Chapter 422: Konoha Takes the Blame

Chapter 422: Chapter 422: Konoha Takes the Blame

"I know the name of his dojutsu because the dojutsu of my Sharingan is also ’Kamui’..."

Kakashi lowered his gaze and weakly answered Guy’s question.

Itachi hadn’t known before that Kakashi’s left eye was actually a Mangekyō Sharingan, so his shock was far greater than everyone else’s. He blurted out, "That Sharingan of yours is a Mangekyō Sharingan?!"

Kakashi silently nodded.

The astonishment on Itachi’s face deepened. "I heard the Sharingan you received back then only had two tomoe. Don’t tell me you awakened it into a Mangekyō with your own ocular power?"

"To be honest, I’m not really sure about any of that myself."

Even now, Kakashi was still completely unclear about how his left eye had awakened the Mangekyō Sharingan—or even when exactly it had awakened.

Itachi sighed in amazement. "For someone who isn’t even an Uchiha to awaken a two-tomoe Sharingan all the way to the Mangekyō Sharingan through his own power... That’s... that’s simply inconceivable!"

As far as Itachi was concerned, even among the elite of the Uchiha Clan, only a handful could accomplish such a feat. Yet an outsider with only a single Sharingan had somehow managed it. It was honestly difficult for him to accept.

Hyuga Kagami asked at this moment, "You used ’Kamui’ during the fight?"

Kakashi nodded. "Yes. The situation was extremely dangerous at the time, and I’d already prepared myself to die together with him. But I never expected that we would both use ’Kamui’ at the same time and end up traveling into an unfamiliar dimension."

"An unfamiliar dimension!?" Shisui froze for a moment before pondering aloud, "Could it be that he avoids incoming attacks by traveling between different dimensions?"

"That’s the same conclusion I came to. That unfamiliar dimension connected to ’Kamui’ should be the key to how he makes his body intangible and avoids external attacks." After a brief pause, Kakashi asked, "Shisui, has there ever been a case in the Uchiha Clan where two different pairs of Mangekyō Sharingan possessed the exact same dojutsu?"

The reason Kakashi was so hung up on this question was that the more he thought back on the previous battle, the more something felt wrong.

The Akatsuki member who had attacked him—the one wearing a spiral mask with only one eye exposed—just happened to have his right eye exposed, the counterpart to Kakashi’s left eye.

It just happened to be a Mangekyō Sharingan as well.

And the dojutsu contained within it just happened to be ’Kamui’ too.

One coincidence might not mean anything, but three coincidences in a row were enough to make Kakashi deeply uneasy.

Shisui and Itachi exchanged glances before both shaking their heads.

When Uchiha Madara had defected from the village, he had taken a large number of the clan’s precious ancient records with him. As a result, the current Uchiha Clan possessed very few records concerning the Mangekyō Sharingan, and records concerning its various dojutsu were even scarcer.

Therefore, despite both Shisui and Itachi possessing Mangekyō Sharingan themselves, neither of them could answer Kakashi’s question.

Hyuga Kagami pondered for a moment but remained silent.

Naturally, he knew that in the original timeline, the brothers Itachi and Sasuke both possessed the Mangekyō Sharingan dojutsu ’Amaterasu.’

However, there were several factors to consider.

First, the matter involved the ’Transcription Seal.’ Itachi had first sealed his own ’Amaterasu’ into Sasuke’s Sharingan, and only afterward did Sasuke awaken his Mangekyō Sharingan.

Second, Itachi and Sasuke were biological brothers, so there was nothing particularly strange about the two of them possessing the same Mangekyō Sharingan dojutsu.

Third, compared to an extremely rare space-time ocular jutsu like ’Kamui,’ ’Amaterasu’ was relatively ordinary. In the original timeline, when the Second Hokage saw Sasuke use ’Kagutsuchi’ to manipulate the shape of ’Amaterasu,’ he had mentioned that he had seen the same dojutsu before, although its power had been inferior to Sasuke’s.

From this, it was clear that there had likely been Uchiha in the past who had also awakened the dojutsu ’Amaterasu.’

But no one had ever heard of the space-time dojutsu ’Kamui.’ Even the knowledgeable Third Hokage had been completely at a loss regarding it.

Seeing Shisui and Itachi shake their heads together, Kakashi murmured, "I see..."

Without a doubt, a certain suspicion had already formed in Kakashi’s heart.

It was simply that, in his eyes, the possibility was far too absurd for him to bring himself to believe it just yet.

Shisui asked at this moment, "Besides us, does anyone else know that your Sharingan is a Mangekyō Sharingan?"

"No."

Kakashi didn’t have many friends to begin with, nor was he the type to run his mouth. So everyone who knew that his left eye was a Mangekyō Sharingan was currently inside this hospital room.

Shisui glanced at Hyuga Kagami and Guy.

Hyuga Kagami shook his head. "I haven’t mentioned it to anyone."

Guy replied, "Neither have I."

Shisui frowned in confusion. "If the information didn’t leak from our side, then how did Akatsuki know? The attacker must have known that Kakashi-senpai possessed a Mangekyō Sharingan before launching the attack. Otherwise, there are plenty of clansmen in the Police Force with three-tomoe Sharingan. If Akatsuki merely wanted to steal a Sharingan, there would’ve been no reason to specifically target Kakashi-senpai, who only had one."

Having regained his composure, Itachi suddenly asked, "Kakashi-senpai, if I remember correctly, the person who gave you that Sharingan was Obito, right?"

Kakashi replied bitterly, "He died. I saw it with my own eyes!"

Itachi calmly said, "The same dojutsu. Yours is the left eye, while his is the right. Even if that man isn’t Obito, there’s a very good chance that his right eye originally belonged to Obito."

Realization suddenly dawned on Shisui. "So he wanted to take Kakashi-senpai’s left eye to complete the pair?"

Guy moved closer to Kakashi and asked quietly, "Kakashi... could Obito still be alive?"

Kakashi answered in a rarely heard stern tone, "I already told you. Obito died. That Akatsuki bastard absolutely cannot be Obito! He must have somehow obtained Obito’s eye by chance and then awakened it into a Mangekyō Sharingan. There’s nothing particularly strange about that. Didn’t my left eye awaken into a Mangekyō Sharingan too?"

Kakashi’s reasoning did carry some weight.

After all, even he—a non-Uchiha—had managed to awaken the Mangekyō Sharingan. If the other person possessed Uchiha blood, then the chances of him awakening the Mangekyō Sharingan would naturally be even greater.

Guy muttered quietly, "Then why didn’t he kill you?"

With a single sentence, Guy struck directly at the doubt Kakashi had buried deep in his heart, leaving him speechless.

"If that man wasn’t Obito, then why would a ruthless Akatsuki member spare me after I’d already fallen unconscious and completely lost the ability to resist—especially when doing so risked exposing information about himself?"

This was the question Kakashi least wanted to confront.

Because he had no answer.

Hyuga Kagami had long since become certain that the person who attacked Kakashi was Obito. He simply chose not to expose him.

After all, Obito was already completely alone. He had no relatives left in the village, and even the last remaining bond he had with Kakashi had been severed by his own hand.

At this point, even if Hyuga Kagami exposed Obito’s identity, it would accomplish little besides giving the other major ninja villages another excuse to point fingers at Konoha.

After all, from the perspective of the other great ninja villages, the people stirring up trouble in Akatsuki were either Jiraiya’s disciples or rogue ninja from Konoha.

When you really got down to it...

Konoha was to blame for all of it.