Chapter 192: The Suicide Note Appears
Hiruzen Sarutobi exhaled a long, heavy breath, the smoke from his pipe curling lazily toward the ceiling of the Hokage's office. He watched as the Anbu operative stepped aside to reveal the summoned guest: Uchiha Kiyokazu, the Grand Elder of the Uchiha Clan. The lines on Hiruzen's face deepened. If Kiyokazu was here, it meant the situation had not improved. Had even Stelle's personal sealing scroll failed to draw Kagami out of his self-imposed exile?
Hiruzen unrolled the parchment across his desk. He had opened it with a singular purpose: to uncover the exact price demanded by the miraculous ninjutsu that had pulled Sakumo Hatake back from the brink of death. His eyes scanned the ink, searching for complex chakra formulas or medical diagrams. Instead, his gaze caught on a string of casual, overly familiar characters. It was not a medical treatise. It was a suicide note.
"Hiruzen, Kagami, Danzo, and Sakumo—my dear fellow comrades of Konoha, hello.
When you see this letter, I imagine I will already be dead.
I must have died in battle. Please, do not grieve for me. My death is for Konoha, a sacrifice for the thousands upon thousands of our fellow comrades.
Izuna-sensei and Tobirama-sensei passed their will onto me, and I have carried that will faithfully. I have not disgraced them.
Death is an end that everyone must experience; it's just that my end has come a bit earlier than yours.
As for that technique... I'm very sorry, but I cannot write it down. From the very moment that technique appeared, it was completely irrational.
Sigh, I'm really worried about you all. Danzo, if you actually dare to establish Root, I will crawl up from underground and wring your neck—did you hear me?
Hiruzen, congratulations on becoming Hokage. Although it sounds a bit hypocritical, I really didn't expect Tobirama-sensei to pass over me and give the position to you. I always thought that in his heart, I was the undisputed candidate for the hat.
But he guessed one thing right: I really was planning to leave Konoha back then. It's just that later, the situation became so grim that I no longer had the heart to abandon ship. Hiruzen, I'm leaving Konoha to you.
Kagami, I suddenly find myself not knowing what's appropriate to say to you. We grew up together. Although we studied under different masters, we practically trained side by side every day. You should really be considered my senior brother.
Since Master and Izuna-sensei asked you to look after me, you took me on as your personal responsibility. You've watched over me and tolerated my antics since we were young. Every time I was willful and made a mess, you were the one cleaning up after me. Thank you, Kagami.
I'll leave the Uchiha Clan to you from now on.
Kagami, take care.
And Sakumo, the Bushido spirit is not something to be followed blindly. Don't just throw yourself into the way of the warrior so casually. You are a ninja now; don't constantly talk about dying for someone else. Remember to live well. I still want to see you get married and have children.
Alright, after saying all this, this is the end. Everyone, farewell forever."
Hiruzen quickly tilted his head back, staring hard at the ceiling as the edges of his vision blurred. His throat worked silently for a moment, swallowing down the sudden, sharp lump forming there.
"Seriously..." he choked out, a bitter, watery chuckle escaping his lips. "I knew you weren't that honest. As your advisor, I worried about you every single day, pacing around like an old father fretting over his reckless daughter. And after all that, you leave me a fake ninjutsu scroll. Ida Mutzuki, you utterly heartless fellow."
The heavy oak door to the office suddenly swung open. Danzo strode in, his lone visible eye sharp and demanding as he balanced a massive stack of intelligence documents in one arm.
"I heard the scroll containing that technique from back then has finally surfaced," Danzo demanded, stepping up to the desk. "Let me see it."
Hiruzen wordlessly pushed the unfurled parchment across the polished wood. Danzo unceremoniously dumped his towering pile of documents onto the table, snatching the scroll with his free hand. He, too, harbored a burning desire to uncover the exact cost of the technique that had dragged Sakumo Hatake back from death's door.
Danzo's eye scanned the text. His jaw locked, a vein pulsing dangerously at his temple.
"She actually never intended to write it down," Danzo hissed, his fingers crinkling the edges of the precious paper. "That bastard. She has been lying to us from start to finish."
He glared at the ink as if trying to set it on fire with his gaze alone. "She even threatened to wring my neck from beyond the grave. If she was so incredibly capable, she shouldn't have gone and died in the first place!"
Hiruzen reached out, gently prying the scroll from Danzo's tightening grip, and handed it to Uchiha Kiyokazu.
"Take this," Hiruzen instructed, his tone shifting back to the grave authority of the Hokage. "Use whatever rhetoric you need. Trick Kagami out of that barrier if you must. If he continues like this, he will completely wear himself out."
It was not an exaggeration. If they failed to pull Uchiha Kagami out of his self-imposed isolation soon, the man would genuinely starve or exhaust himself to death.
Kiyokazu let out a long, ragged breath, his aged fingers wrapping tightly around the wooden spindle of the scroll.
"I will find a way to draw him out," the Grand Elder promised, bowing his head slightly. "But if it truly does not work, Hokage-sama, please grant me permission to deploy the Sealing Squad."
Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heel and departed the Hokage Building, his footsteps echoing down the corridor as he hurried back toward the Uchiha Clan compound.
Uchiha Madara's former residence sat at the absolute center of the Uchiha Clan lands, a geographical positioning that symbolized sitting at the heart of the clan and guarding all directions. The grand courtyard was steeped in history, yet now it served only as a tomb for the living.
Kiyokazu approached the heavy wooden gates of the courtyard. He raised a hand, lightly pressing his palm against the invisible wall of energy humming just inches from the wood. Faint, shimmering ripples of chakra flared outward from his touch, a solid barrier firmly blocking his advance.
Molding his own chakra, Kiyokazu synchronized his energy with the barrier just enough to let his voice pass through.
"Kagami," he called out, his low voice carrying a heavy weight. "It is me, Kiyokazu. Come out for a moment. I have something of the utmost importance to tell you. It concerns the forbidden technique scroll left behind by the Fourth Hokage."
Carried by the chakra resonance, the words drifted clearly into the silent courtyard.
Inside, slouched motionless in a wooden chair, Uchiha Kagami sat like a statue carved from ash. At the mention of the Fourth Hokage, his dull, lifeless eyes twitched slightly. A second later, the brief spark extinguished, returning to absolute stillness.
Kiyokazu stood outside the shimmering wall, the minutes stretching into an agonizing silence. No reply came. The gates remained firmly shut.
"Kagami," Kiyokazu tried again, a note of helpless desperation bleeding into his tone. "There is actually no forbidden technique written on this scroll. It contains the final words the Fourth Hokage left for everyone. Especially for you. Are you truly not going to look?"
He pressed both hands against the barrier, raising his voice to a shout. "Kagami! No matter what has happened, you must at least read the words she left for you! Pull yourself together and come out!"
The courtyard beyond the barrier remained devoid of movement.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, Kiyokazu unfurled the scroll. He scanned the text, his eyes locking onto the section addressed to Kagami, and deliberately altered the words.
"Kagami, regarding that forbidden technique, I want to tell you privately..."
He had barely finished the fabricated sentence when a voice finally drifted from within the barrier. It was incredibly raspy, sounding like dry leaves scraping against stone.
"Kiyokazu. Stop reading."
At the sound of that broken voice, hot tears pricked the corners of Kiyokazu's eyes.
"Come out," the Grand Elder urged softly. "Come out, and I will hand the scroll directly to you. You can read it yourself, whenever you wish."
The interior of the barrier plunged back into a suffocating silence. A long moment passed. Then, the slow, dragging sound of heavy footsteps echoed against the stone path.
The shimmering chakra wall suddenly dissolved into the air. Uchiha Kagami stepped out from the shadows of the gate. He carefully resealed the barrier behind him before slowly turning around. He extended a trembling, pale hand toward the elder.
"Where is the scroll?" Kagami demanded, his voice hollow. "Give it to me."
In the span of a mere five days, the man had become emaciated entirely beyond recognition. Kagami's cheeks were deeply sunken, his cheekbones jutting out sharply against his sallow skin. He was as thin as a rail, his usually vibrant eyes now dull and heavily mapped with thick, bloodshot veins.
Yet, his voice remained eerily calm. There was no ripple of emotion, none of the hysterical sorrow or weeping grief that others might have expected from a man in mourning. His gaze was perfectly flat, devoid of any fluctuation.
It was precisely this version of Uchiha Kagami that sent a cold spike of genuine fear straight through Kiyokazu's heart.
The Kagami who possessed a gentle temperament, the man who always carried a warm, reassuring smile on his lips, had been entirely erased. Standing before the Grand Elder was nothing more than a walking corpse.
Looking at those dead eyes, Kiyokazu couldn't help but think that Uchiha Kagami had already died on the brutal battlefields of the Land of Lightning. What stood here now was merely an empty shell, moving purely on lingering instinct.
With a trembling hand, Kiyokazu placed the scroll into Kagami's waiting palm.
"What I said just now... I made it up," Kiyokazu confessed, his voice thick with guilt. "It wasn't the actual content of the scroll. Kagami, you... you have to pull yourself together. We still have a war to fight. We have to go back to the battlefield together, and..."
The words caught in his throat. Looking at the broken man in front of him, Kiyokazu simply couldn't force the rest of the sentence out.
"I know," Kagami replied, his fingers curling tightly around the parchment. "I am fine. You do not need to worry."
Without another word, Kagami walked past the elder, his dragging footsteps carrying him slowly toward his own courtyard.
As he passed beneath the sprawling canopy of an ancient oak tree, his dragging footsteps finally came to a halt. He slowly turned his head, his dead eyes locking onto a distinct indentation on the thick trunk.
It was a handprint. A mark left behind by Stelle, permanently scarred into the wood from a day when she had playfully slapped the trunk with a chakra-infused palm.
Kagami shuffled toward the massive tree. He slowly raised his trembling hand, his pale fingers reaching out, desperately wanting to trace the edges of that lingering memory.
Before his fingertips could brush the rough bark, his eyes rolled back. His knees buckled beneath him, and he collapsed straight into the dirt like a puppet with its strings suddenly severed.
"Kagami!" Kiyokazu yelled, rushing forward and dropping to his knees to haul the unconscious man up from the dust.
He snapped his head back, glaring at the Anbu operatives hidden in the surrounding shadows. "Quickly! Get a medical ninja here immediately!"
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