"Kakashi-sensei, don't worry! You don't have to go back to the Sand Village anymore! We'll help you! Isn't that right, Sasuke?"
"Yeah."
"Sasuke is Orochimaru's disciple, so if he demands it, Orochimaru should be able to help bring the person back with the Edo Tensei!"
"Yeah."
"And Makoto-nii said the Hidden Rain has already figured out a way to truly revive people! It's just a pity I lost our bet earlier, so I couldn't revive my mom yet."
"Yeah—WAIT, WHAT?!"
Sasuke had just been acting as a mindless, brooding nodding machine, but the exact moment he heard Naruto casually mention true revival, he violently whipped his head around and stared at the blonde in absolute shock.
"There really is a way to revive the dead?!" Sasuke grabbed Naruto's jacket, hurriedly pressing for details.
Naruto had just said he was only one bet short of reviving his mother—wouldn't that mean Sasuke also had a tangible chance to revive his family?!
"Yeah! I just don't know exactly how they do it," Naruto scratched his head, nodding earnestly.
Watching the two of them drift further and further off topic, Kakashi couldn't help but sigh, feeling utterly speechless.
As for resurrection, Kakashi didn't find the concept strange at all.
After all, Kakashi had known from the very start about Makoto's grand plan to revive Rin, and he had even personally taken part in a crucial, highly-censored step of it—entering the illusion world to help materialize part of Rin's anatomy.
The ultimate purpose of reviving Rin was to give his former close friend the emotional anchor needed to turn back from the wrong path.
And in the exact same vein, what Kakashi had to do right now was increase the psychological odds—and the emotional leverage—of that friend turning back.
"Ahem."
Kakashi coughed loudly, reminding Naruto and Sasuke to refocus.
"Oh, right! Forget about that for now, Sasuke. Let's deal with Kakashi-sensei's love life first!" Naruto smacked his forehead, finally snapping back to the urgent matter at hand.
"Kakashi... this Uchiha Obito in the file—he was your old teammate, right?" Sasuke asked directly, looking over the stolen ANBU documents.
"To be more precise, he was my closest friend. We knew each other from childhood. Our relationship… was a lot like yours and Naruto's. Obito was also loud and reckless, and his ultimate dream was to become Hokage too." Kakashi glanced at Naruto, speaking about the past with a trace of genuine emotion.
....
At that exact same time—
The Masked Man arrived in Konoha.
He had come specifically looking for Kakashi.
Ever since the last time he had maliciously stuffed a massive amount of Hashirama cells into Kakashi's, the Masked Man had stayed on high alert for quite a while.
Yet, he never again experienced Kakashi using Kamui to transfer any strange, exploding objects into his private dimension.
That sudden silence made the Masked Man deeply suspicious.
Could Kakashi be dead?
Or was it because the last time he had pretended to be a helpful civilian and reported Kakashi to that Inuzuka-Hyūga-Aburame police squad, Kakashi had actually been arrested and thrown in prison?
To confirm Kakashi's status, the Masked Man covertly returned to Konoha.
Then, he saw Kakashi sprinting through the woods, actively chasing after Sasuke.
Once he confirmed Kakashi was perfectly fine, the Masked Man let out a quiet sigh of relief behind his orange mask.
"Maybe it is simply because the Shinobi World is too peaceful right now. Kakashi simply has no reason to use Kamui," the Masked Man muttered, finding a logical excuse for himself.
Then, with a well-I'm-already-here-anyway mindset, he decided to follow along and see what Kakashi was up to.
Hiding in the spatial distortion nearby, he overheard Kakashi telling Naruto and Sasuke about his tragic past with him.
"Kakashi-sensei, enough about that! What do you think of Uchiha Obito's grandmother?!" Naruto couldn't wait any longer and directly interrupted Kakashi's nostalgic storytelling.
'Hm?!' The Masked Man, who had just arrived in the trees, froze completely when he heard that.
'What did he mean, 'what do Kakashi think of my grandmother'?!'
And speaking of which, did the word "grandmother" here literally mean his grandma—or was it some kind of new, highly disturbing Konoha slang?
Honestly, the Masked Man's first instinct was to pray for the latter.
He would vastly rather believe Kakashi had designs on some bizarre slang concept than believe Kakashi had any kind of romantic connection to his actual grandmother.
His grandmother had just been a sweet, ordinary old woman, and she had died a long time ago!
"She…"
Kakashi's masked face twisted with conflict, even pain.
The dramatic expression invited all kinds of horrifying speculation on Obito.
In reality, what pained Kakashi was that he had to say these disgusting lies out loud himself, willingly nailing his own reputation to the pillar of eternal shame with his own hands, all for the sake of creating a plausible excuse.
Within Makoto's plan, reviving Rin needed no excuse.
With Kakashi around, it was perfectly natural for him to want to revive Rin in order to make up for his past mistakes.
Even if Obito learned about that, the logic would still make sense.
But wanting to revive—or reanimate—Obito's grandmother had no such natural justification.
Doing that out of nowhere would practically be declaring outright to the enemy: [We are deliberately reanimating your loved ones to psychologically torture you into making a choice.]
If that manipulative implication became too obvious, and the Masked Man sensed it was a trap, it might instead harden his resolve to destroy the world.
So, there absolutely had to be a highly suitable, personal reason for Obito's grandmother to suddenly appear on the resurrection list.
And once again, Kakashi was the one taking on the agonizing responsibility of providing that reason.
"When she was young, I had not yet been born. When I was born, she was already old." Kakashi closed his lone visible eye as two imaginary streams of tragic tears running down his face as he dramatically recited a poetic line from the infamous Vigorous Paradise series.
That's right—the Vigorous Paradise series actually had deep poetry written into the smut.
And those verses were wildly memorable, even more widely spread than common proverbs.
For example, in the Vigorous Paradise series, when describing the First Five Kage Summit, the inherently evil Uchiha Madara had drugged the entire venue, turning the political summit hall into complete unhinged chaos.
Kakashi sighed heavily. "I only hate that when she was young, I hadn't been born yet! By the time I was born, she was already old. By the time I grew up, she was already gone…"
Kakashi knew Naruto and Sasuke absolutely lacked the literary background to understand high poetry, so he simply explained his "tragic romance" in plain terms.
"As expected!" Naruto and Sasuke exchanged a triumphant glance.
As expected, there really was something deeply scandalous going on between Kakashi-sensei and his close friend's grandmother!
"What the hell is this guy even saying?!"
Under his orange mask, Obito looked completely shaken to his core, his Sharingan spinning wildly.
His current mood was no less horrifying than drinking a premium, life-saving potion for months, only to discover the label was forged and it was actually toilet water!
Kakashi have no idea that the real Obito was eavesdropping nearby, suppressed his internal agony and continued his Oscar-worthy performance.
"The first time I met her was when she came to the academy to find me. She hoped I would help look after her grandson, and she even brought me a homemade grilled fish. When I took the fish from her, my hand accidentally brushed against her weathered fingers... and my heart stirred so violently that I tossed and turned all night!"
"Later on, after she heard that Obito had gotten into trouble at school, she came to see me again. I personally made grilled fish and treated her to it. …After that, she said she felt her time was running out and wanted to entrust her grandson to me."
"That night, we… well, you get the idea." Kakashi looked away, playing the part of a melancholic lover.
"Then later, she passed away. And I let her down. I failed to protect Obito! Sigh."
Naruto and Sasuke were utterly uninterested in the romantic details of the story itself.
Their only goal was to confirm that Kakashi really did have this specific, granny fetish.
But after hearing that final, damning part, Obito was on the verge of mentally exploding!
He hurriedly warped himself back into the Kamui dimension.
If he stayed in the real world for one second longer, he was terrified he wouldn't be able to stop himself from murdering Kakashi on the spot!
"No wonder.... Rin was so cute and yet Kakashi never showed the slightest sign of liking her…"
Thinking back on everything from their childhood, Obito suddenly felt that the horrifying puzzle pieces all finally made sense!