Chapter 238: Tears

Kakashi lay unconscious beneath the hospital lights.

Tonbo stood beside the bed and examined the activity within his nervous system. Tsukuyomi had broken the normal relationship between perception, memory, and time. Kakashi's brain remained physically capable, but the mental shock had driven it into a coma.

"As expected from someone who survived the battlefield so young," Tonbo murmured. "His neural activity is extraordinary even now."

This was Tonbo's field, yet he had no intention of waking Kakashi before Tsunade returned. Jiraiya had gone to bring her back as the Fifth Hokage. Leaving the most visible part of the treatment to the world's greatest medical shinobi would remove one more excuse for her to reject the office and leave Tonbo trapped behind Hiruzen's desk.

Kakashi would recover no faster because Tonbo wanted to surrender the hat. He therefore stabilized the body and studied the condition without attempting the final treatment.

The transplanted Sharingan continued drawing chakra while Kakashi slept.

Obito's eye could not deactivate as an Uchiha's did. Kakashi's body recognized it as foreign tissue, while the eye depended upon that same foreign body for the physical energy required to maintain its chakra. The eye held a stronger concentration of spiritual energy; the imbalance pulled physical energy from Kakashi at all times and reduced the reserves he could refine for himself.

That constant drain was not the cause of Tsukuyomi's damage. It helped explain why Kakashi remained exhausted longer than an Uchiha would after using the same eye.

Tonbo recorded the structure and chakra response through the nerves he placed around it. The pattern resembled the energy-balancing principle behind his Eye-Opening Hand, but the living transplant had adapted in ways no external model could reproduce.

The distinction between physical and spiritual energy explained more than the immediate coma. Kakashi's own cells produced physical energy suited to his body. The Sharingan carried an Uchiha pattern weighted toward the spiritual side. Because the two rejected one another without separating, the eye continually demanded compensation. Covering it reduced sensory use but did not end that exchange. Every battle Kakashi fought began with a cost another Sharingan user did not pay.

Tonbo traced the flow several times to ensure the effect was persistent rather than a temporary consequence of Itachi's genjutsu. The same route repeated after each measurement. That made the finding useful for Kakashi's recovery and for Tonbo's larger study of how foreign tissues negotiated with a host.

Orochimaru had once balanced Hashirama's cells against Sharingan tissue. Tonbo had to acknowledge the precision of that achievement even while considering how much further his own work had advanced.

He completed a sequence of seals.

Fine nerves separated from Tonbo's network, entered the closed eye, and folded into the existing pathways. Sealing formulas concealed them so completely that an ordinary examination would find only Kakashi's familiar scar and foreign chakra.

Tonbo did not know whether events would ever place the eye in Madara's hands. The future he remembered had already changed too often to be trusted in detail. A hidden connection cost him little chakra and gave him a contingency if someone removed or tried to use the Sharingan later.

"Done," he said. "Sleep while you can, Kakashi. The future will keep you busy."

He left the deeper repair for Tsunade.

Near the Sarutobi district, Konohamaru walked alone through the trees.

Moegi and Udon had tried to remain with him. He sent them away. Their concern made the silence around Hiruzen's death feel louder, and he wanted one place where no one watched him fail to answer.

Without planning the route, he reached the training ground where his rivalry with Tenyu had begun to soften into something closer to friendship.

Metal struck wood beyond the brush.

Tenyu and Jun exchanged blows in the clearing while Maki watched with a lollipop between her lips.

"Iron Fist."

"Rising Dragon Sword."

Padded knuckles met the wooden practice blade. The impact drove both boys apart.

"Tenyu improved again," Maki said.

"We have to," Tenyu replied. "Next time someone invades Konoha, we cannot hide in a shelter and wait for adults. We have to protect the village ourselves."

Maki spoke loudly enough for the words to carry.

"Then tomorrow we should bring Moegi and Udon. Konohamaru has stopped training. That does not mean they should stop too."

Tenyu snorted. "If he spends every day crying and doing nothing, he is not much of a rival. We will have to protect him as well."

Konohamaru's hands closed into fists.

They knew nothing about losing Hiruzen. They still had parents and a father strong enough to stand at the center of an invasion. Anger pushed him toward the clearing, but his grandfather's voice reached him first.

Hiruzen had told him that becoming Hokage meant protecting everyone. Defeating the old man had never been the true goal. Training hard enough to carry other people was.

He remembered boasting that he would take the hat while Hiruzen laughed, remembered lessons he had treated as obstacles, and remembered the last glimpse of a battlefield adults refused to let him enter. If he abandoned his work now, the dream would become something he had said only while his grandfather remained alive to hear it.

Konohamaru wiped his face before the three in the clearing could see his tears. He backed away, then turned toward home with a decision stronger than the anger that produced it.

He would return to training.

Once his presence passed beyond their senses, Jun lowered the wooden sword.

"What if that only made him angrier?"

The exchange had been staged. All three children possessed senses sharp enough to detect Konohamaru before he reached the brush, and his collapse into grief had unsettled them. With no time to ask an adult, they chose the quickest method they could imagine for reviving his pride.

They had not meant the insults as a judgment of grief. They had borrowed the language of their rivalry because it was the one language in which Konohamaru had always answered them. Whether that distinction reached him through the leaves was another question.

Maki removed the lollipop.

"He admired Lord Third. Hiruzen always said the Hokage protects everyone. Reminding him should help."

"We should ask Dad," Tenyu said. "If Konohamaru gives up, competing for the hat will not mean as much."

Jun agreed. The concern beneath the crude plan was real, even if none of them knew whether it had worked.

Tonbo was already at Hiruzen's grave.

He placed white chrysanthemums before the stone. Asuma sat nearby with a cigarette between his fingers.

"He died defending the village," Tonbo said. "That is a glorious name for a shinobi."

Asuma gave a quiet sound of agreement.

"I knew this could happen. What I regret is how much time I wasted fighting with him when I was young. I hated that he managed every part of my life, and then hated that the Hokage never had enough time for our family."

He looked at the unlit cigarette.

"Now I understand more of what he meant by the Will of Fire. I only wish understanding had arrived while we could still argue about it."

The laugh that followed carried no amusement. Asuma raised the cigarette, considered it, and put it away again.

Tonbo remained beside him before returning to the office Hiruzen had left behind.