Nawaki, driven by a death-defying resolve, sprinted toward the source of the screams. As he rounded a shack, he saw it with his own eyes: Hatani using a blade of wind to cut down a middle-aged man who had stumbled out in a panic. Hatani didn't stop there; he turned toward another tightly barred door, intent on continuing the slaughter.
Nawaki's vision went red.
"Raaah!"
He roared, lunging at Hatani's back. He swung a fist so hard that his nails bit into his palms, drawing blood.
Hatani, who had long sensed Nawaki's approach through the wind, hadn't expected his own teammate to actually attack him. It wasn't until Nawaki's fist whistled through the air toward the back of his head that Hatani finally reacted. He tilted his head sharply, barely dodging the heavy blow.
"Nawaki, what are you doing?! Have you lost your mind?!"
Hatani countered with a swift shoulder throw, slamming Nawaki into the dirt. He stared down at his teammate, who was trembling with a manic, bloodshot intensity.
"Lost my mind? I'm the one who's lost it?!"
Despite being pinned, Nawaki used his rage to fuel a burst of strength. He wrenched himself free from Hatani's grip, scrambled to his feet, and lunged again.
"You killed all those civilians just to cover our tracks! And now you're trying to wipe out an entire village! You... you aren't fit to be my teammate! You aren't fit to be a shinobi of the Leaf!"
Nawaki's worldview was crumbling. Every punch he threw carried a suicidal weight; he didn't care about his own defense or the openings he left. He was fighting as if he had nothing left to lose.
"Stop it! Just listen to me first!"
Hatani was caught between a laugh and a groan at the sheer scale of the misunderstanding. He danced back, dodging Nawaki's desperate strikes. But Nawaki had completely shut down—he was deaf to all reason, his hands never ceasing their assault.
Left with no other choice, Hatani reached out to the wind, pleading for it to bind the boy.
Earlier, fueled by his own cold fury, Hatani had finally broken through his long-standing bottleneck. He could now let the wind feel and be stained by his emotions, allowing it to move in sync with his will. While he still needed extreme emotional triggers to make the wind lethal, it was more than happy to help him restrain an opponent.
Suddenly, several funnels of wind spiraled around Nawaki, snapping shut like invisible shackles around his limbs and torso. He was pinned mid-air, unable to move a muscle.
"Let me go! Let me go!" Nawaki screamed, his voice raw with fury. "Namikaze Hatani, unless you kill me right now, I swear I'll report this! I'll make sure everyone knows you're a mass murderer! You'll be a pariah!"
Hatani was momentarily speechless. If I really were a cold-blooded killer, he thought, that idiotic speech would be the fastest way to get yourself executed.
"You won't believe anything I say right now," Hatani said, his voice dropping into a weary monotone. "So, I'm going to let you see for yourself just what kind of 'innocent civilians' these people really are."
Ignoring Nawaki's curses and struggles, Hatani walked over to the barred shack. He kicked the door open with a resounding thud, then pitched his voice as gently as he could.
"It's okay. It's safe now. You can come out."
There was no movement. The person inside seemed paralyzed by terror.
"Don't worry," Hatani continued, his patience forced. "The scum are all dead. You're safe."
Finally, after a long silence, a figure approached the doorway and stepped out into the light.
Nawaki, who had been shouting obscenities only seconds ago, suddenly went mute. His mouth hung open, his eyes widening until they looked ready to pop.
The figure standing next to Hatani was the youngest of the orphans they had encountered that morning. He stood there trembling, looking like a rabbit that had seen too many wolves.
"Hatani... what... what is this?"
The wind shackles vanished. Nawaki stood on shaky legs, a deep sense of shame beginning to gnaw at him, but his confusion was still stronger.
"Think back," Hatani said, not looking at him. "Every refugee we've seen on this road—what did they look like?"
"They were... terrified," Nawaki whispered, the memories flooding back. "Hollow. Emaciated. Like walking corpses that had lost their souls."
"Exactly. So, didn't it strike you as odd that the men back there were all ruddy-faced and well-muscled? They looked like they hadn't missed a meal in months."
"I thought... maybe because they were strong, they could find more food..." Nawaki's voice failed him. Even with his limited experience, his restored logic told him it wasn't that simple.
"Remember when we were hiding in that tree? They were laughing. They were celebrating," Hatani said, his voice growing heavy with a dark, suffocating loathing.
Beside him, the child flinched, a look of pure horror crossing his face. Nawaki watched the boy, his own mind piecing together a theory he desperately wanted to be wrong.
"They were celebrating because they had just caught enough 'prey,'" Hatani said, shattering Nawaki's final defense. "And they were heading out to catch more."
"Urgh—!"
Nawaki doubled over. Even though he had lived on nothing but Soldier Pills for the past day, he began to retch violently, his stomach twisting into knots.
He finally understood. He understood why the usually calm Hatani had turned pale with rage the moment he saw those men. He understood why Hatani had charged them like a man possessed, and why he had looked at Nawaki with such lethal killing intent when questioned.
If anything, Nawaki now felt that simply killing those monsters—creatures that didn't even deserve to be called animals—was far too merciful.
Through his nausea, a crushing weight of guilt settled over him. He had misunderstood his friend so fundamentally that he had nearly tried to kill him. He had almost protected the very monsters that were preying on children.
But more than the guilt, there was a profound sense of relief. He looked at Hatani, then at the emaciated child. He was lucky. He was so lucky that his teammate was Hatani—someone who could see the truth in the wind.
If not for him...
Nawaki looked at the starving child again and didn't dare to finish the thought.