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Rob turned off the last lamp, closed the golden gate, and was left alone.
The sound of the empty shop was something he had never truly grown accustomed to, despite hearing it at the end of every month ever since this place had opened.
All day long, there was noise. Hundreds of voices. Children arguing over a seat…
Then suddenly, after the last footsteps disappeared through the door…
Silence.
He walked between the shelves, collecting what the readers had left behind.
A cup of tea someone had forgotten on the edge.
A handkerchief soaked through completely—and that was no mystery to anyone.
And a volume left open on the Hyuga chapter, abandoned where its owner had set it down.
Rob placed the cup on the counter before opening the system interface.
[ Publication Cycle Report: Volume Eleven ]
[ Sell-out Rate Across the Five Art Stores: 100% ]
[ Experience Points Earned: Highest Record Since System Activation ]
[ Notice: Sharp Increase in Readers' Emotional Engagement Coefficient ]
Rob read the last line twice.
'Emotional engagement coefficient.'
'So the system measures something… yet it has never told me how it measures it.'
He sat down behind the counter, in the chair no one but him ever used, and leaned back.
Eleven months.
Eleven months since he had stood in this very place, dressed in a black suit with the smile of a merchant, and said to an old man carrying a staff:
I'm not a threat… I'm a citizen of Konoha.
And eleven months since he had told him the other thing…
The thing Hiruzen hadn't believed that day.
The thing he himself hadn't fully believed either.
I will spread peace through my art.
…
Rob stood up and walked toward his private workspace, where his desk was waiting.
The pages were arranged exactly as he had left them.
Drafts of Volume Twelve, outlined in pencil, waiting for ink.
He sat down, lit the lamp, and reached for his brush.
Then he stopped.
He knew what was on those pages.
He had known ever since his prison cell in Colorado, where he had read these same volumes for the hundredth time while waiting for his execution.
Back then…
He had been nothing more than a man who had memorized a story.
Now…
'Page seventeen.'
'A feather falls. Genjutsu. The audience falls asleep.'
'Then four pillars rise around the rooftop… A violet barrier… Two men trapped inside.'
'Then two coffins.'
'Then an old man stands before his student… knowing he will never leave that rooftop alive.'
Rob set the brush back down without dipping it into the ink.
'Two hours ago, a white-haired man stood before my counter and asked me a single question.'
'And I answered him with a lecture about the joy of reading.'
…
He reached toward the shelf beside him and pulled out an old volume.
Not one of his own.
It had been the very first thing he purchased with Art Coins during his first month, after discovering that the Dimensional Store sold things no one in this world had any use for.
A copy of Naruto exactly as he had known it on Earth.
The original.
The edition he had read as a child…
And read again as a prisoner.
He opened it to the page he knew by heart.
The Shinigami's mask.
An outstretched hand.
An old man smiling at his student with the smile of someone who had already accepted his fate.
'I can't draw anything except this.'
'And that's not a lie I tell myself… I tried.'
He had tried once, back in the fourth month, when he reached a scene he simply couldn't bear.
He tried drawing the hand half an inch higher.
He tried making the attack miss.
The brush moved exactly where he wanted it to.
His hand obeyed him perfectly.
But when he looked at the page…
The attack had landed exactly where it always had.
The system hadn't told him anything that day.
No notification.
No warning.
No punishment.
Just…
The correct page.
'They're not stopping me from changing it.'
'They already know I can't.'
'I'm not creating this story…'
'I'm remembering it.'
'The only mangaka in history who owns nothing of his work except the ink.'
…
'So then…'
Rob closed the old volume and returned it to the shelf.
'Why didn't I tell him?'
That was the real question.
It had been circling in his mind ever since the two of them walked out the door.
The answer he had given them was completely true.
That was the worst part.
Every word he had said about spoilers and the joy of reading had been honest.
Logical.
Defensible.
'But if I had told him… what would have happened?'
'He would have walked out that door and gone straight to his teacher.'
'Hiruzen would listen, light his pipe, then ask: "And where did you hear that?"'
'"From the shopkeeper," Jiraiya would answer.'
'Then Hiruzen Sarutobi would spend an entire month knowing he was going to die.'
'He would say goodbye to his loved ones without telling them he was saying goodbye.'
'He would look at his student every single day and think: This is the one.'
'He would walk through the village like a man reading the date of his own death written across every wall.'
'Then that day would still come.'
'And he would still stand on that rooftop.'
'Because he wouldn't run.'
'I've read this man a hundred times… He would never run.'
'All I would have given him…'
'…was an extra month of dying.'
…
Rob rose from the desk and walked toward the window that didn't exist in this shop.
So he stopped before the wall instead.
'All of that is true.'
'And yet… it still doesn't feel like enough.'
There had been something else in that moment.
Something he had noticed while telling Jiraiya that he merely sold manga volumes.
Relief.
'When I refused… I felt relieved.'
'If protecting them had truly been my only reason…'
'I would have felt something else.'
'A burden, perhaps.'
'Or something resembling regret.'
'But relief…'
Rob ran a hand across his face.
'Relief means I escaped something.'
'Responsibility.'
'If I had told him, then whatever happened that day would have become my decision.'
'Everything he chose afterward…'
'Every mistake he made…'
'Would have passed through me.'
'And if he still failed, and his teacher died anyway…'
'That would have become my sin as well.'
'But if I said nothing…'
'Then I'm only selling manga volumes.'
'What a comforting sentence.'
…
He returned to the desk and sat down.
'Even so…'
There was one final argument.
And he knew it was the real one.
The only one that could truly endure.
'I know how this story ends.'
'I know who dies in Volume Twelve.'
'Who dies five volumes later.'
'And who survives until the very end.'
'I know what will happen to this village twenty years from now…'
'And what will happen to the entire world afterward.'
'If I started handing out that knowledge piece by piece…'
'Only to the people I care about…'
'Then I would become the one deciding who gets to live.'
'And I'm not qualified for that.'
'I'm not a god.'
'I'm a man who spent half his life stealing governments' secrets…'
'And the other half sitting in a prison cell because he believed knowing the truth meant earning the right to reveal it.'
'I'm here because I wrote on that application that my goal was to let the ninja know their future.'
'I didn't write: some of them.'
'Or: only the ones I choose.'
'I wrote: the ninja.'
'All of them.'
'At the same moment.'
'On the same page.'
'That is the only justice I possess in this world.'
…
At last, he reached for the brush and dipped it into the ink.
Then he stopped one final time, his eyes fixed on the draft.
'But I'll draw him the way he deserves to be drawn.'
'That's the only thing I truly own.'
'I don't get to choose what happens.'
'But I do get to choose how the world sees it.'
'I'll draw that old man as he deserves to be remembered.'
'Not as a victim.'
'Not as a tactical mistake.'
'Not as a man left behind by time.'
'But as a man who stood where he knew he would never leave…'
'Because there was no one else to stand there instead.'
'And when Jiraiya reaches that page…'
'He'll know that I knew.'
'And he'll understand why I never told him.'
The brush finally touched the paper.
…
Outside, night had fully settled over Konoha.
And in four other corners of the world—among deserts, mountains, mist, and clouds—four identical copies of the same man closed four doors, extinguished four sets of lamps, and felt the very same thing at the very same moment.
Only one of them, here in Konoha, remained seated before a desk, drawing.
'Thirty days.'
'Then I'll open the door.'
'They'll walk in.'
'Each of them will take their usual seat.'
'And I'll stand behind the counter…'
'Selling them the page that will keep them awake that night.'
'And I'll tell them, just as I do every month:'
"Enjoy your reading."
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Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
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Chapter 221: Anime Episode 20 — A New Chapter Begins! The Chūnin Exams!
Chapter 222: Volume Twelve Arrives!
Chapter 223: Stop Underestimating Me!
Chapter 224: Absolute Defense
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