… the Third-sama has his reasons," Mei said quickly. "At least now, our village's average shinobi quality and mission completion rate are higher than other villages. Right, Ren?"
Ren sighed, almost tired.
"Average quality… is that useful?"
He looked at her, and his words sharpened.
"Since the other villages' Second generation took power, how many Kage-level monsters have they produced?"
"Cloud has the Gold and Silver Brothers who assassinated the Second Hokage. The Third Raikage who could suppress the Eight-Tails alone and fight an entire army. Killer B, the perfect Eight-Tails jinchūriki, and his brother—the Fourth Raikage, A."
"Sand had the Third Kazekage with Magnet Release, Chiyo the puppet master and her grandson Sasori of the Red Sand. And the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa, who could subdue Shukaku."
"Stone doesn't have as many famous names, but Ōnoki—the one called Two-Weights—stands at the top of the Third generation of Kage."
"And Konoha?" Ren's mouth curved without humor. "Do I even need to say it? The Legendary Sannin. Konoha's White Fang, Hatake Sakumo. The Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen. Danzō, founder of Root. The Yellow Flash, Namikaze Minato—each one heavy enough to crush the era."
Ren's gaze darkened.
"And us?"
"What does Mist have besides the Third?"
He didn't raise his voice, but the words struck like blades.
"How many shinobi in this village can put a hand on their chest and swear they can face another village's Kage—or a jinchūriki—head-on?"
"None."
"Not one."
He let the silence hang, then added, almost conversationally—
"Even Amegakure—smaller than us—produced Hanzō of the Salamander. The man who shook the Second War and earned the name 'Demigod.'"
Mei stood frozen.
Then Ren's tone shifted, and the next words nearly stopped her heart.
"You've been wondering why I returned to the village so fast, haven't you?"
"The answer's simple."
"The mission failed."
Mei's fingers went numb.
"Of the ANBU who went—including me—less than one-fifth came back. Two jōnin leading the operation died."
"And even the Three-Tails… entered a revival period because the jinchūriki died."
Mei's face drained.
Ren looked at her straight on.
"Do you know how we failed?"
"We were beaten by a twelve-year-old Konoha jōnin… and an unknown shinobi with both Mangekyō Sharingan and Wood Release."
Mei couldn't breathe.
Ren kept speaking, like he was describing weather.
"Hard to imagine, right? Mist's veteran jōnin didn't last even ten exchanges against that kid before getting cut down."
"And dozens of ANBU… vanished in an instant, turned into rag dolls hanging from branches… by a Wood Release Uchiha."
Mei's knees nearly buckled.
And in the cold of that abandoned training ground, for the first time, she felt it—
The weight of everything Mist had sacrificed.
And the possibility that all of it had been for nothing.
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