[Starting in Naruto with a Daily Login System] Chapter 63

Chapter 63

Time passed.

Not a lot. Not enough. Just enough to pretend the world was moving on.

The Masked Man vanished like a ghost with better places to haunt. No sightings. No sabotage. No creeping presence in the corner of my eye.

But I knew better.

He was out there.

Watching me.

Breathing down my neck like a memory I couldn’t shake.

I started looking over my shoulder so often I nearly threw a kunai at my reflection once. Slept with my back to the wall. Couldn’t walk through a crowd without clocking exits. Tracked footsteps behind me that vanished when I turned.

Maybe he was gone.

Or maybe I was going crazy.

Argh.

Anyway.

It was another dull gray morning when I found myself staring across a training ground, watching a kid with too much talent and way too little childhood throw kunai with surgical precision.

Uchiha Itachi.

Dead calm. Polite. Terrifyingly focused.

“Too tight on the wrist,” I called out, lounging in the shade like someone who wasn’t half-hallucinating from paranoia. “Your fourth throw’s always a hair right.”

He didn’t flinch. Just nodded once. “Yes, Kakashi-san.”

Kid didn’t call me sensei. Too formal. Too distant. Too Uchiha.

I walked over, hands in my pockets, the limp in my step less from injury and more from existential dread at this point. “You hiding something, or just nervous I’ll figure out your bloodline cheat codes?”

His Sharingan flared once in response. Just for a moment.

Then vanished.

“Not hiding,” he said. “Just… careful.”

But it was true.

The Nine-Tails attack had been different from the one I remembered. The one that never happened but somehow did. In that… timeline—the Kyuubi was controlled by an Uchiha. Clear, obvious. Traced back to the eyes. Easy target.

Here?

Not so much.

The beast was summoned, unleashed, and gone, with only a ghost in a mask and a memory of red eyes to tie it together.

And yet, the whispers spread. Insidious. Persistent.

There were rumors. Lots of them. The kind that didn’t come with proof but burned like gospel anyway. Rumors that the Uchiha clan had been involved.

Really?

Which absolute idiot would start a rumor like that?

Oh right.

Danzo.

I could practically smell the smug stink of Root all over it. Whispering in the right ears. Planting just enough fear to make people twitchy. Classic Danzo—feed a lie to the mob and then pretend to be the one offering a leash.

Still. The villagers?

How dumb could they be?

The Uchiha had nothing to gain by attacking the village with the Kyuubi. Nothing. What was the plan there? Flatten the village, live in the rubble, and rule over a smoking crater? Did they think Fugaku woke up one morning and decided, “You know what this clan needs? Arson and war crimes.”

It didn’t make any sense.

But logic didn’t matter when fear was involved. And people? They’d believe anything if it meant they didn’t have to feel powerless. A shadow moves wrong in an alley and suddenly everyone’s got pitchforks pointed at the Sharingan.

Idiots.

I glanced at Itachi again. Still motionless. Still listening.

“What do you think?” I asked.

His eyes met mine. Calm. Unreadable. Like he was calculating four moves ahead, even now.

“I think,” he said carefully, “that people will always fear what they don’t understand. And the Sharingan… makes it easy.”

Hn. Smart kid.

“Yeah, well,” I said, scratching the back of my neck, “they’re lucky they don’t have to look in a mirror every day and see something they fear.”

His gaze flicked to my forehead protector. He knew what was under it.

He didn’t say anything.

Didn’t have to.

I sighed and stood up. “We’ll train again tomorrow. I’ll show you a counter to the Raikiri in case some idiot ever comes charging at you with it. Just in case.”

“You’re not the idiot, are you?” he asked flatly.

I smirked. “Depends. Do I look like someone who makes rational life choices?”

His silence was answer enough.

I turned to leave, hands deep in my pockets, but his voice caught me just before I stepped off the field.

“Kakashi-san.”

I glanced back.

“If it comes to it…” he hesitated, then said it anyway. “If the village turns on us. What will you do?”

The wind carried the question like smoke.

I didn’t answer right away.

Because I didn’t know.

Because that question was a landmine, and I was already bleeding from the last one.

“I’ll protect the village,” I said. “But I’ll protect what’s right first.”

He nodded once, like he understood.

Or accepted it.

Or both.

And I walked away wondering just how many of us were already standing on opposite sides of a battlefield we hadn’t even seen yet.