"This is… a genjutsu, right?"
It's a genjutsu, right?
It's a genjutsu, right?
It's a genjutsu—right?!
Kabuto was breathing hard.
[The gloomy guy with the glasses a second ago, and he cracked in three seconds flat]
[Hanabi: Three seconds. That's all I need to make an enemy hysterical]
[So what in the world did Hanabi turn INTO?!]
"Hanabi?!" Naruto cried out.
"Calm down, Naruto. The Transformation Technique's still up—which means Hanabi isn't hurt," Sasuke said, clapping a hand on Naruto's shoulder.
"Hm?!" Kakashi didn't know what had happened, but Hanabi seemed to have been wounded. And yet her Transformation Technique showed no sign of breaking?
"Just who are you?!"
Kabuto flung "Nonō Yakushi's" arm off him, then took a step back.
Warm blood.
"You… don't recognize me anymore? It's me, Kabuto…"
It was as if that day were playing out all over again.
Only the two roles seemed to have been swapped.
That look of disbelieving despair, the look of being disavowed by the person dearest to you.
—Wrong, wrong, this is wrong!
"Kabuto…"
"Kabuto…"
"Kabuto…"
Every cry detonated right beside his ear.
Every word felt like it was punching straight through his heart.
But it was fine—he had already, concretely, severed Nonō Yakushi's arteries. She would die any moment now. One minute, no, thirty seconds…
Eh…?
I…
"Did I… kill her?"
Save her.
I have to save her?
No, no, it isn't like that!
This is fake!
Why—when that's so obviously a fake—can't what I'm feeling settle down at all?!
"Hanabi's the one who got hurt, so why is Kabuto-senpai this terrified?"
Even Naruto could see that Kabuto was shaken.
"So this is what a 'psychological attack' looks like, I suppose," Kakashi said, scratching his head.
Frankly he was more interested in how Hanabi knew the life story of one unremarkable Konoha Genin—and could launch a pinpoint psychological strike off it.
This wasn't genjutsu in the usual sense, but it was plenty terrifying.
Just like the things he'd been through himself.
No good—don't think about it, the PTSD's going to act up!
Kakashi rubbed the corner of his eye.
[I can't, Hanabi's attacks are too hellish]
[Can't bring myself to watch]
[Kiritsugu crying lmao]
[Same treatment Kakashi got]
And then—
Nonō Yakushi's body went cold.
"Eh?"
No change.
It wasn't the brat called Hanabi.
It was simply Nonō Yakushi's corpse.
"Did I… kill her again?!"
He was the one who'd won, yet Kabuto sank weakly to the ground.
The blood on his hands was slowly going cold.
The eyes of that corpse were going dark, too.
Kabuto was a medical-nin, so he was certain—he had, beyond any doubt, killed her. No substitution, no clone…
"That's… completely dead? But then why hasn't the Transformation Technique broken?" Hayate Gekko was wondering whether he ought to step up and declare Kabuto the winner—but Hanabi's Transformation hadn't dropped even in "death," which clearly meant she couldn't actually be "dead."
The thought that even his senior had been played left Hayate Gekko wondering: if he stepped out now, would he be made a fool of too?
He shot a pleading look toward the Third Hokage.
But the Third Hokage wasn't watching the arena at all. Pipe in his mouth, eyes turned skyward, he looked almost like he was savoring the moment—so he conveniently failed to notice Hayate Gekko's expression or the mood on the floor.
"Here we go again." Neji, at least, had figured something out.
The Hanabi-Style Transformation Technique—an extraordinary Transformation that not even the Byakugan's dōjutsu could see through.
Hanabi using this method to land psychological blows on people was hardly a first.
And not just in front of Neji.
In private, Hanabi had practiced all sorts of seppuku and suicide poses, several times over.
She was just waiting for Uchiha Itachi to come back so she could perform, right in front of him, a few rounds of his father Uchiha Fugaku's flashy, theatrical suicide—followed by a rendition of a young Sasuke collapsing into a mental breakdown and offing himself too.
—Hanabi guaranteed it: this trick was far more useful than Tsukuyomi.
"Hanabi…" Hinata was worried, but she was also quite composed—from a moment ago until now, Hanabi had only ever been performing.
It was the people who didn't know better who, faced with the corpse of a strange woman, were now thrown into a bit of a panic.
Everyone here was a ninja, sure, but the number who'd actually witnessed a killing was small.
"This is the first time I've seen Kabuto rattled to this degree."
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes too.
The scene before him was genuinely beyond anything he'd imagined.
He had run through Hanabi's abilities in his head, even considered that Kabuto might overpower her—or that Kabuto might put on a "show" right as victory neared and deliberately throw the match.
But what Orochimaru had never once foreseen was a situation like this.
Kabuto Yakushi had lost his combat ability before displaying a shred of his real strength.
"This move…" Gaara, naturally, didn't for a second believe Hanabi was dead. Although that "Nonō Yakushi" had indeed turned into a corpse, as Gaara saw it, that was simply his own strength falling short, leaving him unable to see through it.
"For that Konoha Genin to be shaken this badly—what on earth did he see?" Kankuro, on the other hand, figured Hanabi had let Kabuto glimpse something truly dreadful.
A woman who could let Gaara sleep soundly would surely wield psychological attacks more terrifying still.
"What kind of genjutsu even is this?" Shikamaru watched for a long while and still couldn't make out the specifics. "Don't tell me it's pure acting?"
—But could pure acting really rattle a man like Kabuto-senpai this much?
Shikamaru thought it over and concluded, in the end, that this had to be some tactic combining the Transformation Technique with genjutsu.
"…So. You're Kabuto Yakushi, aren't you?"
A voice suddenly appeared right beside Kabuto's ear. It was Nonō Yakushi's voice.
And the corpse before his eyes—vanished.
"Ngh…"
In that one instant, Kabuto completely lost the ability to fight.
The thought that surfaced in his mind wasn't "that wasn't Nonō Yakushi, thank goodness."
It was "thank goodness, I didn't kill her one more time."
The moment he understood that thought, every muscle in Kabuto's body lost its strength.
His muscles refused to exert force.
Because his body refused to kill Nonō Yakushi a third time.
If he ever actually did such a thing, then his persona as "Kabuto Yakushi" would surely collapse, break completely and utterly… even if this was nothing but a fake.
"My rational mind tells me all of this is fake, but my senses—my feelings—are telling me it's real. What is this, I can't tell them apart, I can't tell them apart anymore…"
Kabuto couldn't fight at all.
"It's all right. You only have to rest now."
"Nonō Yakushi" helped Kabuto raise his arm.
Kabuto finally spoke, his voice hoarse and trembling: "I… forfeit."