However, during the march, despite trying to erase every memory of him over the past few weeks, Kanae realized just how useless it had been.
The moment she saw his face again, that narrow-eyed gentleness paired with his messy dark brown hair, everything came flooding back at once. Her mask almost slipped.
"Why now… why can't I control this?"
She wondered if he had already noticed something. Was he disappointed in her?
Had he already "written her out" too? The thought made her chest tighten painfully.
"But isn't that what I wanted? For him to stop looking at me at all?"
But she reminded herself, there was no choice. Anger the Anbu, and within a year, her fate would be sealed anyway.
A lifetime of humiliation at the hands of her greatest enemy, Kojiro Hyūga, awaited her if she strayed from the path laid out for her.
That was why it was impossible to return Ryusei's feelings, no matter what her heart wanted.
She was certain they were real, after all, who would tease her so long, flirt even against her cold responses, save her multiple times, and give her those scrolls and guidance without expecting anything, if not because of some genuine interest?
"Fool… even if you mean it, what could it ever change for me?"
But even if she admitted it, even if she gave him false hope, what then? At best, a year. Maybe less.
And then she would be dragged away, her revenge buried, her life wasted, claimed as a prize by that degenerate. It made no sense.
So on that day, when Kojiro had humiliated her again with even greater brazenness, and when the Anbu had left her shaken to her core, she had decided. It was cruel to Ryusei. But there was no other way.
She would remember him instead. She would carve into her heart that Ryusei Nishida—no, Senju Ryusei, had once existed. That he had been a genius. That he had been handsome, daring, reckless in a way that burned itself into memory.
Her eyes began to warm despite herself, moisture threatening to rise.
"No. Not here. Not now."
Quickly, she steadied her breathing, cooling her chakra flow, forcing her face back into its cold mask.
She had already cried everything out that day when she left the Anbu compound. There could be no tears now.
Meanwhile, Renjiro found himself watching Ryusei with a kind of restless curiosity.
Now that he knew the truth, that Ryusei was a Senju and likely from a prominent lineage, it oddly eased the sting of all those losses he had suffered against him.
Of course, the gap had always been there. Senju were gifted by blood, their vitality and talent ingrained, and some of Ryusei's almost absurd growth and insight suddenly made more sense.
What he couldn't make sense of was why the village leadership would want to eliminate him. Ryusei had done nothing wrong.
He had served Konoha, earned merit, and even gained praise from the Hokage in public.
"That's supposed to be the dream, isn't it? You give everything to the village, and the village protects you."
At worst, perhaps some of his ancestors had fought politically against the current Hokage. But was that alone truly enough to mark one of their descendants for death?
Renjiro's fists tightened unconsciously. The more he turned it over, the more disgusted he felt. All his life, he had been raised to believe the village was one great family, that its leadership represented strength, justice, and unity.
"Family? No. We're just pieces on their board."
Yet here was proof of the opposite. Proof that at the very core of Konoha, in its highest seats of power, there was a darkness willing to smother even its own pillars if they became inconvenient.
He knew he was powerless to oppose it. Too weak to change anything, too weak even to save his friend.
That helplessness burned, but it also sharpened something inside him. A realization, cold and profound, that if he wanted to live long enough to act differently one day, he first had to survive.
"Strength first. Questions later."
For now, survival was the only step. But somewhere in the back of his mind, Renjiro vowed, when the day came that he had the strength, he would not look away.
Meanwhile, Ryusei moved in formation with the company, leaping from tree to tree, the forest rushing beneath their feet.
He had no time to spare on the shifting moods of his teammates. His mind was fixed only on what lay ahead.
This war would be the true turning point of his life—the moment that would decide whether he sank or swam.
For now, his strength had not yet reached the level of an Elite Jōnin.
In truth, he still classified himself only as the "strongest fodder", strong perhaps, but not yet even a smallest player.
Only at the Elite Jōnin threshold did a shinobi stop being a full pawn and start becoming something between a pawn and a player.
After all, at that level, a handful working together could pressure, or even topple, weaker Kage.
Ryusei knew the line well.
He had fought against two of them directly, the Kusagakure shadow leader and the Root Yamanaka commander.
He had also observed others from the outside: Chōza Akimichi and Yukino Sumi clashing in the distance, or his Senju uncle and Kushina Uzumaki standing at close range, too.
And the truth was simple. He was not there yet. He understood how steep that climb was, how much mastery it took to stand on that plateau.
He was currently at most a High Jonin-level shnobi, just like Hisanori Gekko or Shinku Yuhi, for example.
In truth, the majority of the village's shinobi forces sat around the chūnin or special jōnin ranks.
To have already climbed beyond that level so quickly was remarkable in itself.
Especially considering how young Ryusei was, still decades from the age where a shinobi reached their true prime.
He understood well that both physical and spiritual energy deepened with age, and that was what built real chakra stamina.
So chakra reserves grew with age, and when combined with battle-honed control and stronger bodies multiplied by chakra enhancement, most older shinobi could outlast younger opponents with sheer endurance.
For Ryusei, that meant one thing: his only path forward was sharper, more potent power.
He had to wield techniques potent enough to break through before his future enemies could grind him down by attrition.
Whether for being qualified enough for carrying out his subsequent future plans on this front or surviving the constant strikes of the Hokage's faction, now compounded by threats from the other villages, Ryusei knew he had to reach the level of an Elite Jonin extremely fast now.
However, Ryusei understood that all these classifications he devised were only mental maps, shortcuts at best. They could never be taken at face value in real-life-and-death battles.
What truly mattered was adaptability.
His wide arsenal gave him an edge, making it harder for opponents to find counters against him, while giving him more ways to break through theirs.
And beyond countering, countless situational factors could also tip the scales, intelligence, tactics, terrain, and timing, often deciding victory long before raw power ever did.
Ryusei then thought about the nature of war in this world.
The books he read in Konoha's library recently confirmed what he had already pieced together for a long time.
No village could afford to throw every shinobi onto the front.
Too many had to stay back, defending the homeland, patrolling borders, watching over the nobles.
One jōnin slipping through could cripple supply lines, assassinate nobles, or burn half a city.
There were treaties meant to stop that sort of thing, but in reality, those rules bent and broke whenever it was convenient.
Which meant every great village was forced to scatter its strength, enough on the front to fight, enough behind to deter infiltration.
Compared to his old world, the scale shocked him. Earth's wars moved millions, fought with steel and numbers.
Here, an entire "front" could be decided by barely a thousand shinobi, often less.
A handful of elites could tilt the balance, one clan's bloodline shaping the outcome of a whole campaign.
It wasn't about massed armies; it was about precision.
Guerrilla raids, ambushes, infiltration, assassinations, this was war fought in shadows, not trenches.
Squads of ten to twenty shinobi were scattered across vast forests and valleys, their nets tied together by sensory shinobi.
Those sensors were the lifeline.
Civilian-born or specialists who trained their whole lives just to extend their chakra senses, they were fragile in a fight, but priceless for keeping the army alive.
They raised the flares, sent the warnings, and made sure a breach didn't turn into a massacre.
Without them, the line would collapse within a day.
The Hyūga, too, had their role, their Byakugan turning forests and fog into glass walls before engagements.
But their range couldn't match the sensors that sat further back, eyes stretched wide across the country.
Both types together made the system work.
And then came pursuit. If an enemy slipped through the lines, it wasn't over. Hunters were sent, traps sprung, ambushes reversed.
Shinobi war was constant motion, a game of evasion and counter, chasing, luring, striking.
Nothing was static. Fortresses meant little compared to information, mobility, and the ability to kill a target before he had the chance to strike again.
Ryusei realized the truth. This wasn't a war of nations.
It was a war of predators, fought by packs instead of armies.
Numbers mattered, but only because they bought time for the monsters among them, the handful of shinobi whose strength could decide everything.
It was no wonder that Minato, alone, with his special ability, could turn the tide and turn around what should have been a certain losing war for Konoha.
Ryusei understood more clearly now how the war was structured.
At the lowest level were the soldiers, grouped into the familiar small units under team leaders. Several teams made a Squad, led by a Captain.
Above them stood Company Commanders, each holding about fifty or more shinobi under their command.
Companies reported to Division Commanders, having few hundred shinobi, divisions to Frontline Commanders, like Orochimaru, and above all of them stood the Hokage himself, the Supreme Commander.
But the Hokage didn't act alone. There was always the war council, a circle of chosen minds and hands who steered the whole machine.
Shikaku Nara, already known as one of the sharpest men of his generation, had been elevated to Chief Strategist.
Then there were the special corps that the Hokage had prepared in advance.
Tsunade would command the revolutionary mobile medical corps.
Inoichi Yamanaka would lead the universal sensory corps, a net of shinobi linked together, pooling their perception into one living map of the battlefield.
All of this made sense to Ryusei now.
Shinobi war wasn't only about strength of arms; it was how the command structure and these specialized corps could take scattered killers and weld them into something that resembled an army. It was the only way to balance the chaos of predators on both sides.
In fact, Ryusei knew it wasn't that the village threw children straight into war without thought. Obito's generation was already on the verge of graduating, so the Academy had simply pushed them out a few months early.
Those in earlier years would probably remain for now, but Ryusei suspected that if the war dragged on long enough, even they would eventually be mobilized. That was the nature of this world; every age became fodder if the fighting demanded it.
By some accounts he had pieced together, the truth was simple. Without Minato Namikaze, this war would have been hopeless for Konoha.
The other villages had all expected Konoha to be strong, but no one, neither Suna, Kumo, Iwa, nor Kiri, could have predicted a single man with a technique so broken it overturned the logic of battle itself.
Minato's Flying Raijin made him untouchable, and that kind of mobility turned him into a weapon that could rewrite entire fronts.
Ryusei couldn't help but think, coldly, that it was terrifying how much of Konoha's survival hinged on one man's back.
A single anomaly, a genius who defied every rule. Without him, Konoha's fronts would probably have crumbled, their losses piling until even the Fire Daimyo would have considered cutting ties. Minato alone kept them afloat.
Ryusei knew his company would probably be stationed somewhere in the Land of Hot Water, fighting against Kumogakure and its two vassals, Yugakure and Shimogakure.
Smaller villages never really had a choice in these wars. They let the great powers clash inside their countries.
Depending on the strategies of both parties, some of the engagement might even spill into the Land of Fire or Cloud itself.
Kumo was an opponent Ryusei couldn't take lightly. He respected them more than most.
The Third Raikage, in particular, though the legend of him facing 'ten thousand shinobi' alone, in this was, was surely exaggerated of his past life's story; he realised by now, was still someone Ryusei judged to stand at the absolute peak of the Kage class.
Stronger even than Hiruzen. Ryusei prayed he would never have to meet him on the battlefield for a while.
Then there was the Fourth Raikage, still young but already infamous, and Killer B, the perfect jinchūriki.
Together, they made Kumo perhaps the second most dangerous of the Five, second only to Konoha itself at full strength.
Against them, Ryusei was just another soldier in the eyes of the enemy, not the "instability factor" Konoha saw him as.
And he also understood that in this world, nothing about fronts was neat. Shinobi could move with inhuman speed.
Maneuvering decided everything. It wasn't strange for a unit stationed against Kumo to suddenly find themselves clashing with Kiri inside the southern parts of the Land of Hot Water at some point, too.
That was the nature of it. Fluid lines, no fixed borders, and battles where only the strongest survived.
Unlike the Third Raikage, whom he prayed never to meet, Ryusei wanted to meet Orochimaru and Tsunade as soon as possible.
Those two were the real opportunities.
If he played his parts right, they could become his biggest backers in the village, the keys to turning his status around.
But only if he was extremely careful.
"People think legends are untouchable. All I see are cracks waiting to be pulled apart for me to slip into their inner worlds."
He didn't need to worship them; he needed to manage them. One could restrain the other.
Use one to gain the other one too initially, without them knowing how close you are to each other.
"Fake it till you make it" was still the only tactic available to someone in his position.
As for access, it wouldn't even be that hard.
Tsunade was leading the new medical corps, moving across the fronts to patch up the most badly wounded and keep them alive.
Unlike ordinary shinobi, her corps wouldn't be thrown directly into combat. Their task was to survive the war itself, to heal others until the very end.
And Orochimaru was the commander of this very front. Opportunities would come naturally.
Ryusei had thought long about the question: how do you beat an enemy entity much more powerful than you?
"You don't. You make it choke on its own weight."
The answer wasn't to clash head-on.
It was to hit from within. Divide, conquer, and gain leverage.
Use public attention and merit as a shield, also smear Hiruzen's reputation so that he loses influence.
The Hokage had to carry the weight of an entire village.
"That's the gap. He holds the mountain. I just need to throw pebbles until it slides down on him."
Ryusei only had to survive. That was the asymmetry.
He could focus purely on finding cracks. Weak links. Thumbscrews.
Every structure, no matter how strong, had them. Even the Hokage's faction.
The Hokage's position itself was the weak point, too heavy for any one man to wear without leaving gaps.
Lesson one: never fight power where it is strongest. Find where it is stretched thin.
Lesson two: Survival doesn't require you to win outright, only to make the other side lose balance.
Lesson three: strike fast and vanish; the surprise is worth more than the strike itself.
Ryusei wasn't entering this war unprepared.
In a sense, he'd been preparing since the day he woke in this body, and he was finally let free to act.