Chapter 317: Understanding Everything
Tsunade stood beside the hospital bed with her thoughts in complete chaos.
‘Younger?’
‘Used to?’
‘Crushing sadness?’
She understood every word individually.
But why was Nawaki using them to describe Kitahara Kaede?
She couldn’t make sense of it at all.
While Tsunade’s brow tightened in confusion, Nawaki suddenly stirred on the bed.
Seeing her struggle with the clues seemed to jolt something inside his own mind.
The sealed and blurry images buried in his memories began to churn violently.
Combined with the details he had casually mentioned moments earlier, the scattered fragments slowly connected into a complete line.
Nawaki abruptly stood up.
“I know!”
The shout snapped Tsunade out of her thoughts.
She looked at him and waited.
“Sis,” Nawaki said after taking a deep breath, lowering his voice, “do you know what actually happened to me when I disappeared back then?”
Tsunade numbly shook her head.
The violent explosion, followed by the despair of never finding a body, had remained one of the deepest wounds in her heart for years.
Nawaki looked at her and began to explain.
“I was surrounded on all sides by an enemy elite squad that everyone had missed. There was no way out.”
“They used several Explosive Tags against me. When I saw them go off, I actually closed my eyes and waited to die.”
“But…”
“After the explosions, I realized I was still alive.”
“When I opened my eyes, Master had appeared right in front of me out of nowhere.”
Nawaki lifted a hand beside his face as though outlining the memory.
“I’m certain that Master looked like a mature man back then. Much more mature than he does now. His jawline was harder, too.”
“Everything about him felt different. He was quiet and deep… like someone who had already been through countless storms.”
Nawaki paused, remembering the scene.
“I was completely confused, so I worked up the courage to ask why he’d saved someone he didn’t even know.”
“Master didn’t answer at first. He just stood there silently looking at the sky.”
“We stayed like that for a long time.”
“Eventually, he turned back to me and gave me a simple answer.”
“For someone.”
‘For… someone?’
Tsunade’s heart seemed to stop for an instant.
A possibility surfaced in her mind.
Nawaki didn’t notice the change in her expression and continued.
“After he saved me, Master took me somewhere hidden where no one would find us.”
“During that time, he taught me everything he knew. Ninjutsu, taijutsu—everything. And he was insanely strict about it.”
“That went on for a while, until one day he told me he had to go back.”
“But before leaving, he did something strange.”
“He specifically took me to secretly see you once.”
Tsunade immediately stepped forward, her voice tightening.
“He took you to see me?! When?!”
Seeing how urgently his sister reacted, Nawaki described the memory carefully.
“We stood on a rooftop really far away. There were several streets between us, and we watched you from there.”
“That was when I realized something wasn’t right.”
“The way Master looked at you wasn’t how someone looks at a stranger.”
“There was familiarity in his eyes. Attachment. And something like… restraint.”
“I got curious, so I asked him directly whether he knew you.”
“He admitted he did.”
“But when I asked why he didn’t go over and say hello, he only shook his head. He looked really bitter.”
Nawaki cleared his throat and imitated Kaede’s helpless tone from that day.
“Master said, ‘I can’t go see you. Because right now, you don’t know me yet.'”
Tsunade felt as though she could barely breathe.
Nawaki gave her little time to process it before finally revealing the most important truth.
“Right before we separated, Master finally told me everything.”
“He said he had come here through a power called the Dragon Vein.”
“He had traveled through time from the distant future, forcing his way back to the exact point when I was supposed to die!”
Nawaki repeated Kaede’s warning from that time word for word, his expression unusually serious.
“Master told me that according to the original timeline, I definitely died in that explosion. He was the one who forcibly changed my fate.”
“But because he didn’t want to create even worse butterfly effects, he warned me that no matter what happened, I could never come looking for you. I couldn’t let you know I was still alive.”
“After telling me that, he personally sealed my memories.”
Nawaki lowered his head slightly, his voice falling with it.
“Afterward, my memories were sealed and my head was always foggy. Black Zetsu took advantage of that and abducted me while I was on the road.”
“It wasn’t until I saw Master again on the battlefield that those sealed memories were triggered and came flooding back.”
‘Dragon Vein…’
Tsunade’s body swayed slightly.
She remembered.
Minato… the Third… that top-secret report concerning the Roran mission…
So the traces of Wood Release discovered at the site of Nawaki’s disappearance hadn’t come from some unknown enemy at all.
They had been left by Kitahara Kaede.
He had returned from the future just to save Nawaki?
For her?
At that moment, every mystery seemed to finally have an explanation.
And yet Tsunade felt no relief.
Instead, one word from Nawaki’s story caught painfully in her mind.
‘Bitter.’
And before that…
‘Sadness.’
‘How could that be?’
The Kaede she knew now was always calm and composed.
No matter what happened, he seemed impossible to crush.
He always carried himself as though nothing in the world could truly shake him, as though every problem could eventually be arranged and solved.
So what had happened to the Kaede of the future?
What had he gone through…
To become the man Nawaki remembered?
‘Could it have been… because of me?’