Chapter 133: News
"What is it this time?"
"Calm down, Kakashi kun."
On the projection screen, Aizen Sousuke no longer looked like the gentle, bookish man Kakashi remembered, yet the way he sat in his chair, hair neatly combed, fingers wrapped around a cup of red tea, still carried that same unsettling charm.
Facing that unfathomable figure, Kakashi forced down the unease twisting in his chest. He drew in a slow breath and tried to steady himself.
For some reason, especially in the last few days, a strange panic had been clinging to him.
He kept feeling as if someone were watching him, hiding just behind another presence. That feeling grew stronger whenever he was with his friends, until even simply standing beside them made him tense.
Just when the world seemed to be improving, when he was slowly becoming the kind of person he wanted to be, and his friends were finally catching up to their own potential, this sensation had appeared and rooted itself deep inside him. Kakashi had started to wonder if he was sinking into some paranoid delusion.
On paper, it made no sense.
As the eleventh ranked member of Las Noches, even if he could not win, he should at least be able to escape from almost any situation. To feel monitored without being able to confirm it was irrational, and that contradiction only made him more irritable.
Being with Obito and Rin calmed him a little, but paradoxically, in those moments the feeling of being watched became even sharper.
You seem quite uneasy. Has something happened?
"It just feels a little off," Kakashi admitted.
"Feelings."
Aizen blew gently across the surface of his tea. The pale red liquid barely rippled. His voice remained smooth, magnetic, almost soothing.
"Feeling is simply an empiricist shortcut, Kakashi kun. It is a pattern your mind builds out of past experiences. Generally speaking, when people develop a strong premonition they cannot explain, it is because they have already linked together a series of subtle signs of crisis."
He tapped the steel spoon lightly against the porcelain. The crisp sound rang through the call.
"In other words, there must be something around you that does not conform to your usual sense of the world, something you are unwilling to acknowledge. Only anomalies that contradict your cognitive instincts can make your senses feel so uneasy. If your perception is as keen as I believe, then theoretically, you should already know the source."
Aizen's eyes half closed, as if reciting a lecture he had given countless times.
"Your eyes have already captured a strange image. Your mind has drawn a conclusion faster than conscious thought. Your brain has made a judgment before you could name it. Only in that state can we call it an instinctive reaction.
"It is the feeling you get when you glimpse another person in the mirror where there should be no one, when a phantom flickers at the edge of your vision as you read, when a second set of footsteps echoes behind you while you walk alone."
"Only when such things truly brush against your perception, and vanish just as quickly, will you tell yourself you have a premonition."
Aizen stirred his tea again.
"To put it simply, if you have a premonition that you cannot decode, then what you are sensing is either foolish wishful thinking, like winning the lottery, or something you do not want to face. It is that simple, Kakashi kun."
"...So you recorded a video just to lecture me on human instinct?"
Kakashi stared at Aizen's smiling face for a long moment before giving up on trying to untangle his logic. He let out a breath he had not realized he was holding.
"Thank you, I guess. Now that you have said that much, I know what I have to do. So, what about you? If you are taking the time to talk like this, you must have made some progress over there, right?"
"Not particularly."
Aizen smiled as if they were discussing the weather.
"The various ninja villages are secretly dealing with the Infinite Army. Once they identify the key traits, removing and erasing them is a simple task. That is not something you need to worry about. I am asking about you, Kakashi kun. How is life in Konoha treating you?"
"At first, I thought it was fine. After hearing you talk, I am starting to think something is wrong with it."
"What a pity. I had hoped to give you a more complete childhood. But since you have already recognized the problem yourself, there is no need for me to say more."
Aizen leaned back in his chair, fingers resting lightly on the armrest, an enigmatic smile playing on his lips as he watched the sullen expression on Kakashi's face.
For some reason, that smile sent a jolt through Kakashi's heart.
In his memories, Aizen's smile had never signaled anything good.
Yet that man always smiled. Always elegant, always composed, every curve of his lips carrying the quiet assurance that everything was under his control.
Now that gaze and that smile were focused entirely on Kakashi.
His mind stirred uneasily.
He knew this pattern all too well. Whenever Aizen began moving pieces on the board, it was always this natural, this effortless, leaving not even a seam to pry open.
"The test of courage for people is endless," Aizen said softly. "For you, for me, even for those who once sat on high and watched this world as gods. Each of us must confront our trial if we hope to ascend to a higher level. Otherwise, we are simply washed into the dust."
"So you are finally planning to move?"
"Recently, yes."
Aizen's eyes glinted.
"If Madara Uchiha's Infinite Army proves worthless, it may be time to proceed with the next stage."
"I understand. So I should stay in Konoha and wait for Minato's orders?"
"Have I not told you already?" Aizen smiled again. "All I want is to give you a better childhood, and then hope you can overcome your hardships through your own strength. That is all."
"Completely meaningless. Goodbye."
Kakashi cut the call, the image of Aizen's smile lingering on the blank screen like an afterimage burned into his eyes.
Aizen was a terrifying man.
His favorite game was to hide the most crucial information and then hint at it in front of the person most affected. Kakashi knew that habit too well.
Since Aizen had taken the initiative to call, offer explanations, and even make those soft promises, Kakashi was almost certain that something bad was about to happen to someone close to him.
That was not some vague omen. It was a cold, objective fact.
Once Aizen's attention settled on you, the ending was never good.
But if, as he had said, this strong premonition was just his mind trying to rationalize something irrational embedded in his daily life, then what was the trigger?
Aizen, as a master of illusion, would never speak without cause.
After cutting the connection, Kakashi leaned back and sank into thought.
No matter how he sifted through his memories, he could not find anything that felt like a missing piece.
If there was anything major that had changed, it was his reunion with his two childhood companions.
Yet no matter how he examined that, he could not find a flaw.
Rin's talent for Kido had been evaluated and confirmed. She really was a genius who could not only wield Kido, but understand and refine it.
Obito was even more unnerving. He was a genius beyond the frame of ordinary people, with a sense for space and time that outstripped most researchers.
Kakashi had already begun to suspect that if Obito had focused on space time ninjutsu from the very start, he might have been the one to break through the hyperspace travel barrier that Hueco Mundo still could not solve.
Yes, people said their grades had once been average, even poor. So what? Talent did not always announce itself early.
Kakashi ran through every doubt, every small inconsistency, over and over, and still nothing surfaced. He combed through countless tiny details of the last few days, then the last few months, but not a single one shouted anomaly.
So where did it go wrong?
Could Aizen have deliberately misled him?
The thought was absurd, and yet the unease would not fade.
With that lingering tension in his chest, Kakashi set out to meet Obito and Rin.
When he saw Obito, he realized at once that his own unease was not the only problem on the table.
Obito looked like he had not slept at all. Dark circles sat heavy beneath his eyes, yet the moment he saw Kakashi, he grabbed his hand, excitement flickering behind his exhaustion.
"...A cave?" Kakashi repeated.
"Yeah. I found it right below my house."
Obito scratched his head, embarrassed, the shadows under his eyes stark.
"I wanted to report it to the Hokage at first, but the guards stopped me. They said it was too minor to bother the Hokage with, and since this is not Uchiha compound territory, it should be handled by the clan instead. I went to the clan, but no one cared. They just told me to trust Hueco Mundo and let them handle it. So in the end, I decided I would report it to you."
"I see." Kakashi nodded. "Then take me there directly. We will have a look."
"Okay. I will call Rin too. We can treat it like an adventure."
"What kind of adventure could there possibly be under Konoha's basements?" Kakashi muttered. "At most, it will just be one of Aizen's laboratories."
"Haha, that counts as an adventure too."
Obito laughed loudly.
"And that is my basement. Sounds mysterious enough to me."
He continued to laugh as he hauled Kakashi along toward Rin's house.
Yet whether it was just his imagination or something more, Kakashi could not shake the feeling that, somewhere behind Obito's cheerful expression, a single pupil was quietly watching him as they ran.
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