Chapter 34: That Year, That Incident – The Third Hokage’s Apology!

Chapter 34: That Year, That Incident – The Third Hokage’s Apology!

BOOM!!

With a tremendous crash,

the front gate of the Sarutobi household was smashed to pieces.

A red-haired woman charged straight in.

Konohamaru came running out at the noise.

Then he saw her—a woman with wild, fluttering red hair and a face full of fury standing right at the entrance.

“You… who are you!?”

Konohamaru was a little scared, but he still pulled out a kunai and stared warily at the unfamiliar redhead.

Then, as if something suddenly clicked,

he pointed at her and shouted loudly,

“It’s you!

You’re the woman who helped Sasuke-niichan beat up that snake!”

“?”

Kushina’s raging momentum paused for a moment.

She honestly had no idea what this brat was talking about.

Whoosh!

With a light sound, Kakashi finally caught up.

“Kushina-sama!

Please calm down!

There’s… a bit of a misunderstanding here!”

Konohamaru blinked in confusion.

He couldn’t understand why Kakashi was calling this red-haired woman “Kushina-sama.”

At that moment,

Asuma also rushed out from inside the house.

“Who the—…”

Before he could even finish, the cigarette dangling from Asuma’s mouth fell straight to the ground.

“K-Kushina-sama!?”

Asuma was completely stunned.

He couldn’t comprehend how someone who was supposed to be dead could be standing here, alive and kicking.

“Could it be… Edo Tensei!?”

That was the first possibility that came to mind.

But then he immediately felt something was off.

“Wait, no…

Edo Tensei usually summons very powerful shinobi.

Kushina-sama was indeed strong, but…

she wasn’t that strong, right?”

“Asuma.”

While Asuma was still dumbfounded, Kakashi spoke up beside him.

“Go call the Third right now.”

“No need.”

Kushina gave a cold snort.

Then she strode straight toward the inner rooms without another word.

Asuma instinctively moved to block her, but Kakashi stopped him with a hand.

“Kakashi, what the hell is going on?!”

“It’s… a long story. Let’s go inside first.”

Kakashi shook his head and quickly followed after her.

……

Sarutobi Hiruzen knew his days were numbered.

So in the time he had left, he wanted to spend it quietly with his family and watching over the village.

Right now he was sitting in the garden, basking in the sun.

He had no idea what the commotion earlier was about,

but since Asuma had gone to check it out, he figured it would be handled.

Just as that thought crossed his mind,

a voice—extremely familiar, yet somehow also strangely distant—suddenly rang out.

“Hokage-sama!”

Hiruzen turned his head.

Then he saw a figure he could never forget.

“K-Kushina…!?”

Clatter…

The pipe fell powerlessly from his mouth and hit the ground.

He stared with wide eyes, mouth hanging open.

For a moment, he was utterly dumbfounded.

“This…

this…

you…

you’re not…”

“I’m not dead, right?”

Kushina finished the sentence for him.

“To be honest… I don’t even know how I came back to life.”

“What in the world is going on?!”

Hiruzen was completely lost.

He was absolutely certain the person in front of him was not an Edo Tensei summon.

This was a living, breathing human!

Someone who had been revived!

And precisely because he realized that, he felt even more confused.

“How can a dead person be brought back to life?!

What kind of technique is this?!

Wouldn’t the caster suffer terrible backlash?!”

“Third.”

Kakashi hurried over and quickly gave a brief account of what he had witnessed at the cemetery that morning.

“Something like that actually happened?!”

Hiruzen was still dazed.

He couldn’t comprehend it.

Who… what kind of power… what organization had the ability to bring the dead back to life?

And what was the purpose of reviving Kushina specifically?!

“Kushina.

Come with me outside the village.”

Hiruzen’s expression turned grave.

“Your revival is far too shocking.

We don’t know what that person’s goal is.

But for now…

we need to isolate you and perform a thorough examination of your body.

If that person can control you to destroy Konoha… the village might suffer unimaginable damage!”

“Fine.”

Kushina had once been the Hokage’s wife. Of course she understood the gravity of the situation.

“But—

I want an explanation from you first.

Naruto…

my Naruto…

Why does the whole village know his secret?!

Why has he suffered so much?!

What happened to the promise you made back then?!”

Hiruzen’s face immediately darkened with guilt.

“Kushina… I’m sorry.

This was my failure.”

He took a deep breath and began to explain.

“That year, after I carried Naruto away from the battlefield in silence, I entrusted him to a trustworthy nanny.

However… many villagers found out about it.

They didn’t understand the full story.

All they knew was that the Nine-Tails had been sealed by the Fourth,

that the Fourth had sacrificed himself,

and that right after the battle, a newborn infant with whisker marks appeared—

an infant I personally carried away from the battlefield and handed to a nanny, with several ANBU watching over him at all times.

So…

the villagers concluded that Naruto was the Nine-Tails.

They believed the Fourth had sealed the demon into a human child,

that the Nine-Tails had transformed into a human infant after being sealed.

After that,

the rumor spread like wildfire through the entire village.

I noticed it immediately and tried to stop it.

But there was no way to seal the mouths of so many people.

In the end, to protect Naruto from being targeted by outside shinobi,

I had no choice but to issue a strict order:

anyone who revealed that Naruto was the jinchūriki would be severely punished.

At the same time, I publicly explained that Naruto was just an ordinary child born on the night of the Nine-Tails attack—

that he had no connection whatsoever to the beast.

I also sealed away any information linking him to the Fourth.

I thought… this way the secret that Naruto was the jinchūriki could be protected.

And at first, it actually worked quite well.

Very few people truly knew the truth.

But…

I underestimated the darkness in people’s hearts.

Those who lost family members, whose homes were destroyed—

they couldn’t take revenge on the real Nine-Tails, and they didn’t dare to.

So they turned all their hatred and pain onto an innocent child.

They refused to call him by his name.

They only called him ‘demon fox.’

They didn’t treat him as a human being… they treated him as the Nine-Tails itself!

I had no choice but to issue another order:

No one was allowed to direct their anger at the innocent Naruto.

No one was allowed to tell him he was the demon fox.

No one was allowed to address him by that name.

But… the prohibition seemed to have the opposite effect.

It only made more people curious.

They secretly called him ‘demon fox’ behind his back,

and some even took pride in it.

They didn’t care about the truth.

They didn’t care about Naruto.

To them, it was just entertainment—

the same way they used to mock your red hair back then.

They ridiculed him, isolated him, enjoyed it.

The children in the village caught the behavior from the adults.

They started isolating Naruto too… and even bullied him at the academy.

So I could only ask Iruka to look after him as best he could.”

Hiruzen let out a long, heavy sigh.

“Naruto has endured pain his whole life…

but I still believe in him.”

He turned his head, gazing at the large tree in the garden—lush, green, and full of life.

“I believe…

that the hatred between people can be melted away with love.

One day, he will be acknowledged by everyone.

He will become a hero in their eyes.

He will become the next Hokage of Konoha!

The true era in which people can understand one another…

will surely come someday!”

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