Naruto: Farming Emotions with Multiple Identities in Naruto — Chapter 197

Chapter 197: Never Making Friends Again

Black Zetsu’s raspy voice slithered through the damp, dimly lit cavern, weaving a heavily exaggerated and entirely biased tale of the ongoing Ninja World War. He hovered near the edge of the stone bed, his yellow eyes fixed intently on Kazushi.

“The Fourth Hokage fell after a brutal siege,” he murmured, lacing his tone with artificial sorrow. “At the very moment of her death, her greatest concern was you. You were the only friend who could truly understand the burden she carried. She simply could not let go of her ideal to bring lasting peace to this world. And so, in her final breath, she used a forbidden jutsu to create me.”

He paused, letting the lie hang heavy in the stale air. “I lurked in the shadows of the Hidden Sand Village for a long time, searching for where they held you captive. Fortunately, I arrived just in time. Had I been a moment later, you might have already been hollowed out and turned into a human puppet by Chiyo.”

Kazushi lowered her head, her hands flying up to cover her eyes. A ragged gasp tore from her throat, followed by another. Soon, her slender shoulders began to shake violently, convulsing with what appeared to be uncontrollable grief.

“Stelle is dead…” she choked out, her voice cracking perfectly on the syllables. “Honestly… how could someone so impossibly strong just die?”

She slumped backward, leaning weakly against the cold stone wall. Her eyes stared blankly ahead, painting a picture of absolute, hollow sorrow. “Why did you even bother to pull me from that cell? What reason does a Kage have to keep breathing, especially when abandoned by the very village they swore to protect?”

She shed no tears and offered no loud wails. This eerie, quiet desolation was the ultimate portrait of a shattered mind.

Black Zetsu watched her intently. He knew this was the absolute perfect window to seize control of her psyche. Yet, he held back from using brute force, opting instead to plant a shallow, insidious mental suggestion. He remembered the disastrous lesson he had learned from Uchiha Kou. Forcing a complete mental rewrite on someone with a formidable will only led to irreversible damage.

Besides, Enkawa Kazue was a prime target. Betrayed by her own people, her best friend dead—she was a fragile shell waiting to be filled. He only needed to provide a gentle nudge. She was already drowning in despair regarding this cruel world. If he handed her a single, sharp reason to keep living, she would walk right into his snare without a second thought.

“That is exactly why you must survive,” he whispered, his voice dropping to a comforting, hypnotic cadence. He spoke slowly, painting himself as her sole confidant. “Everyone wants to see you crumble. You must succeed just to spite them. You must mold the Ninja World into the vision you both shared, strictly according to the plan.”

He leaned closer, his shadowy form shifting. “The ones at fault are your village, your friends, and your subordinates. They tossed you aside. So, you must toss them aside in return. From this day forward, live only by your own will.”

Kazushi’s pupils trembled violently, widening as if his words had struck the deepest chord in her soul. She clamped her mouth shut, offering neither agreement nor rejection. She simply sat there, completely submerged in her own isolated world.

Satisfied, Black Zetsu nodded. The seed was planted. He instructed her to rest, to focus entirely on healing her battered body and regaining her chakra before they made their next move.

The absolute second his dark presence vanished from the room, Kazushi dropped the act. She flopped backward onto the mattress, her head bouncing slightly against the stiff pillow. Her hollow, despairing expression melted into a dry, unimpressed stare.

‘Black Zetsu, you slimy weed,’she thought, staring at the rocky ceiling.’You had better have given me a massive payout of mood values for that Oscar-worthy performance, or I am going to make your life a living hell.’

In truth, her survival in the Land of Wind had been a complete mess of overlapping interventions. She was fully prepared to die the moment Chiyo and the elder council moved against her. That was the script.

However, Ebizo, despite being placed under strict house arrest by his own sister, had somehow managed to slip a message out to Kakuzu. She had intentionally sent the bounty hunter away to avoid him interfering, but Ebizo brought him right back. The elder had even prepared a specialized antidote in advance.

Kakuzu had swooped in, snatched her from the jaws of death, and immediately forced the antidote down her throat. It was administered late, leaving her hanging by a literal thread, but it kept her heart beating. Not stopping there, the miserly rogue ninja had actually burned a massive hole in his wallet, using an obscenely expensive Healing Scroll smuggled from Konoha to stabilize her. He had essentially dragged her back from the afterlife by sheer financial force.

Under Ebizo’s frantic, behind-the-scenes orchestration, Kakuzu wasn’t the only one involved. Matsumoto Akira had been dragged into the rescue operation as well. For days, Akira and Kakuzu had taken exhausting shifts, guarding her bedside with unblinking vigilance. With those two hawking over her, she couldn’t exactly execute a dramatic, spontaneous disappearance.

Then, through a bizarre twist of fate, Black Zetsu had slithered in and stolen her away while she was drifting in a daze. The shadowy entity had then taken over her medical care, assigning a White Zetsu clone to monitor her vitals around the clock.

And now, she found herself sitting here, inexplicably drafted as a pawn on Black Zetsu’s chessboard.

Her mood was incredibly complicated. How did her most emotionally detached, death-seeking alias suddenly end up with such a stubborn life force?

More, she had vanished right under Akira’s nose. Knowing Kakuzu’s temper, she sincerely hoped the bounty hunter hadn’t ripped the poor man to shreds in a fit of rage. Her relationship with Kakuzu was technically just a business contract, but she had dragged him into countless chaotic situations purely to farm his mood values. Over time, an unspoken camaraderie had formed. They were friends, even if neither would admit it out loud. For her sake, Kakuzu would absolutely seek retribution. She could only pray that Akira, a minor character who didn’t even have a footnote in the world’s grand timeline, possessed enough luck to be saved by Ebizo.

Fortunately, Akira had not been beaten to a pulp. Kakuzu was a man of intense fury, but he rarely acted without calculated reason. He actually maintained a decent working relationship with the man. During dry spells when high-paying bounties were scarce, Akira would secretly funnel minor, profitable tasks his way, usually at Ebizo’s expense.

But Akira was currently destroying himself from the inside out. The guilt was eating him alive. Ever since Kazushi had vanished from the secure underground room without a single trace, he had spent every waking hour loudly demanding a blade to commit seppuku.

Ebizo had immediately dragged Kakuzu into a frantic, covert investigation. They scoured every single noble clan and hidden faction within the Land of Wind that possessed the resources to conceal a Kage. They found nothing.

The timing could not have been worse. The war machine was in full motion. The main army had already marched to the borders, leaving the village administration drowning in logistics and panic. There was simply no manpower left to tear the desert apart looking for one missing woman.

Ebizo nearly flipped the entire Hidden Sand Village upside down before finally accepting the grim reality. She was truly gone. Given her catastrophic injuries and the lingering poison ravaging her system, being abducted by an unknown force meant only one logical outcome. Death.

Driven to the edge, Ebizo had stormed directly into Chiyo’s quarters, slamming his hands on her desk to declare that Kazushi’s body was missing.

Chiyo’s reaction was swift and terrifying. How could she ever allow her best friend’s corpse to be desecrated and strung up as a weapon? Right in the middle of a high-stakes war council, she brought up the disappearance of the Third Kazekage’s body. Her voice had been cold as ice as she issued a blood-chilling ultimatum: if any faction, clan, or individual dared to turn the Third into a human puppet, she would personally see their entire bloodline erased from the earth.

The clan leaders had stared back at her in genuine bewilderment. They knew absolutely nothing. Internal political assassination was one thing, but desecrating the corpse of their own Kage crossed a sacred line. They had limits. Once the internal strife settled, they respectfully commissioned a grand tombstone for the Third Kazekage, honoring her memory.

The disappearance simply faded into an unsolved, haunting mystery.

Deep within the Hidden Sand Village, Kakuzu sat heavily on the tatami mats of Akira’s house, a cup of cheap sake in his hand.

Akira was completely intoxicated. He clung to a wooden support pillar, wailing at the top of his lungs. One second, he was sobbing apologies to the former Daimyo for failing to protect Princess Kazushi. The next, he was viciously cursing Ebizo as a useless, pathetic coward who couldn’t even keep the woman he loved safe. Then, the cycle repeated, ending with Akira begging for a short blade so he could join the Princess in the afterlife.

Kakuzu’s patience finally snapped. A thick, black thread shot out from his wrist, whipping through the air. A sharp hand-chop struck the back of Akira’s neck, instantly knocking the weeping man unconscious. Silence finally returned to the room.

Kakuzu stared down at his cup. The Third Kazekage was dead. The Fourth Hokage was dead. The two absolute fools who had yearned for peace more desperately than anyone else in this miserable world were the first to be buried by it.

Peace was a delusion. He had always known that, even if he had occasionally allowed himself to entertain the quiet, foolish fantasy of what the world might look like if those two women had actually succeeded.

Where was this so-called peace? It was invisible. It was untouchable. Money was real. When you held a stack of crisp bills in your hand, the weight of it grounded you. It was truly yours. Money didn’t bleed out in a desert. Money didn’t vanish in the middle of the night. As long as he hoarded it, protected it, it would never abandon him. That was good enough for him.

Kakuzu filled his cup to the brim. He slowly tilted his wrist, letting the clear liquid spill onto the wooden floorboards in a silent tribute.

“Enkawa Kazue,” he muttered, his deep voice rough as sandpaper. “Have a safe journey.”

He corked the wine flask, gathered his meager belongings, and stepped out of the house. He didn’t look back as he handled the winding, sandy streets toward the village gates.

He was Kakuzu, the immortal rogue ninja of Takigakure. The moment he had taken that headband, he was marked for life. He could never truly belong to the Hidden Sand. As Enkawa Kazue’s bodyguard, the contract was null and void the moment her heart stopped. The desert held no reason for him to stay.

Just as his boots hit the edge of the village gates, a figure stepped out from the shadows of the sandstone wall. Ebizo.

The elderly shinobi didn’t say a word. He simply reached into his robes and tossed a sealed scroll through the air.

Kakuzu caught it effortlessly, his green eyes narrowing. “What is this?”

Ebizo looked out at the rolling dunes, his voice completely hollow. “Kazushi left that for you. It contains every last ryo she had to her name. Her personal notes stated it was a final payment. To buy you one single day of true rest. To let you be a carefree Kakuzu, if only for twenty-four hours.”

Kakuzu’s grip tightened on the parchment. A sudden, crushing weight slammed into his chest, shattering the iron-clad emotional walls he had spent decades building.

Damn that woman. How was she so terrifyingly perceptive? She had looked right through his greedy, violent exterior and guessed the one quiet, impossible thing the Great Kakuzu secretly desired most.

He spun on his heel, pulling his hood up as he charged aggressively into the howling wind and biting sand.

She was just an employer. A loud, troublesome, chaotic employer. Yet here she was, reaching from beyond the grave to trick the Great Kakuzu out of his tears. They definitely were not friends. Absolutely not. He swore to the desert winds that he would never, ever make another friend as long as he lived. He would stick to loving money. Money only got spent. Money didn’t die and leave you standing alone in the sand.

The Exchange Center awaited. The Great Kakuzu was back in the game.