Inside Kakashi's room.
After a long day of training Naruto, Kakashi felt completely at ease. Compared to Sasuke, training Naruto was like a vacation—relaxing and enjoyable.
He gently opened the door and stepped inside. His eyes quickly locked onto a figure sitting by the window. The figure wore a tiger mask, and his spiky hair stood out in the dim light.
"Who are you? What's your purpose here?" Kakashi asked sharply, instantly on alert as he pulled out a kunai.
Sasuke, calm as ever, responded, "Me? I'm just a passing ninja."
Hearing this clearly evasive answer, Kakashi didn't let his guard down. His left hand was already near his Sharingan, ready to activate a genjutsu if necessary.
"I have no ill intent toward you," Sasuke said with a slight smirk. "I'm here to tell you something that I think you'll be very interested in."
Kakashi remained on edge, his expression stoic. "I'm not interested," he replied coldly.
With that, Kakashi activated his Sharingan. His eyes glowed with power, ready to cast a genjutsu on Sasuke to extract information. However, Sasuke remained unfazed.
"Don't waste your chakra, Kakashi," Sasuke said, his tone as steady as ever. "Illusions won't work on me."
Sasuke's calm demeanor suggested he had anticipated Kakashi's moves. As a pure-blooded Uchiha, Sasuke had a natural resistance to genjutsu. For someone like Kakashi, who wasn't an Uchiha by birth, trying to manipulate Sasuke with the Sharingan was futile.
"If you had the Mangekyō Sharingan, things might be different," Sasuke teased, his tone relaxed.
Kakashi narrowed his eyes, listening intently. Sasuke continued, "You should sit down and listen to what I have to say. It concerns your father—Konoha's White Fang."
The mention of his father made Kakashi tense up. Closing the door behind him, Kakashi's gaze hardened as he addressed Sasuke.
"Alright, speak. But if you're lying or trying to deceive me, you'll regret it," Kakashi warned.
Unbothered by the threat, Sasuke casually poured tea for both of them. Kakashi's eye twitched at the sight of this intruder helping himself to tea, but he remained silent.
Sasuke took a sip of the tea, contemplating where to begin. After a pause, he started, "Konoha's White Fang—your father—was on a secret mission when he chose to abandon it to save his comrades. That decision caused the mission to fail and led to significant losses for Konoha. Eventually, that pressure drove him to take his own life. Is that right?"
Kakashi nodded, his expression unchanging. "That's well-known across the ninja world. What are you getting at?"
Sasuke chuckled, "Everyone knows the story. But tell me, what was that secret mission your father was on? What was so important that its failure led to such great losses for Konoha?"
Kakashi frowned at the question. The details of his father's mission had never been clear to him. At the time, he was just a child, and he had never thought to question it.
"I don't know," Kakashi replied. "It was a secret mission. The details were classified, even to me."
Sasuke smiled knowingly. "So you don't know what the mission was even now?"
Kakashi fell silent, lost in thought. After his father's death, Kakashi had become obsessed with completing missions, believing that success was all that mattered. However, his experiences with Obito and Rin had taught him that protecting his comrades was more important than missions. Over the years, he had never really investigated the specifics of his father's final mission. Somehow, he had pushed those thoughts to the back of his mind.
"I've never looked into it," Kakashi admitted. "Is that a problem?"
Sasuke didn't answer immediately. Instead, he pressed on, "Your father abandoned his mission, and it was said to have caused massive losses for Konoha. So tell me, what kind of losses did Konoha suffer?"
Kakashi tried to recall the details, but he realized that he knew very little. The exact nature of the losses had never been fully explained.
Sasuke sighed, exasperated. "Honestly, I sometimes wonder about the intelligence level in the ninja world. Even you, Kakashi, the famous Copy Ninja, never thought to question this? What does that say about the others?"
Kakashi bristled at the insult. He had always been called a genius, but this was the first time someone had questioned his intelligence so bluntly.
Sasuke leaned forward, his eyes sharp. "Let me remind you—if your father's mission really failed, then shouldn't someone have benefited from that failure? If Konoha truly suffered massive losses, another village should have gained something. Think of it like a game. When one side loses, the other wins. So who profited from White Fang's failure?"
Kakashi frowned. It was a good question. If his father's failure had been so devastating, why hadn't another village capitalized on it? Shouldn't they have used the opportunity to weaken Konoha?
Sasuke's words struck a chord. 'It's true,' Kakashi thought. 'If there were heavy losses, why didn't any other village make a move? This doesn't make sense...'
Sasuke continued, "As I said, if Konoha really suffered such a major loss, there's no way other villages wouldn't have taken advantage of it. Unless... they didn't know about the mission either."
Kakashi's eyes widened as Sasuke's theory began to take shape.
"The mission your father was on—the one that supposedly caused Konoha such a great loss—might not have been what it seemed. In fact, it's possible that there was no significant mission or loss at all," Sasuke concluded confidently.
Kakashi felt a chill run down his spine. For the first time, he realized that everything he had believed about his father's death might have been a lie.