Being a rogue ninja is worse than being Hokage.

Does this mean I've gone blind?

After all, Sasuke had used up all his eye power in his battle with Itachi.

But soon, Sasuke realized that it was not his eyes that were plunged into darkness.

Rather, it was the darkness brought about by the space he was in.

In this dimly lit space, Sasuke heard Naruto's voice:

"You look like you've given up on life. It's rare to see you like that."

Sasuke looked in the direction of Naruto's voice.

At the other end of the pitch-black space, the faint candlelight, insufficient to illuminate the entire space, shone entirely on Naruto.

In that instant, Naruto became the only light in Sasuke's dark eyes.

Sasuke did not respond to Naruto. Slightly dazed, he subconsciously drew out the last bit of light from his lifeless eyes.

Naruto didn't expect Sasuke, who was feeling empty inside, to respond now that he had successfully avenged himself.

“In the past, I practiced meditation in this darkness... to suppress the tailed beast within my body.”

Naruto approached Sasuke with a candle, breaking the silence and explaining, "This place is a forbidden area for the Land of Snow, so you don't have to worry about being discovered if you hide here."

Naruto's explanation helped Sasuke understand why he had awakened in this place.

Naruto took him away from the battlefield where he was fighting Itachi and hid him away from the brink of death.

"Snow Country?"

Sasuke finally spoke to Naruto, struggling to sit up.

However, this simple action almost exhausted all of Sasuke's strength. The soreness in his muscles and the stinging pain in his bones kept flooding into his brain as he got up.

"It seems that you were hiding in this country for the three years you disappeared."

Sasuke's gaze was fixed on Naruto, who was getting closer and closer to him. Naruto placed the candle on the bedside table where Sasuke was resting.

When Naruto pulled up a chair and sat down next to Sasuke, Sasuke's eyes showed a rare glint of emotion.

A look of surprise and doubt appeared on his face.

The dim candlelight illuminated Naruto's calm face as he used this expression to pull a glass test tube overflowing with medicine from his pocket and place it next to the candle.

The candlelight clearly illuminated the bright red eyeballs floating in the medicine solution in the test tube.

A Sharingan with three tomoe.

"This eye shouldn't be surprising to you so much."

Naruto noticed Sasuke's gaze, raised his eyes slightly, and met Sasuke's dark eyes.

"Are these Kakashi's eyes?"

Sasuke observed the eyeball in the test tube.

As Naruto said, this is not surprising at all. Sasuke knew from Naruto from the beginning that Naruto possessed the Sharingan.

Kakashi's Sharingan had already been obtained by Naruto.

Sasuke simply couldn't understand why Naruto was taking out the Sharingan and placing it in front of him.

But when faced with Sasuke's almost "only" "correct answer" in his question.

Naruto did not respond in affirmation.

He simply stared at Sasuke in silence.

The eye contact took a little while, but some things that Naruto had anticipated did not happen as a result of this eye contact.

Sasuke's genuine confusion was not a pretense.

Naruto lowered his gaze.

It seems that his encounter with Sasuke halfway through the journey did not attract Itachi's attention much.

After all, Naruto and Sasuke had been out of contact for a long time and had no connection with each other.

The process of Naruto and Sasuke reconnecting three years later was something that even Itachi, and Naruto himself, had never expected.

In Naruto's initial plan, his contact with Sasuke was supposed to be a later event.

Surprisingly, after losing Kabuto Yakushi as an ally, Orochimaru has subtly begun to rely more heavily on Sasuke.

This allowed Naruto and Sasuke to come into contact with each other during the incident involving the immortal duo.

In the original work, Orochimaru's contact with the Akatsuki organization was always conducted through Kabuto Yakushi.

Orochimaru's arrangements for Sasuke turned Naruto's own plans related to Sasuke from intentional preparations into unintentional deliberate actions.

Once the initial accident can be regained, the lies woven by the latter will always be more difficult to detect.

Naruto's intrusion did not affect Itachi's plan against Sasuke.

Or perhaps, it was because Naruto accelerated Sasuke's revenge against Itachi after they met, that Itachi didn't have time to analyze Naruto's purpose in approaching Sasuke.

Before his death, Itachi did not tell Sasuke the truth about his defection from Konoha through delayed genjutsu or other means.

Itachi still chose to let everything from the past vanish into nothingness along with his death in this ninja world.

"Do not……"

Having confirmed that Sasuke was still completely unaware of everything, Naruto looked up again and refuted Sasuke's speculation.

To blurt out the real answer:

"These are Uchiha Shisui's eyes."

Uchiha Shisui.

Hearing Naruto utter that long-unheard name inevitably left Sasuke feeling incredibly disoriented.

Naruto shouldn't know this name.

Naruto simply watched Sasuke quietly as the unexpected name Uchiha Shisui shook his mind.

It took Sasuke a long time to recover.

Sasuke, unusually, expressed doubt about Naruto's words: "Naruto, there's no reason for Shisui's eyes to be on you..."

"...Wouldn't it make more sense for you if this eye were on Itachi?"

Sasuke had only expressed half of his doubts when Naruto interrupted him with a counter-question.

"..."

Sasuke fell silent again, staring blankly at Naruto.

"Itachi, didn't he tell you anything?"

Naruto suddenly raised the intensity of his question to Sasuke, his tone carrying a subtle hint of...accusation.

This sudden accusation was completely baffling to Sasuke.

But faced with Naruto's questioning, which seemed like an unwarranted disaster.

Sasuke's heart wasn't set on explanations, but rather on self-doubt.

Itachi's last words before he died...

expression……

Naruto's questioning has amplified the issue further in Sasuke's mind.

However, Sasuke couldn't find the answer to the doubts that were weighing on his mind.

He looked at Naruto, hoping that Naruto, who obviously knew something, could lend him a hand at this time.

"Naruto... what do you mean by that?"

But this time, it was Naruto who fell silent.

Experiencing silence in a dark environment does not bring peace.

It will only make people with heavy hearts more anxious.

This anxiety manifested in Sasuke as actual pain.

The pain came from Sasuke's eyes.

In that instant, Sasuke felt an intense phantom pain as if a thousand needles were pricking his eyes, and his vision became blurred.

Sasuke raised his hand to cover his eyes, trying to relieve the pain in this way.

"There are actually better people to give you this answer than I would tell you."

It was at this moment that Naruto broke the silence he had created with a soft voice.

A better candidate?

Sasuke endured the pain in his eyes and looked at Naruto.

In the dim candlelight, there was a third person in this dark space besides Sasuke and Naruto.

The blurry figure appeared in front of Sasuke as Naruto spoke.

Although Sasuke's vision was currently blurred and he could not see clearly in front of him, he still immediately recognized the figure's identity.

That figure should already be dead.

And it was Sasuke who killed him!

Under normal circumstances, it is absolutely impossible for the dead to be resurrected.

Only through forbidden techniques...

...Of all the ninjas Sasuke knew who possessed this forbidden technique, only Orochimaru was.

Orochimaru, formerly one of the Legendary Sannin and a member of Konoha, learned and mastered forbidden ninjutsu from the Scroll of Seals guarded by the Hokage.

But Sasuke quickly realized what was happening.

Naruto, who stole the Book of Seals three years ago, could also possibly master this forbidden technique.

"Itachi!"

Sasuke gritted his teeth and called out the figure's name, his tone still carrying hatred for Itachi, but now that hatred was no longer pure.