In the Land of Fire, in Konohagakure, within the old territory of the Hatake clan, Kakashi Hatake sat alone and stared at the diary lying on the table before him.
The plain cover was neatly labeled: "Kitahara Kaede's Diary (Kakashi Hatake's Copy)."
It had dropped from the sky onto his desk only moments ago, appearing so abruptly that even someone as composed as Kakashi had gone tense. He had checked it inside and out with painstaking care, searching for hidden mechanisms, poison, seals, or any trace of ninjutsu, yet found absolutely nothing suspicious.
This was the Hatake clan's ancestral land. Even if he was the only direct descendant left, a few side branches carrying Hatake blood still remained, and this place was not somewhere ordinary people could play tricks unnoticed.
After all, he was Kakashi Hatake—Konoha's famed "technician," one of the strongest ninja in the world beneath the level of the Kage.
Once he had confirmed the thing was safe to touch, he opened the diary.
It really was a diary. But the contents were strange enough to make even Kakashi narrow his visible eye.
May 1st, Year 63 of Konoha. Clear. [Set out to suppress a group of rebellious mountain bandits.]
May 2nd. Sunny. [What kind of damned world is this? I've never even killed a chicken before, but today I killed several bandits. Then again, those bandits really were vicious.]
May 3rd. Sunny. [There were no accidents on the return trip.]
May 4th. Cloudy. [Finally got back to Konoha. My heart can finally relax after being wound so tight.]
May 5th. Sunny. [Nothing to do today. Practiced meditation at home.]
May 6th. Drizzle. [No plans today. Stayed home to cultivate.]
May 7th. Sunny. [Nothing to do today either. Continued my spiritual practice.]
May 8th. Cloudy. [Completed a C-rank mission today. Tired.]
Kakashi frowned as he read. So far, everything was nothing more than scraps of daily life. It looked like the personal journal of a Konoha ninja named Kitahara Kaede, a record of mundane tasks and ordinary thoughts.
Very few ninja kept diaries, much less wrote in one every single day. A diary could expose far too much, and for shinobi, information was often more dangerous than a blade.
But the next entry made Kakashi sit up straighter.
May 9th. Sunny. [I passed by the Ninja Academy today and saw the famous Naruto Uzumaki. He's completely ostracized. Demon Fox? Ha. What a bunch of ridiculous fools those villagers are.]
[But I didn't dare go near him. Who knows whether ANBU are lurking nearby, ready to drag me away the moment I step too close? I'm only an ordinary chunin. In wartime, I'd be cannon fodder.]
Kakashi's expression changed at once.
Of course he knew who Naruto Uzumaki was—the orphaned son of his teacher, the child carrying the sealed Nine-Tails. But how did this Kitahara Kaede know?
Only a tiny circle among Konoha's upper leadership, along with Naruto himself, knew that Naruto was the son left behind by the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze. As for the Nine-Tails, even fewer people understood the truth of it.
Ordinary villagers merely knew Naruto as the so-called vessel of a fox demon. In their minds, he was linked to the colossal Nine-Tailed Fox that had thrown the village into chaos twelve years ago.
Even most ninja did not know the whole story. Yet the tone of Kitahara Kaede's words made it clear he knew far more than he should.
Kitahara Kaede. Chunin.
Kakashi searched his memory and found nothing. Strictly speaking, Konoha had too many ninja for anyone to know them all, and chunin even more so.
Only a small number of elites ever became widely known, and those were rare even among jonin. Still, for some reason, the absence of any impression at all made this man feel even stranger.
A spy from another village? The suspicion rose in Kakashi's mind almost instantly.
He nearly got to his feet then and there, ready to track the man down. But the very moment that thought fully formed, an invisible and terrifying pressure crashed down on him.
His instincts screamed before his reason could catch up: if he took that step, he would die immediately.
Kakashi cut the thought off at once.
Even so, he could not shake the sense that someone might be somewhere near the house, watching him. He immediately used a sensory ninjutsu to probe the surrounding area.
He was not a true sensor-type ninja, but as Konoha's famous "technician," he had mastered a little of almost everything. His sensing was crude compared to a specialist's—broad, imprecise, and far less reliable—but it should still have caught an ordinary intruder.
It found nothing.
Not a single presence. Not a trace of chakra. Nothing at all.
Kakashi's eye darkened.
Could such a person really exist in this world? No—impossible. Even the Hokage could not accomplish something like this without leaving behind the faintest ripple, much less detect his thoughts the instant they turned toward a specific target.
The moment he thought of finding Kitahara Kaede, that terrible fear descended. The moment he stopped, it vanished.
He could not understand it, but one thing was clear: as long as he did not think directly about going to Kaede, that pressure did not appear.
Kakashi reached back and touched his spine. His clothes were soaked in cold sweat.
No. He still needed to investigate Kitahara Kaede's identity and background.
And he quickly realized something else: if he avoided the direct thought of seeking Kaede out in person, the strange warning did not trigger. That meant indirect investigation might still be possible.
Mission logs. Personnel files. Any records connected to Kitahara Kaede. Those should not be forbidden.
But if a terrifying existence like this truly stood behind the diary, then what exactly did it want?
It clearly had no intention of protecting Kaede's secrets. On the contrary, it had practically delivered the diary into Kakashi's hands and exposed its contents on purpose.
Why?
There were too many mysteries. The more Kakashi thought, the less he could make sense of any of it.
Then his gaze fell on the final entry.
May 10th. Sunny. [On my way home after receiving my mission today, I saw Mr. Fifty-Fifty in the distance. It was the first time I'd actually seen this Konoha technician who's famous throughout the entire ninja world. Beneath the Kage level, he should count as one of the strongest.]
[But sadly, once Shippuden starts, power like his won't be enough anymore. In the end, this is a world where legends are written through eyes. Without a bloodline, you're nothing.]
Kakashi froze.
Hatake… Fifty-Fifty?
Is that supposed to be me?
For one absurd second, he genuinely wondered whether there might really be another Kakashi Hatake somewhere among the scattered branches of the clan. But the line about the "Konoha technician" made the meaning obvious. There was no one else it could be referring to.
Since when had he gained a nickname like "Hatake Fifty-Fifty"?
And what was "Shippuden"? A place? A code name? A prophecy? As for that line—"a world where legends are written through eyes"—what exactly was it supposed to mean?
He understood the part about bloodlines. That almost certainly referred to bloodline limits.
But who dared claim that without a bloodline, a person was nothing?
His father had possessed no bloodline limit, yet with a single blade he had carved the name of Konoha's White Fang into the world. Kakashi himself had no inherited kekkei genkai either, and still he had earned the name of Konoha's greatest technician through skill, experience, and talent alone.
Bloodline limits were powerful. They let some people begin the race far ahead of everyone else. But they were not invincible.
Since childhood, Kakashi had stood above his peers again and again. Among those he had surpassed were more than a few heirs to famous clans.
The Uchiha. The Hyuga. And others besides.
Most of them had never been his equal.
Yet despite that certainty, the diary's words would not leave his mind.
Shippuden. Eyes. Bloodline. Hatake Fifty-Fifty.
Each phrase lodged itself there like a hook, refusing to come loose.
The room had gone silent without him noticing. Outside, the Hatake compound was as still as a place abandoned by time, and in the stillness, the diary on the table seemed heavier than any classified intelligence report Kakashi had ever read.
It was only a handful of pages, full of ordinary dates and ordinary notes. And yet every line felt like the tip of something enormous buried beneath the surface.
If Kitahara Kaede was merely a chunin, then he should not have known what he knew. If he was more than that, then Konoha had somehow failed to notice a dangerous anomaly within its own walls.
And if there was truly some unknown being behind this diary… then Kakashi had just brushed against something far beyond common sense.
He lowered his gaze to the last page once more, his expression unreadable behind the mask.
No matter how ridiculous the words looked, one fact remained: the fear had been real. His body would not lie to him about that.
So he would not act rashly.
He would investigate from the edges first, test the boundaries, and uncover what could be uncovered without stepping across whatever invisible line had been drawn around Kitahara Kaede.
But even as Kakashi made that decision, one thought still lingered in the back of his mind, sharp and impossible to ignore.
If those words about the future were true… then what, exactly, was waiting for him there?