Chapter 152: A World Where Aizen Doesn't Exist
"The hypothesis should be correct."
Feeling the faint, illusory sensation ripple through him, Aizen reclined in his chair and slowly turned the pages of the reports Tsunade had sent.
Just as he had initially predicted, Kakashi Hatake's return from being pulled into his world had not been without aftereffects. When Aizen created the Unseen Garden, he had already noticed something.
Tsunade's brief confusion when she left that space, and the tug Aizen felt in his own chakra, were both signs that some invisible connection was beginning to form between this world and his own.
Chakra of the same type will always gather. Chakra that is completely identical in nature will tend to adhere, resonate, and unify. In the end, it coalesces into a single core, a pill of pure energy, exhibiting an aggregation pattern entirely different from normal living organisms.
That was the result Aizen had reached through his research.
What he had not expected was that this principle could extend across different timelines.
In other words, if one continuously imprinted one's mark and influence upon a world, as resonance increased, even if the two worlds never physically connected, they could still begin to touch through chakra.
It was like certain theories he had once read. Similar structures produced similar patterns. And if two completely identical objects were placed together, they no longer remained individuals A and B. They became two instances of the same thing.
Based on that, Aizen had begun to suspect his arrival here was no accident.
All research began with bold hypotheses and careful verification.
This resonance theory had been with him for a while now, but until he stepped into another world himself, it had remained untested. To truly discover a foreign realm, to dare to enter it, and then successfully trigger resonance within it, required more than intellect.
It required nerve.
Going to another world was, at its core, a gamble.
As for why he called this place another world, the answer was painfully simple.
"Did Sosuke Aizen never exist in this world to begin with?"
Looking over the Konoha orphanage records Tsunade had provided, Aizen raised an eyebrow, genuinely surprised.
Logically speaking, if someone could travel backward into another timeline, there should have been at least one fixed point in common. Initially, Aizen had assumed that anchor would be himself.
However, on closer analysis, the primary reason he had reached this world at all was Kakashi Hatake's summoning, the nature of Kakashi's Kamui space, and the resonance of his immense spiritual pressure with that space.
If he calculated along those lines, then he had likely squeezed himself into a channel that had initially been Kakashi's.
He had taken the slot that should have belonged to someone else.
In the future, it was entirely possible that Kakashi Hatake would be able to use that anchor to travel between parallel worlds with similar chakra and energy systems.
But for the current Aizen, there was one problem.
He had no anchor in his original world.
That meant he could not simply open a door and walk back. He could only rely on the resonance of his own power, constantly searching for signals that resembled his original world. Once he caught one, he would have to use space time techniques to force his way back through.
Many of the theoretical details still needed subjective estimation, and the data were far from perfect, but for this stage of the experiment, they were enough.
Besides, Aizen had no intention of using himself for every trial.
He was going to need test subjects.
There was a phrase he had heard once.
An exchange program.
People from this world sent over there, people from that world brought here.
Once communication and understanding existed on both sides, locating coordinates would no longer be so difficult.
The puzzling question was why Sosuke Aizen did not exist in this world at all.
According to normal logic, a universal constant like himself should at least have left traces, even if he had died.
Here, there was nothing.
In his original timeline, he had grown up in an orphanage.
From other people's accounts, his own memories, and the data he had collected later, he knew that he had once been an ordinary commoner child named Aizen, sent to the orphanage with a request that he be raised there and given an official registration.
The man who brought him, who had called himself Aizen at the time, had later been identified by Aizen as a civilian named Ishishita.
His real surname had not been Aizen at all.
He had chosen that name for the child simply because he wanted something that sounded good and was not insulting or unlucky.
The man had died young of tetanus.
The baby called Aizen had been the infant he had found in a remote mountain, crying weakly.
Who had originally carried that child into the mountains was impossible to verify.
During the war years in the Land of Fire, sending newborns one could not afford to raise into the wilds along the main roads had become common practice.
When a family could not feed another mouth, when there were no relatives left, and no hope of support, there were only two options.
Abandon the child at a temple gate.
Or leave them in the mountains and hope someone kind would pass by.
After a meticulous examination, Aizen had found no DNA in the Land of Fire that matched his own.
If his guess was right, the family that could not afford to raise him had long since died, swallowed by the chaos of the Fourth Shinobi World War.
He was hardly a special case.
In this new world, things were completely different.
There was no civilian named Ishishita. The place where that man had once lived in Aizen's world had been razed during the Fourth Shinobi World War.
The orphanage he remembered did not exist either.
Because in this timeline, when Konoha launched an all out offensive, orphanages had been targeted by indiscriminate attacks and forced to shut down long before his supposed arrival.
Those welfare institutions only reopened after the war.
The entire life pattern was different from the world Aizen had known.
Tracing his origins here led nowhere.
For Aizen, though, this kind of backward tracing had always been a matter of chance. If he found something, it was a pleasant surprise. If he did not, there was nothing to regret.
Back when he had still been just a normal person who liked reading stories, he had noticed something.
Very few transmigrators ever found the true cause of their own arrival.
The nature of time travel remained a mystery.
Treating it as a long term research target was, if anything, appealing.
Who would not want to know where they came from, what they would become, and where they would end.
The charm of science lay in stripping away mysticism, in expanding what had once been terrifying and unreal into something concrete and knowable.
On the surface, many of his investigations appeared fruitless, but Aizen never saw them that way.
Each failure was a wrong path excluded, shrinking the unknown and pushing his research further. That was not a loss. It was a quietly satisfying victory.
Now that he had digested Tsunade's data, Aizen felt it was time to move to the next step in their agreement.
He needed to continue anchoring chakra and energy, expand his influence in Konoha and the wider ninja world, and tie that influence back to his own world.
In a situation of information asymmetry, dressing your own goals up as gifts was a very efficient method.
Even if Konoha had refused to cooperate, Aizen would have eventually activated the Unseen Garden anyway, using it as a medium to summon chakra aggregation.
Now, the Unseen Garden was no longer just a tool.
It had become a present.
And the technological expansion that came with redeveloping the Bleach system and deepening resonance theory had been wrapped neatly into the terms of his deal with Konoha.
In Konoha's eyes, Sosuke Aizen was a responsible, if enigmatic, super researcher, a man who pushed the boundaries of knowledge for the entire ninja world and cared only for his work.
Aizen did not deny that.
At heart, he truly was that kind of person.
But from a certain angle, he also possessed a keen sense for politics, and he did not hesitate to use that talent to tilt the game slightly in his favor.
That was human nature.
He had no intention of going back to the path of fighting the entire world alone.
If he could handle things peacefully, keep his smile warm, and leave people with memories of his generosity, then even if someone betrayed him, most observers would instinctively assume he had deeper reasons.
That sort of reputation was far more useful in the long run.
As he flipped through Tsunade's dossier on the construction and registration of the Konoha orphanage, he was still seated in his chair when a small knock tapped lightly at the door.
"The door is open," he said. "Please, come in."
"Um… hello, I am here to learn."
A small head peeked in first, as if testing the air.
Cherry blossom colored hair, a wide forehead, a delicate face.
The girl, who clearly had a cautious streak, did not barge in. She glanced around, checked the room, then stepped in properly.
The moment she saw Aizen sitting there, calm and composed, she froze for half a second. Then she straightened, moved to the side, and bowed deeply.
"My name is Sakura Haruno. Tsunade sensei, no, the Hokage sama, specifically chose me to study here. Aizen sensei, I look forward to your guidance. No matter how difficult the course is, I am confident I can understand and master it."
"…Teacher?" Aizen repeated.
"Ah, wait, you are not my teacher?"
"It is not that," he said. "It is just new to hear it. The people I used to teach never used such a respectful title."
His eyes curved with quiet amusement.
"They called me things like hey, or Aizen, or that guy, or you. If you are going to call me teacher, you might be the first. I am very pleased, Sakura kun."
"Eh? Really?"
"But, are you the only one who came to study?" he asked. "That would be a little lonely."
"Ah, no. There are three more waiting outside. I just came to check first. There are four of us in total."
"I see. Then I have been rude to keep them waiting."
"Ah, no, it is fine…"
Sakura watched as Aizen rose with a small, apologetic nod and walked past her toward the door.
Up close, the tall, composed man in the white stand up collar coat felt even more imposing.
She had been prepared for something else entirely.
Tsunade had called for her earlier, and had only asked one question.
How much are you willing to give up for Sasuke.
Sakura had answered without hesitation that she would endure any hardship.
Instead of teaching her personally, though, Tsunade had assigned her to this man called Sosuke Aizen, along with three others, saying they would be learning new techniques.
It had stung a little not to be taken as a direct disciple by one of the Legendary Sannin, but the Hokage's orders were absolute.
If Tsunade had chosen to send her here, there had to be a reason.
And at least, it was not what she had feared.
She was not stepping into the lab of some terrifying man, destined for brutal human experiments or something worse.
Looking at the tall, handsome man with the gentle smile and sharp, stylish coat, Sakura could not help feeling a faint, guilty flicker of anticipation.
After all, he was a good looking young man, and the Hokage herself had ordered her to study under him.
Thinking about it that way, her future did not seem so grim.
Sakura kept a polite, well trained smile on her face and followed Aizen out.
In the lounge outside, three Chunin around her age were sitting very straight, clearly trying to showcase the professionalism of Konoha's shinobi.
In Aizen's eyes, though, they were almost too individualistic.
To be precise, they did not look much like the shinobi he remembered.
The ninjas of his original world had been wildly diverse yet oddly uniform in their clothing.
The three before him, by contrast, were all distinct, both in style and in presence.
Tsunade's data had already introduced them to him.
The blonde girl at the coffee table, who looked like she had been sneaking snacks a moment ago, wore modern, somewhat revealing clothes. Yamanaka Ino, a user of secret techniques, specialized in precise chakra control and had her own ideas in the field of mental energy.
Next to her sat Aburame Shino, cloaked in a robe and hiding behind dark sunglasses, a member of the insect clan. She excelled in insect based techniques and had experience in cultivation and extraction, making her a valuable experimental assistant.
The last one, looking as though the weight of the world was pressing down on him, was Nara Shikamaru, the genius Tsunade had personally recommended. His intellect was extremely high, and he could adapt theory to new situations with ease.
Then there was Sakura Haruno, the medical ninja he had met first, a naturally gifted tinkerer who could tweak and refine small devices without realizing how rare her talent was.
Tsunade had not held back in this exchange.
There were no mediocre students among the four, no embarrassing misjudgments.
Each of them was one of the sharpest, most resilient young shinobi that Konoha's new generation had produced.
It was not that the others lacked talent or resolve.
Simply put, these four were the ones who fit Aizen's requirements best.
In a way, their selection was a gesture of trust from Tsunade.
Looking at the four standing before him, who by appearance were only seven or eight years younger than he was, Aizen smiled and addressed them.
"Sakura Haruno, Ino Yamanaka, Shino Aburame, Shikamaru Nara. The Hokage has assigned the four of you to come here and learn new techniques from me. That is correct, yes?"
"Yes"
Their answer overlapped almost in unison.
"There is no need to be quite so stiff," Aizen said, his tone light. "This is meant to be a welcoming, gentle environment. I have no special demands. I am simply someone who imparts knowledge. How much you can truly grasp and develop will depend on your own efforts."
He paused for a heartbeat, then added,
"My deal with Tsunade secured these four spots for you. So, please do not let her down."
He did not call her Hokage.
He simply used her name.
Shikamaru, standing among the others, noticed that detail instinctively.
As a genius, he enjoyed dissecting every word and nuance around him. Before he could reach any conclusion, Aizen's calm voice touched his thoughts like a knife's edge.
"Shikamaru kun," Aizen said, turning his gaze on him, "it is good to think deeply. But I hope you will share those thoughts with others. Communication is the root of progress. Only when everyone puts their ideas together can you reach truly excellent answers."
"Ah, yes. Thank you for your guidance," Shikamaru answered automatically.
Is that a guess. Or is he bluffing. Trying to put pressure on us right from the start.
"It is not a guess," Aizen said mildly. "It is certainty, Shikamaru kun."
He sighed, not in annoyance, but in patient explanation.
"You seem very clever. But the thinking of clever people often converges on the same optimal outcome, which makes their reactions almost identical. At that point, being clever stops being a strength. It becomes another kind of foolishness."
"…Yes. Thank you, for the guidance."
Caught in Aizen's calm, unblinking gaze, Shikamaru did not argue. He lowered his head slightly and answered with genuine respect.
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