Chapter 151: Minato Namikaze's Melancholy
It was not only Hiruzen Sarutobi and the Shinigami faction who were beset by internal and external troubles.
Minato Namikaze also felt the creeping weight of anxiety.
That unease, ironically, stemmed from the very organization that had once been Konoha's greatest stabilizer.
The Gotei Thirteen.
At the beginning, entrusting the Gotei Thirteen with dissidents and the early researchers of the Shinigami system had been the most logical choice. The world had been in chaos, normal order barely existed, and there was almost no framework that could have contained the new power.
Back then, Hiruzen Sarutobi, as the former Hokage, had enough prestige and political weight to manage the Thirteen Divisions with a firm hand. But after Aizen Sousuke's departure, the Gotei Thirteen had slowly begun to show a stance that diverged from Konoha.
Or rather, one that diverged from the Land of Fire itself.
They no longer needed to worry about survival.
Everything in the Seireitei was forged from chakra and natural energy. Food, hot springs, architecture, even the smallest tools were rational constructions spun from that fusion.
They were chakra beings in human form, no different in essence from tailed beasts given shape and consciousness.
Expecting them to remain sensitive to the wars of human nations was almost absurd.
The only reason they continued to move in step with Konoha at all was habit, a lingering sense of duty from when they had still been human.
They still told themselves that as long as they were once shinobi, they should contribute and work for the Leaf.
But as time passed, and the missions and daily struggles of the mortal world drifted farther from them, their thoughts and actions grew more detached.
To Shinigami, the lives and deaths of mortals were not just light, they were nearly meaningless.
On a good day, one could even summon souls at random and check whether they were suited to become Death. If they were not, it did not matter. Shinigami could conceive and give birth. Their children were born with one foot already in that same realm.
With that mindset, and with their needs entirely severed from the issues of supply and demand in the human world, the Thirteen Divisions had inevitably drifted away from worldly affairs.
Now they were showing signs of deviating from Konoha altogether.
Even Hiruzen himself seemed to be slipping into that pattern without fully realizing it.
He appeared to have forgotten that he had taken the position of Captain of the First Division in order to better assist Minato with management, not to replace him.
So when Minato learned that Hiruzen had convened a captains' council on his own authority, and then had the nerve to simply report the meeting's decisions to the Hokage after the fact, Minato kept a gentle smile on his face, but something twisted in his chest.
In theory, only the Hokage could call such a high level operational meeting in Konoha.
Yet Hiruzen Sarutobi, acting in his capacity as Captain of the First Division, had summoned the captains, speculated about Minato's intentions, and then calmly presented the results as if it were natural.
If not for Hiruzen's long years of service and contribution, Minato would have wanted to slam his hands on the table and shout at him.
You are not me.
What are you doing holding my meeting.
To put it plainly, the Thirteen Divisions were still an organization under the authority of Konoha.
The Hokage had not even expressed his stance, and yet decisions were being made in his name.
Even if it was unintentional, the result was the same.
That action had quietly carved a rift between Konoha and the Thirteen Divisions, setting up a line in people's hearts between us and them.
Just as the village had once ostracized the Uchiha, the Gotei Thirteen had almost openly defined who counted as their own and who did not.
Their interests were no longer fully aligned with the Leaf.
What numbed Minato most was that none of this surprised him.
If anything, he felt it was inevitable.
As if Konoha was not truly Konoha unless it had a few traitors and troublemakers hidden somewhere in its walls.
With Aizen Sousuke gone, the ballast ripped out of the hull, the fact that the Leaf had endured this long was, in Minato's eyes, already impressive.
"Every time I look through these reports," he muttered, "I cannot help but think about how incredible Aizen was. He managed to suppress all the ambitious ones, all the Shinigami, and still force them to work, even when they cursed him in their hearts. Now, it has only been a short while, and look at them. The Shinigami already feel they are no longer shinobi. They tell themselves they no longer owe Konoha anything."
"Minato… is it really that bad right now?"
"It is not completely hopeless," he said. "Aizen has only been gone a short time. People are just starting to get restless. Aside from a few who have already stepped forward, none of the major powers have moved openly yet."
Warmth pressed lightly against his back as Kushina wrapped her arms around him.
Minato let out a breath, then lowered his eyes to the sea of documents spread across his desk. Lines of ink, numbers, diagrams, all blooming into possible futures.
He had never doubted whether Aizen was doing well.
Or whether he would be able to return.
This was Aizen Sousuke they were talking about.
A man who never took a single step without having already mapped the next hundred.
If he had chosen to go to that unknown world, then either something over there was compelling enough to draw him, or he was certain he could come back whenever he wished.
Worrying about the life or death of a man like that felt pointless.
Compared with the terrifying, suffocating pressure Aizen had brought while he was present, Minato had always suspected that Aizen's true intentions were deeper.
No one had ever truly understood why he left Konoha, only to create Hueco Mundo and begin steering the age of evolution.
Aizen's current actions, too, had to be deliberate.
He was clearly working toward some outcome beyond anyone else's imagination.
That was what Minato believed.
Aizen Sousuke had never failed to meet his own standards. Every move he made was layered with meaning.
Since Minato could not see through it, the only choice left was to observe and prepare.
But even that simple resolve felt fragile in the current climate.
With Las Noches withdrawing from the Land of Fire's security framework, the Daimyo had flown into a rage and demanded that Konoha immediately send troops to attack it.
Minato was not stupid.
All he could do was dodge and stall with the Daimyo's envoys, buying time while he tried to cool the man's temper.
Whether they could win such a battle was one issue.
To move by force at such a tense moment, however, would be something else. It would be read by the world as a starting signal, an opening shot, and all eyes would turn to Konoha as the one who lit the fuse.
Minato did not want to be remembered as the man who started a world war.
So in front of the Daimyo's fury, all he could do was gently deflect, soothe, and misdirect, hoping to bleed the pressure dry.
Meanwhile, the other great villages were stirring.
Even though the Chunin Exams were still technically in progress, many leaders of nations and heads of hidden villages had already begun to withdraw to their homes and fortresses.
The rise of Shinigami, with their own loyalties and agendas, sharpened the conflicts further.
The peace that the exams were supposed to symbolize had become almost meaningless.
The lid that had held the ninja world's pressure down had been removed.
Sometimes Minato genuinely questioned Aizen's choices.
Perhaps Aizen was as compassionate and gentle as he presented himself.
But his clinical insight and his cold decisions had led them here all the same.
If he had not systematically eroded the confidence and arrogance of every great power, if he had not cherry picked and absorbed the most dangerous individuals into his own structures, perhaps the world would have already been at war for years by now.
"If Aizen were still here," Minato said quietly, "they would not dare to act like this. And the Shinigami would not be so bold about announcing that they are no longer shinobi."
He tapped a document with tight, irritated fingers, eyes drifting to the list of newly formed Shinigami groups.
"Look at them, Kushina. These people were all shinobi once. Many of them were heroes in their villages. Now look at them, the moment they become Shinigami. In just one year, they start to think they are something else entirely. They eat differently, dress differently, work differently, live in another world altogether. One year, and they already act like they belong to a different species from the ninja villages."
"Not only that, these Shinigami groups have begun to throw away the idea of nations and villages altogether. While Aizen was still here, they all behaved themselves. Now that he is gone, how long has it been? Has it even been three days? Three Shinigami organizations have already declared independence from their hidden villages and started forming separate orders. They even dare to use the name Seireitei, and say the Gotei Thirteen should set things right."
"I am scared, Kushina. I am really scared that one day the Thirteen Divisions will leave Konoha entirely and become the Gotei Thirteen in truth, tearing the Leaf apart from the inside. I do not understand how things could change so much in such a short time..."
The departure of a single person had shaken the world.
As bad news kept piling on his desk, Minato Namikaze had genuinely begun to entertain the thought of simply walking away.
Even before Urashiki Otsutsuki's message had fully spread, the ninja world had already started to slide into turmoil.
If Madara Uchiha's promises and Urashiki's words became common knowledge, if the concept of the Second World took root everywhere, Minato did not even want to imagine what shape this world might twist into.
Perhaps it would become a barren, eerie planet, dotted with giant black towers where human forms floated in nutrient tanks.
In endless corridors of shadow, Shinigami would wander with no duties in the living world. Outside, war and terror would rise and fall like the tide, massacres and the destruction of nations as frequent as breath.
For most people, such visions would sound like strange fiction.
To Minato, they felt like plausible forecasts.
Only those who lived in the shadows of great powers really understood how terrifying the forces at play could become.
The fact that those forces had not yet been fully unleashed was precisely what made people more curious, more willing to test them.
Minato, at least, stayed calm on the surface.
He knew that the Third Raikage of the Hidden Cloud was preparing to abdicate.
The chosen candidate for Fourth Raikage, however, belonged to a radical faction. If war broke out, he would not hesitate to plunge forward.
Kazekage Rasa was entirely immersed in ninjutsu development and technological innovation, leaving almost all diplomacy and politics of the Sand to Onoki.
Onoki, for his part, lived up to his reputation as a man of balance. He treated Rock and Sand shinobi with equal fairness. That even handed approach had given him immense influence in the united nation, a sharp contrast to Minato's own precarious position.
The Hidden Mist was quietly courting Las Noches.
With a new Daimyo in the Land of Fire, the Mist had started extending an olive branch to Aizen's former fortress.
Isolated across the sea, they did not intend to intervene directly in continental wars.
If anything, they wished the rest of the world would tear itself apart, leaving them to pick over the ruins.
Their constant habit of stirring up chaos, even from a distance, matched perfectly with this moment.
In Minato's eyes, Konoha was crawling with insects on the inside and surrounded by wolves on the outside.
It was still the greatest village in the world.
Yet he could not shake the feeling that it might shatter at any moment.
"I do not think you need to be that tense, Minato."
Kushina tightened her embrace and rested her chin on his shoulder.
"Even if the former Hokage and the Thirteen Divisions have thoughts of breaking away, they still acknowledge they belong to Konoha in some way. Why not simply accept that they are our counterpart. That is not entirely a bad thing. If Konoha is in real danger, they will step in on their own. At the very least, we will have someone to help us hit back without restraints."
"That does make sense," Minato admitted. "But their attitude has grown more subtle lately. I feel like they are starting to think about things that are not realistic at all. Brother Aizen once said..."
"You are talking about Aizen again?"
"...Aizen once said that ambition grows alongside ability. And it does not grow in a straight line. It grows like a curve, faster and faster."
Thinking back to that quiet conversation in old Konoha, Minato pressed his fingertips into his temples.
Almost everything Aizen had said back then rang in his ears now.
That man had loved to talk, drifting across all sorts of topics. But none of it had been random or empty. Every line had contained weight.
It was just that Minato, like Kakashi, had not understood.
They had dismissed those words as quirks, the personal interests of a strange genius.
Now, looking back, it seemed that neither the development of the ninja world nor the current state of Konoha had ever escaped Aizen Sousuke's design.
If Minato was being honest with himself, he could not shake the suspicion that even Aizen's departure had been planned.
Whether it was to test a theory, or to better understand some law of this world, he did not know.
"Ambition grows exponentially with age and power," Minato murmured. "The younger they are, the less they understand, the faster they grow, the more their ambition swells. It is especially true for those who only grasp things on the surface, and still think they can climb straight to the top. They always fantasize that one day their strength will suddenly leap forward, that everyone will recognize them, that they will stand at the very peak."
"They do not understand the price of their actions. They do not understand how shallow and fragile their knowledge is. They only know others are listening to them and obeying their orders. That illusion of being respected drives them. For that feeling alone, they are willing to do anything, even things that make no sense even to themselves. As long as it feels like they are in control, they will not hesitate."
"In the ninja world, that is how the leaders of those small organizations think. They do not care what happens to the world. They just want to watch it burn."
"…Which makes our great Hokage the firefighter who has to clean up after them?"
"It is not that I want to be the firefighter," Minato said with a faint smile. "I just do not have the luxury of refusing."
He covered Kushina's hand with his own, eyes dropping once more to the numbers on the page, then sighed in his heart.
There were some parts of Aizen's critique he had never voiced to anyone.
Because if he did, Minato knew that he would fully understand why Aizen had done what he did.
And once he understood that, he would be forced to question his own sense of justice.
No village and no powerful leader intervened against every agent of chaos.
To do so always required sacrifice.
And if someone was willing to demand that sacrifice from others within a system, there was only one explanation.
They had something to gain from maintaining that system.
Konoha was the greatest beneficiary of the current peaceful order.
To keep that structure from collapsing was in Konoha's best interest.
The Thirteen Divisions, the other great villages, and even Hueco Mundo had not obtained the greatest share of benefit from this world.
Nor had they invested as much to maintain its peace.
The Army Without Borders operated for conviction and honor.
Konoha operated for its interests and its system.
Minato had no illusions about that.
The Leaf had to extinguish the sparks of war before they caught.
If the framework that supported Konoha's prosperity began to crumble, the first wave of destruction would crash down on the Leaf's own economy and people.
"…Did you see all of this back then, Aizen?"
Looking at the promising figures written on the surface, and the terrifying future hidden beneath them, Minato Namikaze slowly lifted his gaze to the window.
In the dim light beyond the glass, he seemed to see a familiar figure in a white high collared coat, watching him from above with that same unreadable smile.
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