Orochimaru could never forget that day, six years ago.
In Year 48 of the Shinobi World Calendar, the Third Great Ninja War had finally ended.
After being besieged on all sides, Konoha achieved a costly victory.
But…
"What was the point of it all?"
His thin lips moved without sound, his eyes calm as he looked ahead.
Lead-colored clouds stretched across the sky. The cemetery, already somber, now seemed desolate and cold. The crowd of mourners bowed their heads and wept like reeds bent under the rain. A sea of black umbrellas clustered together like a murder of crows.
He stood amidst them, watching the old man at the very front of the crowd.
His revered teacher, the Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen.
Hiruzen brushed the rain from the gravestone. Perhaps moved by this gesture, a wave of sorrow rippled through the crowd.
Orochimaru turned his gaze slightly toward a bowl-cut boy standing off to the side.
He knew the child. He often saw him running around Konoha with his Genin father, doing upside-down laps. The two of them were always absurdly cheerful, completely unfazed by the mocking or irritated looks from others.
But now…
For the first time, Orochimaru saw that boy cry, crying stupidly, tears and snot mixing into a muddy mess on his face.
It was said the boy encountered the Seven Ninja Swordsmen of the Mist during a mission. His so-called "useless" Genin father had rushed in to shield his son.
In the end, that man killed four of them singlehandedly, forcing the remaining three to flee wounded.
But he died in the process.
And that other child…
Orochimaru's narrow eyes shifted to the side. In their reflection was a boy's pale, expressionless face, standing still without an umbrella, soaked by the rain.
His sobs were soft and hoarse, just low hissing sounds, shoulders trembling like torn cloth.
Tears streamed constantly, splitting into rivulets that flowed down his cheeks, lost in the rain.
Hyuga Sho.
Timid, frail, and weak. Even when other children his age were already training in Gentle Fist, he hadn't even awakened the Byakugan. He was infamous among the Hyuga as a total "failure."
His father hadn't died on the battlefield, but during a mission escorting a wounded Main Family member. After using up nearly all his chakra to carry that elder back to safety, he was tortured to death via the Caged Bird Seal.
Sho's father had once earned commendations under Orochimaru's command during the Second Great Ninja War.
And now these children, what were they, nine? Ten years old?
Thrown onto the battlefield so young, only to lose the only family they had left…
Orochimaru looked once more at the old man at the front. Lightning split the sky in crooked branches, turning the world stark black and white.
That stark white flash cast long, twisted shadows behind the hunched figure of Hiruzen, his face etched in both light and sorrow.
Having lived through two great wars, Orochimaru was suddenly filled with a loathing so profound it made him nauseous.
All these dead… what meaning did their lives ever hold?
Nothing had changed. Absolutely nothing.
As the mourners dispersed, leaving only the silent gravestones behind, Orochimaru remained standing in front of Nawaki's grave.
A black umbrella hung heavy in his grip. He laid a white chrysanthemum before the stone, reading the familiar name carved there.
Yet he felt… nothing.
No sorrow. No anger. No pity.
Only unease.
He stared at the raindrops slipping off the umbrella, into the grooves of the inscription below, feeling a coldness rise from deep within.
"Um… excuse me…"
A timid voice behind him broke the silence, barely louder than a whisper forced from a throat.
Orochimaru snapped out of his daze and turned toward the sound, only to meet a pair of pale Byakugan eyes.
His expression, still laced with lingering frost, startled the boy, who instinctively flinched, but didn't flee. He held his ground.
"Um… your face… it looks pale, so I…"
His voice faded further under Orochimaru's gaze.
Orochimaru peered down at this child, Hyuga Sho, and realized he'd been standing at the grave too long. The boy must've been worried about his health.
Kind-hearted and weak.
Yes… a failure through and through.
He dismissed the boy with a glance and prepared to walk away.
"Lord Orochimaru."
The voice called again.
Strangely, he stopped walking.
"Do you know… what the meaning of life is?"
Orochimaru narrowed his eyes and turned. The boy was still staring at him, uncertain but earnest.
"My father used to talk about you," Sho said. "He said you were Konoha's hero. I thought… someone like you must know a lot…"
"There is no meaning."
Orochimaru cut him off quietly.
"If there ever was, it only exists while you're alive."
"The dead… have no meaning."
Death was the great equalizer. When it arrived, it took everything, status, power, possessions.
That creeping cold returned to his bones. Even the chill wind slipping into his collar felt more biting now. His fingers, gripping the umbrella, turned white.
Yes, death was like water vanishing into water.
Death meant losing[everything]. He didn't want that.
He couldn't accept that.
He wanted to possess[everything].
So, he would not die.
"Lord Orochimaru," Sho suddenly said, raising his head, "do you believe… gods really exist?"
Orochimaru blinked and looked at the boy, then let out a low chuckle.
Just like Jiraiya and his nonsense about "Child of Prophecy" saving the world.
In his eyes, prophecies and gods were fantasies invented by the weak to comfort themselves.
All-knowing, all-powerful gods? Laughable. At best, they were just stronger beings.
"What if… what if one of them had eternal life?"
Seeing the disdain in his eyes, Sho quickly added, "Before he died, my father gave me a scroll… and a cor, corpse. He said the scroll held the Hyuga clan's darkest secret, and the body belonged to our ancestor… someone who hasn't died and never will. Just… whose soul left the body."
Sho's voice grew quieter as he went on, almost as if he didn't believe it himself. But Orochimaru's pupils twitched.
If there was anyone in the ninja world who understood "souls," it was him.
Most believed souls were intangible, but to Orochimaru, who studied the essence of life, such a thing was not only possible, it was within reach.
And the Hyuga were one of the oldest ninja clans…
He looked at the trembling boy before him, sweat forming at his brow.
And strangely… found himself believing him.
Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to take a look?
Just then, Sho noticed the rain no longer hitting his face.
He looked up.
A shadow loomed overhead. Orochimaru now stood in front of him, shielding him from the rain with the umbrella. One hand rested lightly on his own knee, crouching to meet him at eye level.
"Tell me," he said with a pale smile, "why are you telling me this instead of your clan's elders?"
"My, my father said… if he died, I could trade the scroll and the body for good treatment from the clan."
Sho's face flushed slightly, perhaps due to Orochimaru's softened tone. He looked down.
"But… I don't trust them. They're the ones who killed my father."
His voice trembled, tinged with hatred. Orochimaru glanced at the small fist slowly clenching at Sho's side. Unexpectedly… the kid had a spine after all.
"Do you want revenge?" Orochimaru asked with a sly smile. "Aren't you afraid I'll report this to the Hyuga clan?"
"I don't think someone like you would," Sho replied, shaking his head slowly. "And even if you did…"
"I wouldn't lose much."
"Only myself."
Facing those determined white eyes, Orochimaru paused.
Then he laughed softly and placed a hand on Sho's head.
After all, living might not guarantee meaning, but only the living could encounter interesting people and things.
Later, Sho handed over the scroll and corpse to Orochimaru.
He broke some of the seals and read the first few pages.
There it was, records of the Ōtsutsuki Clan, beings from beyond the stars, born with godlike power. They didn't need training. They could revive themselves through devices called "Karma Seals." They transcended death.
They traveled in pairs across the cosmos to plant "God Trees" that devoured all life on a planet.
The "main family" would return to their homeworld, while the "branch family" remained behind to oversee the God Tree's fruit.
The corpse Sho brought was described as a "branch family" member, an Ōtsutsuki who spread chakra to humanity and fathered the Hyuga clan.
Orochimaru had yet to unlock the rest of the scroll, and thus didn't know why that being had abandoned its body, but even this fragment shook him to his core.
Such perfect chakra pathways. Such flawless biology. They weren't even the same species as normal humans.
Eternal life was real.
All material things perish, but the soul could endure.
If he could just uncover the secrets of the Ōtsutsuki…
Then one day, he would grasp the truth of all existence.
,
It had been six years since Orochimaru received the scroll and the body.
In that time, he believed he had complete control over Hyuga Sho. The boy obeyed without question. Any experiment, he complied. Even when asked to get close to Hiruzen or pass messages to Danzo, he never refused.
And oddly enough, despite his lack of ninja talent, Sho had an uncanny intuition for research. He often stumbled upon obscure clues that gave Orochimaru unexpected inspiration.
That was rare. Even Tsunade, the so-called "Medicinal Prodigy," only saw medical ninjutsu as a healing tool, never a path to understanding life itself.
For a time, Orochimaru even felt a flicker of kindred spirit toward Sho. He nearly spared his soul.
But in the end, his greed for truth and immortality overcame any fleeting sentiment.
Now, looking at the boy who had just moved to kill…
At the headless corpse on the floor…
Orochimaru felt something surreal, like waking from a long, absurd dream.
"You…"
His usual composure cracked.
"What are you doing?"
Sho merely smiled.
"Thank you, Lord Orochimaru."
"Like you once told me, true ignorance isn't lack of knowledge. It's refusal to seek it."
"And weakness or ignorance isn't what dooms us."
"Arrogance is."
Yes. Because of arrogance, Orochimaru never took a "failure" like Sho seriously.
Because of arrogance, he fixated on the Ōtsutsuki corpse and overlooked all the anomalies in the boy beside him.
After all, what could a timid little failure possibly do?
A boy who couldn't even activate the Byakugan?
Sho had been an unopened island, and Orochimaru saw only the surface, never the bottomless, silent swamp beneath.
Only when it was too late did he realize he'd lost control.
It had never been he who chose Sho.
Sho had chosen him.
He'd been played… by a kid?
Orochimaru almost laughed in fury, his pale face twisted into a snarl.
"You think… you can escape from me?"
The instant the words left his lips, he vanished.
A frigid, murderous intent erupted in the room.
It was like the cracking of a frozen river, millennia of icy pressure finally bursting forth.
Vmm!!
A sonic boom split the air.
Too fast.
The kunai had vanished into a blur. It moved beyond vision, tearing through space itself.
Even now, with his chakra nearly depleted, Orochimaru was still not someone Sho could defeat.
After all, this Ōtsutsuki body was manifested through several thousand[Fabrication Points], a powerful bloodline, yes, but still incomplete.
Even as the blade's light reflected in Sho's blue-white eyes, there was no panic.
Instead, to Orochimaru's astonishment, Sho moved into the attack.
Shick!
Blood sprayed, a deep gash tearing across Sho's neck. From vocal cords to spine, an ordinary person would be dead in seconds.
And yet…
Sho smiled.
His lips moved silently:
"Even now… you couldn't aim for my heart?"
If that's the case, then I win.
BOOM!
A deafening roar erupted behind Orochimaru.
He turned, and saw an enraged old man.
"Orochimaru! What are you doing?!"
As the shout echoed, Sho slowly closed his eyes and collapsed onto the operating table.
His last thought drifted through the haze.
Heh… a failure shackled by the Caged Bird Seal.
Fate really did hand me the worst script possible.
But it's fine.
Because I was born to be the best actor.