Chapter 65: Obito's Desensitization Training
Tick-tock! Tick-tock! Tick-tock!
The numbers signaling the approach of death ticked away relentlessly. The countdown had officially begun.
Each sound falling on Obito and Rin's ears was like a heavy hammer blow striking directly at their hearts.
"Mmmph... mmmph..."
Rin was, after all, just a young girl. Her fragile heart couldn't bear the crushing weight of approaching death.
Her mouth was stuffed full with cold metal from the device, and she could only utter meaningless, muffled sobs—unable to form words. Tears streamed freely down her face, quickly soaking her pale cheeks.
Her pupils revealed absolute terror as she stared helplessly at Obito through the barred window. Although she felt crushing guilt, both reason and emotion told her she shouldn't force Obito to do something so horrific.
But the primal instinct for survival—the raw, overwhelming fear of death—forced her to place all her desperate hopes on him.
She had no choice.
"I will definitely save you, Rin!"
Through the heavy iron door separating them, Obito's gaze remained absolutely unwavering, blazing with determination.
I'm sorry, Obito. I'm so sorry.
But I really have no choice. I don't want to die.
Sensing the fierce determination in Obito's words, Rin closed her eyes, tormented by the war raging inside her conscience.
She seemed to use every last ounce of her remaining strength to give one gentle, trembling nod.
Do it. Please... save me.
Obito gazed deeply at Rin's face through the window, as if desperately trying to burn that image permanently into his mind.
He knew—deep in his heart, he knew—this might be the last time he could ever truly see Rin.
The entire exchange seemed to last an eternity, but in reality, only a few seconds had passed.
Obito stopped hesitating.
Turning sharply on his heel, he rushed toward the adjacent room, slamming his shoulder against the heavy iron door and forcing it open with a thunderous crash.
BOOM!
As the heavy door swung wide, a visible plume of white steam—accompanied by an absolutely bone-chilling cold—came surging out in a frigid wave.
"Hiss—S-so cold!"
In just that single glance inside, a thin layer of frost immediately covered Obito's eyebrows and hair, turning them white.
The entire room was covered with thick walls of solid ice, filled with a visible, shimmering chill hanging in the air like fog. Judging from the sensation alone, the temperature inside had to be at least negative twenty or thirty degrees Celsius.
With each breath, the freezing air filled his lungs, accompanied by excruciating, stabbing pain—as if even his internal organs were being slowly frozen solid.
One minute!
Thinking of Rin trapped in the next room, Obito gritted his teeth and stepped forward into the frozen hell.
WHOOOOSH!
A sudden, powerful gust of icy wind swept through the sub-zero room the instant he crossed the threshold.
But Jigsaw's twisted surprise was far from over.
The moment Obito fully entered, a hidden mechanism triggered—and an entire bucket of ice-cold water dumped directly over his head.
SPLASH!
In the deeply sub-zero environment, water freezes almost instantly upon contact with human skin.
The biting, penetrating cold sank all the way to his bone marrow. Within mere seconds, a thick layer of frost formed across his eyebrows, hair, and exposed skin, making him look like a frozen corpse.
So cold... so unbearably cold!
Obito hugged his arms tightly against his body, trembling violently and uncontrollably. He hadn't expected his body temperature to plummet this rapidly. His teeth chattered so hard he thought they might shatter.
Just as he tried to take another step forward, he discovered his ninja sandals had frozen completely to the floor. They were stuck fast to the ice.
To continue, he would have to abandon them.
Obito's remaining eye blazed with absolute resolve. There wasn't even the slightest hesitation.
He forcefully tore off his frozen ninja sandals, then stepped barefoot directly onto the solid ice floor, walking step by agonizing step toward the weighing scale visible in the center of the room.
The extremely low temperature tore away flesh upon contact.
Each step forward ripped away large, ragged chunks of bloody skin and tissue from the soles of his feet.
The scalding hot blood froze at an alarming rate the instant it touched the ice, creating patterns that resembled blooming crimson flowers—tragically, horrifically beautiful.
But Obito felt no pain anymore.
His body had gone completely numb, his mind driven forward only by a single burning obsession, advancing relentlessly toward that weighing scale.
Wait for me... Rin. Just hold on.
The short distance—which should have taken only four or five seconds to cross—ended up taking over ten seconds as he limped forward on mutilated feet.
Finally reaching the scale, Obito didn't hesitate for even a moment.
He brought two fingers together, slowly lifted his remaining eyelid with shaking hands, and then—with a strangled cry—forcefully gouged out his last eye.
SQUELCH!
The eyeball was completely torn free from its socket.
Before any blood could flow, it was instantly frozen solid in the frigid eye socket, creating a crystalline red mass.
Now completely blind, relying purely on memory and touch, Obito placed his destroyed Sharingan eyeball onto the weighing scale.
CLICK!
A mechanism activated immediately from somewhere to his right.
Unable to see anything, Obito could only desperately grope with his trembling hands through the darkness, finally locating a second container.
He pulled out a kunai with numb fingers and slashed deeply across his own wrist, holding the bleeding wound over the container to let his blood flow freely into it.
But the temperature was so impossibly low that the wound froze over after only a few seconds of bleeding, the blood crystallizing before it could fill the container.
So he was forced to repeatedly—again and again and again—slash open his frozen wrists, desperately trying to fill the container with enough blood to trigger the next mechanism.
He lost so much blood that Obito began feeling severely lightheaded and dizzy, as if he might faint and collapse at any moment.
His vision—already gone—swam with phantom lights and colors.
Just a little more... just a little more...
Finally, mercifully, he heard the grinding sound of another mechanism being activated.
Now came the final step.
Taking a shuddering breath, Obito plunged his entire hand deep into a container filled with concentrated acid. The corrosive liquid immediately began eating away at his flesh with a horrific sizzling sound, dissolving skin and muscle, leaving nothing but exposed bone.
Before the key could completely melt away in the acid, he grabbed it with his skeletal fingers and yanked it free.
"Wait for me... Rin... I'm coming..."
Obito staggered forward, his entire body on the verge of total collapse, sustained now by nothing but sheer force of will.
With massive blood loss, no vision whatsoever, and only his acid-stripped skeletal hand remaining functional, he could only use that horrible appendage to grope his way forward along the frozen wall.
He wanted only one thing—to save Rin, even if it cost him absolutely everything!
Scrape... scrape... scrape...
With agonizing slowness, Obito struggled his way back to the room where Rin was trapped.
Through the heavy iron door, not wanting her to worry or see how broken he was, he forced his frozen lips into something resembling a smile:
"Rin... I'm back. It's okay. Everything's going to be okay now."
"MMMPH! MMMPH!"
But the only response was Rin's desperate, muffled whimpering—a mixture of urgent panic and overwhelming fear.
RING RING RING~~~
The alarm clock signaling the end of the countdown suddenly rang out with a shrill, piercing tone.
In that single instant—as if his shattered mind suddenly realized what that sound meant—Obito gripped the iron door with his skeletal hand and roared with every fiber of his being:
"NO—!!!"
He was too slow.
Just too slow.
Rin, still strapped helplessly to that iron chair, stared wide-eyed in absolute terror. Tears continued streaming down her face in rivers.
The girl's horrified gaze was fixed on the alarm clock positioned directly in front of her.
The countdown to her life had reached zero.
SNAP!!!
The reverse bear trap activated with mechanical precision.
The device mercilessly ripped Rin's entire head apart with brutal, unstoppable force.
Blood, chunks of flesh, shattered bone fragments, brain matter—crimson blood mixed with white viscous substances—exploded outward across the room in a grotesque fountain of gore.
The crisp, wet sound of bones and soft tissue being torn apart was similar to fabric being ripped—but infinitely more horrifying, more sickening, more soul-destroyingly terrible.
"Rin! RIN?!"
Obito, clinging desperately to the iron door's barred window, unable to see what had just happened, could only call out helplessly into the sudden silence.
"Rin, please answer me! Please!"
However, there was absolutely no response from inside the room.
Only deathly, suffocating silence.
"AAAAAAAAHHH—!!!"
Overwhelmed with unbearable anguish, Obito felt his sanity beginning to completely shatter.
He had sacrificed everything—his eyes, his blood, his body, his future as a ninja, everything—and in the end, he still couldn't save the girl he loved!
"NO—RIN!"
The most painful thing in the world is being powerless to save the one you love when they're right there in front of you.
But if there's anything even more painful than that, it's knowing you could have saved them—being just one step away, just a few measly seconds short—and still failing.
Why wasn't he faster?!
If he had been just a little faster—even just a tiny bit faster—he could have saved her!
It was all his fault!
He killed Rin!
He killed her!
Obito's mind completely broke down.
Creeeak... creeeak...
The familiar, unsettling sound of that rusty tricycle rang out once more through the darkness.
Jigsaw slowly rode up beside the collapsed boy. Obito's eyes were vacant and empty, his face slack. He had crumpled to the ground like a discarded puppet, muttering the same words over and over:
"Kill me... just kill me... kill me..."
"Most people don't know how to be grateful while they're alive," Jigsaw observed, those crimson eyes scrutinizing the utterly broken Obito with cold, clinical interest.
"But you won't make that mistake. Not anymore. You never will again."
The puppet's mechanical jaw clicked shut one final time.
"Game over."
Deep in the Forest of Death, inside the Central Tower
Uchiha Kazuki sat cross-legged in the center of the room, directly facing all the examinees participating in the Chunin Exams.
His eyes flickered with an eerie glow as his gaze landed specifically on Obito's contorted, anguished face. A slight, knowing smile played across Kazuki's lips.
"No need to rush, Obito," he murmured softly to himself, watching the boy thrash and scream in the throes of the genjutsu nightmare. "Your good days are far from over."
His smile widened slightly.
"Your desensitization training... has only just begun."
[End of Chapter 65]
Author's Note:
Holy hell. HOLY HELL.
This might be the darkest chapter yet. Obito literally sacrificed EVERYTHING—both his Sharingan eyes, most of his blood, the flesh on his feet and hand dissolved by acid—and in the end, he was still too slow to save Rin.
The psychological devastation here is absolutely catastrophic. Obito didn't just fail to save Rin—he failed by mere seconds after giving up everything he had. That's the kind of trauma that fundamentally breaks a person.
And then we get the reveal: this is all Kazuki's genjutsu. He's deliberately putting Obito (and presumably all the other examinees) through horrific psychological torture as some kind of twisted "desensitization training."
This explains SO much about why canon Obito became the person he did. If he's being repeatedly traumatized like this—watching Rin die over and over in different horrible ways—it's creating the perfect psychological conditions for his eventual descent into darkness.
Key Points:
Obito sacrificed both his Sharingan eyes—the pride of the Uchiha clan
He mutilated himself beyond recognition trying to save Rin
He failed anyway, by just a few seconds
This is deliberate psychological conditioning by Kazuki
The phrase "desensitization training" implies this will happen REPEATEDLY
Discussion Questions:
How many times will Kazuki make Obito watch Rin die?
Is this "training" actually meant to make him stronger, or break him?
What are the other examinees experiencing in their scenarios?
Will there be any way to mentally recover from this?
This is absolutely brutal psychological warfare disguised as training. Poor Obito...
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