Chapter 233: The White Fang's Blade That Can Never Be Drawn Again
Kakashi's footsteps faltered, his sandals scuffing against the dirt path as he ground to a sudden halt. Under the cool canopy of the night sky, the sharp, hyper-alert edge in his gaze melted away. His eyes drooped back into their signature, half-lidded 'dead fish' stare, rolling upward in a dramatic display of exasperation.
"Where did he even pull that conclusion from?"
Stelle patted her own cheek, blinking with wide, exaggerated innocence. "Maybe my previous face gave him the wrong idea about you, Kakashi. Hey, can I ask you a question?"
Kakashi shoved his hands into his pockets. "Ask away."
"Why do you always cover your face?"
"No particular reason," he replied flatly, his tone giving absolutely nothing away.
"I bet it's because you're just too devastatingly handsome, and you're terrified of people staring at you." It was a wildly popular theory, one that half the village had practically agreed upon by now.
Stelle leaned in, her expression shifting into one of intense, comical seriousness. "Then what exactly do I have to do to get you to pull that mask down? Just one peek."
"I don't know!" Kakashi shot back, a masterclass in dodging the issue. It was as if he hadn't spoken at all.
Honestly, with her current abilities, forcing a peek wouldn't be difficult in the slightest. But where was the fun in that? There would be zero sense of achievement. Stelle rubbed her chin, genuinely considering a new long-term plan: focus entirely on her training, wait until her strength skyrocketed, and then challenge Kakashi to a high-stakes duel. The terms would be simple—if he lost, the mask came off.
By the time they finally arrived back at the Hatake compound, Sakumo was already waiting by the front gate. The moment he spotted Stelle being carried on Kakashi's back, his posture stiffened, and he closed the distance between them in a few quick strides.
"Is A-Mu injured?" he asked, his voice tight with paternal concern.
Stelle shook her head, offering a reassuring smile. "Just a few scratches. A little medicine and I'll be good as new."
Sakumo's sharp eyes carefully scanned both children. Only after confirming that neither had sustained any serious damage did his shoulders drop as he exhaled a long, heavy sigh of relief. Gently, he lifted the girl from Kakashi's hold and carried her inside. After carefully cleaning and bandaging her minor scrapes, he affectionately patted Stelle's head.
"Get some good rest, A-Mu," he murmured warmly. "Don't be afraid. Everything is fine now."
Stelle obediently slipped under the covers, allowing Sakumo to tuck the blankets snugly around her shoulders before she closed her eyes.
Satisfied, Sakumo quietly stepped out of the bedroom, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft click.
Instead of returning to his own room to sleep, Kakashi was standing out in the moonlit courtyard. His arms were crossed, his posture rigid. He was clearly waiting for his father.
"Kakashi?" Sakumo prompted gently. "Is something the matter?"
Kakashi narrowed his eyes, answering a question with a question. "I think you're the one who should be answering questions, Dad. Don't you have anything you want to ask us?"
It made zero sense. The two of them had vanished in the dead of night, only to reappear hours later looking worse for wear, yet his father hadn't asked a single probing question about what had actually happened. How could he not find that suspicious?
Sakumo stepped fully into the courtyard, a mild, easygoing smile gracing his features. "Well then, may I ask now?"
The muscle beneath Kakashi's mask twitched in sheer irritation. "Are you still acting? You clearly know exactly what happened."
Kakashi knew his father's stubborn streak too well. If he didn't force the issue, Sakumo would gladly play dumb forever, waiting for Kakashi to drag the truth out of him.
"Tell me the truth," Kakashi demanded, his voice dropping an octave. "You were following us the entire time, weren't you? Watching everything unfold from the shadows. You saw we weren't in any real danger, so you never bothered to show yourself. And I was just too weak to notice you were there."
Sakumo didn't utter a word, but the subtle shift in his gaze—a quiet, melancholic acknowledgment—told Kakashi everything he needed to know. His deduction was spot on.
"Then explain this to me," Kakashi pressed, stepping forward. "Why did you stop being Konoha's White Fang? Why reduce yourself to a ramen shop owner and hide your true identity from the world?"
Kakashi had suspected his father was hiding something for a long time, specifically during his kenjutsu training. Whenever Kakashi hit a bottleneck or prepared to advance to a more complex sword technique, his father would miraculously produce a highly advanced training manual—perfectly tailored to solve his exact problem.
Once could be dismissed as a lucky coincidence. But when it happened at every single hurdle? Only a fool would remain blind to it.
, there had been slip-ups at the ramen shop. On more than one occasion, Kakashi had caught passing veteran shinobi respectfully bowing and addressing his father as 'Senior Sakumo' before quickly correcting themselves.
Sakumo exhaled slowly, the gentle facade finally melting away. "I honestly thought you would just swallow your curiosity and never ask."
The warm, domestic smile vanished from Sakumo's face, replaced by a solemn, heavy gravity that Kakashi rarely saw. Without another word, the older man turned and walked out of the courtyard gates. Guided by an unspoken understanding, Kakashi quietly fell into step behind him.
The moonlight was blindingly bright tonight, casting long, sharp shadows across the village and rendering the flickering streetlamps dull and lifeless by comparison.
The two figures, one tall and burdened, the other small and seeking answers, handled the quiet streets until they reached the village cemetery.
Sakumo stopped before a very specific, familiar grave. Spotting a few stray autumn leaves resting on the polished stone, he bent down, gathered them gently, and discarded them in a nearby bin. Reaching into his pocket, he produced a clean handkerchief and began to carefully wipe away the thin layer of dust that had gathered overnight.
The white fabric brushed over the engraved characters, revealing the name etched deeply into the rock.
Ida Mutsuki.
The tombstone of the Fourth Hokage.
"You want to know why I abandoned the title of Konoha's White Fang to boil noodles in a kitchen," Sakumo began, his voice barely rising above a whisper. He drew in a long, ragged breath, struggling to force the next sentence past the lump in his throat. "It is because... I made a catastrophic mistake. A mistake that caused the death of the one person I swore my absolute loyalty to. Ever since that day, I found myself completely unable to swing the White Light Chakra Sabre."
Sakumo's famously straight, proud posture sagged, as if the invisible weight of the world had suddenly crashed down upon his shoulders. His tone was drenched in a suffocating, bitter dejection.
"They teach it constantly at the Academy, don't they? They tell you that the Fourth Hokage died a hero's death, fighting endlessly on the front lines to protect the village and her comrades." A hollow, self-deprecating chuckle escaped his lips. "But I guarantee the history textbooks conveniently leave out the fact that the Fourth Hokage only deployed to that battlefield because of an intelligence report I sent from Sunagakure. A report that had been secretly intercepted and altered by the enemy."
He traced the engraved letters with a trembling finger. "She was unimaginably powerful. Under normal circumstances, she never would have fallen in combat. But during that ambush, to save my life, she was forced to activate a Forbidden Technique. The sheer strain caused her old, unhealed injuries to violently flare up mid-battle, ultimately forcing her to self-destruct to take out the enemy forces. If it hadn't been for her... I would have died in the barren deserts of the Land of Wind when I was only nineteen."
The guilt was a venom that never stopped burning. Sakumo constantly tortured himself with the thought that if he had just been sharper, if he hadn't transmitted that doctored intel, her ending would have been entirely different.
His mind drifted back to a sunlit afternoon from years ago. He had spent half the day standing in a ridiculously long line just to buy a specific batch of limited-edition snacks the Fourth Hokage had been craving. When he finally handed them over, she had looked at him and said something incredibly strange.
'Sakumo,'she had told him, her tone oddly distant as she chewed on a skewer.'Let me tell you what the absolute most tragic thing in this world is. You meet someone, you make a terrible mistake, and you desperately want to make amends. But in the end, you realize you are completely powerless to turn back the tide. The mistake you made simply cannot be undone, no matter how hard you bleed for it. That is true tragedy.'
At the time, he hadn't understood her at all. He had simply thought her words were overly cynical and pessimistic for such a beautiful day. He had even asked her why she felt that way, wondering if a painful memory from her past had suddenly resurfaced.
The Fourth Hokage had merely sighed, dramatically shaking her head. 'Sakumo, you just don't get it. Sigh... no one understands me. And absolutely no one understands this reference.'
Back then, he had only felt a deep sense of loneliness radiating from her, as if she existed on an entirely different wavelength that no one in this world could ever hope to reach.
Even now, Sakumo still didn't fully comprehend what was going through her mind when she spouted that bizarre nonsense. But the cruel irony was that he finally understood the raw, agonizing meaning behind those words.
Unlike most of his peers, Sakumo had only attended the Ninja Academy for half a year. He wasn't molded into a traditional shinobi; his foundational education was rooted deeply in the strict codes of Bushido.
To a samurai, loyalty was absolute. You pledged your life to a single master, swinging your blade for one unwavering conviction until your dying breath. Sakumo's personal 'Way of the Sword' had always been protection. And on his long, arduous path of mastering the blade, he had found the one person worthy of his eternal loyalty.
Yet, he was the very reason the Fourth Hokage—the woman he had sworn to serve and protect at all costs—was lying beneath this cold stone.
The moment she died, his 'Way of the Sword' shattered.
Later, consumed by grief and rage on the battlefield, he had hunted down and slaughtered the Third Raikage to avenge her. But when the blood finally dried and his revenge was complete, a horrifying realization washed over him. Nothing had changed. The gaping void in his chest remained. The person he cherished was still dead.
Everything was beyond salvation. He was utterly powerless to turn back the tide.
In that sickening moment of clarity, Sakumo knew he could never again manifest the fierce, protective sword aura that had made him famous. It was the darkest abyss of his life. His entire reason for existing had been violently ripped away, leaving him adrift, unsure of how to even breathe, let alone live.
Seeing his catastrophic mental decline, Hiruzen Sarutobi and Danzo Shimura mutually agreed that he couldn't handle any more trauma. To preserve what was left of his sanity, they locked down his military files, erased his active status, and allowed him to fade into the background of Konoha as an ordinary civilian, completely isolated from the bloody politics of the ninja world.
For years, he had been a ghost haunting his own kitchen. If it hadn't been for A-Mu's sudden appearance—which had spooked Hiruzen enough to personally investigate the ramen shop—Sakumo likely would have spent the rest of his days aimlessly boiling broth, waiting to die.
But he didn't view A-Mu as the literal reincarnation of the Fourth Hokage, despite their uncanny physical resemblance.
The Fourth Hokage's short, brilliantly chaotic life was a blazing comet that deserved to be remembered exactly as it was. She was utterly irreplaceable.
The only reason he was finally tearing open these old wounds and confessing his sins tonight was for Kakashi. As a father, he refused to sit back and watch his son stumble down the same path, doomed to repeat his tragic mistakes.
Listening to his father bare his soul in that slow, gravelly voice, a rare flicker of deep shock cracked through Kakashi's stoic demeanor. At his young age, he couldn't fully process the crushing weight of such heavy, suffocating grief.
All Kakashi knew was that, standing here in the pale moonlight, his legendary father looked incredibly fragile. He looked exactly like the old, rotting tree by the training pond—hollowed out and ready to collapse.
From the outside, that tree appeared lush and sturdy, its thick roots deeply intertwined with the earth. But Kakashi knew the truth. The core had been completely eroded by the stray strikes of his Lightning Release ninjutsu practice. It only needed one final, gentle push to shatter completely.
Sakumo turned away from the grave, reaching out to press a heavy, calloused palm onto his son's small shoulder.
"Kakashi," he said, his voice thick with unshed tears. "Work hard. Become strong. Become strong enough to protect the people you hold dear. And whatever you do... never end up like me, drowning in a sea of endless regrets."
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