Fallen Leaves Lay Withered on the Ground (New Book, Please Bookmark and Vote)

At the end of Konoha’s Year 36, the situation in the ninja world gradually worsened.

Sunagakure accused Konoha of maliciously seizing mission shares that had originally belonged to them, while Konoha accused Sunagakure of crossing the Land of Rain to raid the Land of Fire’s borders.

Friction between Konoha and Sunagakure continued without end. Iwagakure and Kumogakure remained ambiguous in their stance, while Kirigakure was secretly mobilizing its armed forces as well.

The Land of Rain, situated between the three great nations of Earth, Wind, and Fire, was forced to become a buffer zone and sacrifice for the great powers’ slaughter.

Lead-gray storm clouds had spread across the entire sky, making this weeping nation even lonelier and more sorrowful.

Only homeless wild dogs crouched beside rotting flesh, tearing into it.

"Konan, keep up…"

"Grr!" The wild dogs pricked up their ears warily and bared their teeth toward the hazy mist.

From afar came the faint sound of footsteps, mixed with low murmurs.

Then lightning branched across the dark clouds, dyeing the world in shades of gray and white.

In the distant desolation, two withered figures staggered out of the rain mist, their ghostly pale faces illuminated by the light.

"Yahiko, I’m so cold…"

"Hang on a little longer… If we can’t find anything, we’ll go back."

Their oversized, tattered raincoats concealed their frail little bodies. Their eyes still held some spirit beneath the shadows, though their sallow, bedraggled faces were young and tender.

One was an orange-haired boy called Yahiko, and the other was a blue-haired girl called Konan.

The two children kept scanning their surroundings.

But the houses on either side were mostly in ruins. Amid broken walls and filthy mud, they could only vaguely make out corpses—perhaps men and women, perhaps the elderly and children—mangled beyond recognition as they soaked in the mud, rotting and stinking.

Clearly, everyone in this settlement had been slaughtered.

White bones lay exposed in the wilds; for a thousand miles, not a rooster crowed.

Whenever they saw shattered, rotting corpses, Konan would tense her face and unconsciously press her lips together, while sorrow and fear showed in Yahiko’s eyes.

Pale faces still frozen in terror gradually etched themselves deep into his mind.

"Yahiko, look over there…"

Only when Konan tugged at his sleeve did Yahiko snap out of his daze and look in the direction she indicated.

He saw an alley, and a figure within it.

It was a strange corpse wearing a gray vest, lying with its head tilted back.

"We actually found one!"

Delight flashed across Yahiko’s face. After confirming there was no one nearby, he quietly slipped into the alley.

The instant he stepped into the entrance, the curtain of rain pressing heavily upon his shoulders seemed to be abruptly cut off.

"Whew!"

Yahiko let out a breath instinctively.

Konan, however, looked upward and instinctively touched her throat.

She did not know whether it was an illusion, but she felt a chill.

Yet when she looked up, there was only the raging wind and the dimness hidden beneath the awning. Not even moonlight could be seen.

"It’s the corpse of a Sunagakure Chunin!"

The suppressed cry of surprise beside her interrupted Konan’s inexplicable distraction.

She withdrew her gaze from above and lowered her head toward the figure.

The corpse wore a Sunagakure forehead protector and lay face-up, a Kunai embedded in its left eye socket, exposing muscle fibers and ruptured crimson blood vessels.

Dazzling blood ran down its cheek and pooled beneath it, forming a pale red mirror that reflected the blurred scenery of the alley.

"There has to be something!"

Yahiko crouched before the stinking corpse. Rather than feeling disgusted, he reached into its clothing with an expectant look.

It was obvious this was not his first time doing such a thing. He was as practiced as the wild dogs gnawing on corpses.

In truth, what he did was no different from those wild dogs.

If they found anything valuable on a ninja’s corpse, they could exchange it for food in Rain Capital. If they found nothing, they could only steal…

Konan stood quietly to one side, silently watching the corpse.

"…How terrifying," she murmured softly after a long silence.

Seeing the corpse still wearing a ferocious yet bewildered expression even in death, Konan could almost imagine how it had been killed.

Could that force that pierced straight through the skull have come from a thrust?

To penetrate a head, wouldn’t it take at least a blow?

First, drive a short blade into the eye socket, then punch or kick it hard enough to force it straight through.

Even more tellingly, the Sunagakure ninja’s face still held a wary expression. That meant he had cautiously entered the alley, only to be killed before he could even react.

At that thought, Konan felt uneasy. She looked around, yet could find no source for that unease.

A cold chill mixed with the scent of blood entered her lungs, while wavering, faint, indistinct moonlight reflected off the ground.

The alley’s walls were mottled on both sides, covered in damp water stains and moss. Spiders waited upon shadowy webs as if expecting food to fall in, their compound eyes reflecting two small figures.

The entire alley had fallen utterly silent, as though they were the only ones left in the world. The curtain of rain at the entrance was like a door, locking two lost little beasts in a cage.

Yahiko did not notice Konan’s unease. He continued searching, then suddenly his eyes lit up.

"Found it!" he cried out joyfully, pulling out a ninja tool pouch. "Konan, look! There are shuriken and Exploding Tags in here too… Huh? Why isn’t there any of that special steel wire? That stuff is pretty useful…"

Yahiko spoke excitedly.

But before he could finish, Konan interrupted him in a trembling voice.

"Ya-Yahiko! Did you hear that?"

"…Hear what?" Yahiko froze and looked up.

Konan stared blankly at the raging storm outside the alley.

It seemed she had heard something hidden within the roar of rain and wind.

It sounded like…

Click… clack…

No, that was wrong. It did not merely sound like something. There really was something.

The instant that thought appeared in Yahiko’s mind—

Lightning tearing through the storm clouds suddenly dyed the sky a blazing white.

Within the distant rain mist, dazzling white light cast three long, ghostlike shadows upon the ground.

Click, click! Clack!

They heard it more clearly now. The bizarre sound was drawing closer, and terror surged over them like a tide.

Boom!!

A thunderclap exploded close behind the lightning.

Konan and Yahiko jolted awake, their young faces turning pale in an instant.

They understood. They had heard it clearly.

What did that familiar sound represent?

"Sunagakure’s Puppet Master!!"

Yahiko reacted first. He grabbed Konan’s clothes and turned to flee.

But just as he rose and took one step—

Whoosh!

A streak of cold black light suddenly flashed before his eyes.

In that instant, Yahiko could even smell its faint stench.

Clang!

Yet in the next second, a soft, crisp impact rang out, and the cold-glinting Kunai suddenly veered from its original trajectory.

It flew past Yahiko’s face by a hair and embedded itself in the wall beside him, leaving cracks.

"Ya-Yahiko…" Konan’s little face was utterly pale as she gripped the corner of Yahiko’s clothes tightly.

"Gulp!"

Yahiko stood frozen like stone, his mouth slightly open, his throat bobbing as even his breathing stopped.

Whether sweat or rainwater, crystalline liquid slid from his temples down his cheeks to his chin, then fell to the ground and shattered into droplets.

"I… I’m fine…" He raised a trembling hand and touched his nose.

Feeling the sharp pain and the wetness on his fingertips, his pupils trembled. Every hair on his body stood on end, and he even felt the urge to wet himself.

So close!

He had almost died!

This was the first time he had felt the terror of death from so close.

But that sound just now…

Click, click!

Click, click, clack!

Before Yahiko could recover from his daze, two figures emerged from the rain curtain amid the increasingly distinct strange sounds.

Both wore conical hats. One had long yellow hair, and a bloodstained Kunai still spun around his finger, blood and rainwater gathering at its tip before spraying out.

The other had a vicious scar across his face and carried a human-shaped object wrapped in waterproof cloth on his back. That strange sound came from behind him.

"What?" Seeing the frail, diminutive Yahiko and Konan, the yellow-haired sand ninja froze before frowning in complaint. "They’re just two brats."

"You only just realized they were two brats?" the Scarred Sand Ninja asked in surprise. "I thought you saw them, so you held back and missed on purpose."

The yellow-haired sand ninja’s expression immediately darkened, and he cursed, "Bullshit! I was clearly aiming for his head!"

The Scarred Sand Ninja took it as an excuse, smiled, and looked toward the corpse in the alley.

"That idiot actually died here…" His gaze shifted toward Yahiko and Konan as he said indifferently, "I remember Lord Kazekage said we should avoid harming civilians whenever possible?"

At that, Yahiko and Konan froze, a trace of hope appearing in their eyes.

"Don’t make me laugh." The yellow-haired sand ninja snorted disdainfully. "Don’t forget that on your first A-rank mission, you slaughtered a group of Land of Rain civilians."

"Maybe their parents were among the civilians you killed…"

With that, he suddenly turned his head, and the Kunai in his hand shot out at once.

In an instant, Yahiko and Konan, who had been trying to move, froze where they stood. The Kunai had embedded itself precisely beside their feet.

"Be good now." The yellow-haired sand ninja revealed a teasing smile. Like a cat playing with a mouse beneath its claws, he slowly walked toward Yahiko and Konan.

The Scarred Sand Ninja did not stop him. He merely touched the scar on his face, which seemed to ache faintly, and coldly reminded him, "Make it quick. We still have to help that idiot collect his corpse."

Hearing their conversation, utterly devoid of pity, Yahiko and Konan’s hope was extinguished, and the expectation in their eyes turned to despair.

The shadows of trees beside them seemed like swaying human figures, coldly mocking the two children for their futile resistance.

Even the feeling of icy wind slipping through their collars became sharper. A bone-deep chill made Yahiko’s hand clutching his collar turn white, while his chest heaved violently like a broken bellows.

"Why?" he murmured in a trembling voice.

He did not understand why ninja battles had to drag civilians into them. He did not understand why wars between great nations had to pull the Land of Rain into the flames of war.

The Land of Fire and Wind Country, Sunagakure and Konohagakure, all seemed to be fighting for their own "justice."

And Sunagakure’s reason for starting the war was to promote fair resource distribution.

"Fairness"—what a "just" and "correct" reason.

But they only wanted to live. Was that wrong? If even that was wrong, then who was right?

"Is that your last words?" Hearing the little brat mutter, the yellow-haired Sand ninja, already at the alley entrance, raised a brow. He even seemed somewhat troubled. "Unfortunately, even if you ask me, I don’t know how to answer."

As his words fell, the yellow-haired sand ninja’s unceasing steps carried him lightly through the curtain woven from falling rain at the alley entrance.

Drip.

Konan, whose face had held nothing but ashen despair, suddenly froze. Her gaze fixed on the pool of blood beneath the dead ninja.

From her angle, the bloodstained water surface was like a mirror, yet it reflected a pair of deep blue eyes.

Like a predator quietly watching its prey beneath the depths of a secluded pool.

In her daze, Konan even seemed to see those eyes curve slightly, as though they were… smiling?

Smiling?

Who was smiling?

Before she could raise her head and see clearly, her view was blocked.

Before her stood Yahiko, trying to shield her with outstretched arms, along with the ninja’s raised Kunai and the vicious smile on his face.

"Heh, brat, in your next life, pray you aren’t born in a small country."

His words fell, but when he tried to swing down his arm, nothing happened.

No warm blood splashed out as it always had, nor did he feel that thrill he craved.

The situation made the yellow-haired sand ninja pause instinctively. His eyes shifted toward his own arm.

His sleeve slowly tore open around the arm holding the Kunai, and a ring-shaped red line split across the skin beneath…

As blood sprayed out, his arm slid downward and separated from his shoulder, revealing a smooth, neat cross-section where every detail of bone, muscle, and tissue was plainly visible.

Pain was produced in the cerebral cortex. So after a person suffered direct injury, how long did it take for pain signals to reach the cerebral cortex, and how long did it take to react?

The answer was less than a second.

Even with nerves taut to the limit and the mind lost in shock, it took less than a second to react.

But to shift from utter stillness to utter motion took only the fleeting instant of a bloom.

Before anyone could react, the black figure had already drifted down from the darkness above like a falling maple leaf, landing behind its prey. Its toes touched the pool of blood, sending out a faint ripple.

When a predator hidden in the dark revealed itself beneath the moonlight, the first thing people noticed was not its face, but the cold glint that caught a sliver of moonlight as it cut down.

Splurt!

The blade was swift. There was no pain as it passed, only cold death.

Almost instantly, the yellow-haired sand ninja’s head shot into the air, then struck the ground like a bowling ball with a crisp sound like a watermelon hitting the earth, rolling away in a trail of blood.

That head still carried a trace of confusion as it rolled into the pooled water, eyes open in death and reflecting the two stunned children.

Meanwhile, blood burst from the severed neck like a fountain, turning the place into a rain of blood that fell over Konan and Yahiko.

But soon, a shadow covered them, and the foul rain of blood stopped falling.

"Liking to ask ‘why’ is a good habit. Unfortunately, you chose the wrong person."

A somewhat youthful voice came from above, yet the first impression it gave Konan and Yahiko was one of gentleness.

"…"

Still seeming unable to recover from what they had just witnessed, the two of them blankly raised their heads and happened to meet a pair of deep blue eyes.

"Most people in this world are like fallen leaves. They can only drift helplessly through the air, tumbling and trembling, before finally collapsing onto the ground in resignation and becoming nourishment for the next generation."

"Only a small number of people can be like stars moving along predetermined paths. The fickle winds of fate cannot move them; their hearts have a course already set."

It was a boy in a black robe, still holding an umbrella in one hand. His knuckles were distinct, and his eyes held a smile.

For a moment, Konan could not tell whether the dim blue light reflected in those eyes was starlight or rain.

She only felt that the dark, rainy night had become bright. The rain poured down, her heart surged, and it was as though a sealed valley had suddenly opened, letting an endless gale rush in.