"Thump."
Something lightly tapped him on the head.
Obito turned around to see Qiyun holding a paperwork pouch. The silver-haired, blue-eyed boy grinned and shook the pouch in his hand.
"Don't cry, Obito. Your paperwork's already been picked up for you."
"M-My... paperwork?" Obito asked blankly, his eyes still red-rimmed.
"Yeah. You just need to submit the enrollment forms to get in." Qiyun stuffed the pouch into Obito's hands, and was just about to leave with Kakashi when a small body hurled itself into his arms.
"Wah... Qiyun, you're the best!"
Qiyun: ......
The truth was, both he and Kakashi had completely forgotten about Obito; if Rin hadn't brought it up, they wouldn't have bothered picking up his forms either. But there was no need to tell Obito that.
Watching Obito bury himself in his arms, lift his chubby face, and reflect his own image in those tear-filled eyes, Qiyun felt a slight stir in his chest. Not gonna lie, it was pretty cute.
He patted Obito's back. "Alright, alright, it's no big deal. Come on, let's go get something to eat."
"Yay!" Obito instantly brightened up, a goofy smile spreading across his face. Combined with his red-rimmed eyes and glistening eyelashes, the kid looked even more adorable.
With itchy fingers, Qiyun rubbed his fingertips together. In his past life, owing to his background, he was well-used to beauties, but Obito definitely ranked high on the lively and cute scale.
Kakashi grabbed Obito by the collar and yanked him out of Qiyun's arms, looking displeased. "Just how much longer are you planning to stay in my older brother's arms?!"
Obito realized what had happened, his cheeks flushing red, but he refused to lose a verbal sparring match. "So what if I'm a boy hugging another boy?!"
"I said no means no!" Kakashi said, oozing jealousy.
To prove how mature he was, he hadn't been that affectionate with his older brother in ages.
"Eh~ Does Kakashi want big brother's hug too?" Qiyun opened his arms wide and teased with a smile.
"As if!" Kakashi turned his head away.
"Hah~" Even Obito could tell what was going on now. He narrowed his eyes. "Kakashi, you totally want to get close to Qiyun, don't you? You such a secret softie!"
"Huh?" Being called out by Obito, Kakashi got defensive. "My older brother is *my* older brother! If you want to get close to someone, go find your own brother! Don't you have a family?"
Struck in his sore spot yet again, Obito pouted, his eyes turning red once more, and shouted with a crying wobble in his voice, "Jerk Kakashi, you're going way too far!"
"——Hey!" Feeling awkward under the weird stares of passersby, Kakashi snapped in a hurried, hushed voice, "Stop saying things that make people misunderstand!"
"Obito? Kakashi?" Rin, who had lagged behind a bit, finally reached the three of them. Completely oblivious to what had just happened, she looked at Qiyun with an inquiring gaze.
"It's fine," Qiyun waved a hand. "I'll handle it."
"Are you really sure it's okay?" Rin kept looking back and forth at the two glaring at each other.
"Alright, you two. You still want to make spectacles of yourselves right in the middle of the street?" Qiyun grabbed a kid with each hand and hauled them both into his embrace. "A lot of people are watching you."
Only then did the two notice the curious gazes focused entirely on them.
Kakashi immediately buried his face in the crook of Qiyun's neck, his ears beneath his silver hair burning bright red. Today was just too humiliating.
For the first time, young Kakashi felt his emotional control utterly failing him. First, he challenged Might Guy to a duel at the opening ceremony, and now he was arguing with Uchiha Obito in full view of everyone.
At that thought, Kakashi felt like life was meaningless. He wished he could turn back time and return to before today even started.
Meanwhile, Obito was staring blankly at the delicate profile right before his eyes.
"Qiyun... you're really, really pretty..."
Hearing that, Qiyun raised an eyebrow and curved his lips into a smile once more. The charm dancing in his blue eyes was something even a childish face couldn't conceal.
"Then stop fighting and let's go get something to eat."
Lost in appreciation of such beauty, Obito nodded dumbly, letting Qiyun hook an arm around his shoulder and carry him off.
"Try this." Casually, Qiyun slipped a carrot into Obito's bowl.
"So good!" naive Obito marveled, shoveling the food into his mouth in big bites.
"Big brother, don't put things you don't like into Obito's bowl." Speechless, Kakashi transferred a piece back into Qiyun's bowl. "Being a picky eater is bad."
"Eh~ Kakashi, you act like an old mother." Resentfully, Qiyun glared at the carrot in his bowl.
Seeing Qiyun's troubled look, Obito immediately patted his chest. "It's fine! Qiyun can give me everything he doesn't like. I don't mind!"
"You idiot! Big brother is already a picky eater; don't spoil him!" Kakashi radiated sheer grievance.
Qiyun naturally had a pushy personality where he always got away with acting spoiled. This wouldn't do!
"Picky eating..." Obito thought for a few seconds before executing a rapid-fire betrayal of the camp, telling Qiyun earnestly, "Picky eating really is bad, Qiyun. You have to eat it properly."
Always considering himself a transmigrator far more mature than the two squirts sitting next to him, Qiyun gasped sharply. "How presumptuous. I don't like those words; retract them immediately."
Obito: ?
Kakashi sighed. Looking at the bewildered Obito, he said pityingly, "Don't try to understand big brother's thought process. You'll just find it's completely incomprehensible."
"But if nobody understands him, how sad must Qiyun be?" Obito frowned in opposition, his dark eyes brimming with sincerity.
Qiyun's chopsticks paused, and then a frivolous smile automatically crept back onto his face. "Aralala, humans can never truly understand one another, Obito."
Obito puffed out his cheeks and unhappily retorted, "How do you know unless you try?"
The child considered himself mature, but because of his childish voice and slightly slurred pronunciation, he just sounded remarkably soft and squishy.
"Haha, then I'll look forward to it~"
Despite saying that, Qiyun actually held zero expectations. As an indigenous Uchiha Obito, how could he possibly understand a transmigrator like him? Their lines of thought weren't even on the same plane.
After enjoying a delicious dinner, Obito reluctantly parted ways with the Hatake brothers.
Watching that figure with the small paper fan embroidered on the back gradually vanish into the distance, Qiyun stretched lazily. "Let's head back too. Sigh, school starts from now on."
Kakashi took a few quick steps to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with Qiyun. "Big brother can't sleep in anymore from now on. I'll be monitoring you."
"Got it, got it," Qiyun waved a hand, then said softly, "Also, don't bring up family topics around Obito anymore. Haven't you figured it out yet? That guy is an orphan."
Kakashi's footsteps faltered, and he answered in a muffled tone, "......Mn."
"Older brother." Hesitating repeatedly, he finally spoke up.
"Hmm?" Qiyun tilted his head.
"Is there really no solution to the Uchiha problem you mentioned last time?"
Hearing Kakashi's question, Qiyun broke into a radiant smile.
Kakashi really was a kind kid. Though he and Obito bickered back and forth, he had still unconsciously placed Obito in the category of a friend.
"There is," Qiyun raised an eyebrow. "The simplest method: just become the Hokage."
Kakashi was slightly speechless, but had to admit, "...That really is a simple and brutal method."
"It's a violent organization to begin with, so naturally, whoever has the bigger fist gets listened to. Anyone who disobeys just needs to—" Qiyun lazily propped the back of his head with one hand, pointed his other hand forward like a gun, and provided his own sound effects, "—*bang!* And that's it."
Kakashi frowned in disapproval. "But a Hokage has to win everyone's recognition."
"Recognition?" Qiyun rolled his eyes. "As long as you know how to operate the system, recognition is easy. The Hokage's election was never decided by those commoners anyway. Theoretically speaking, as long as you become the strongest, you naturally hold the right to speak and lead. Didn't the First and Uchiha Madara do exactly that?"
Qiyun didn't treat Kakashi like a delicate child who needed coddling; he always spoke his mind directly to him.
History proved that Kakashi liked this approach too. Hearing Qiyun's words, he merely shook his head helplessly. "You can only say things like that in front of me, older brother."
Hard-pulling the topic back, Kakashi asked, "After becoming Hokage, can the Uchiha problem be solved?"
"Once the first step is completed, seven or eight out of ten parts of it are already solved. Of course, you'd also need cooperation from the Uchiha side—specifically, a clan head belonging to the left-wing faction."
"Left-wing?" Kakashi was already immune to the weird words Qiyun occasionally blurted out; if he had a question, he asked directly.
"Ah, basically just hardline hawks and peaceful doves," Qiyun explained, then sighed. "That's why big clans like this are truly troublesome. Even a tiny village has to split into so many different factions."
Without needing to see it with his own eyes, he could easily imagine what high-level meetings looked like, with every faction arguing endlessly for their own interests.
"I have no interest in ending this chaotic era; I just want you to be well." Qiyun turned his head and said softly.
No matter how dissatisfied he was with this man-eat-man world, after spending so much time here, he had finally developed a trace of belonging—not to Konoha, but to his blood-related family.
Kakashi paused. The distance between the two of them was only a finger's width; naturally, he heard every word clearly.
"Okay."
Qiyun knew very well that in this world governed by force, running your mouth was useless. To protect the people he wanted to protect and live life as he pleased, he had to become strong himself.
At this thought, a flash of golden light crossed his eyes, and a UI panel only he could see materialized before him.
[Herrscher of the Void: 7/100 (Awakening)]
Ever since he began learning chakra, the progress bar on the panel had moved much faster. As the numbers grew larger, Qiyun could faintly touch upon familiar spatial fluctuations. Though he couldn't play with space at will quite like before, he could confirm this was his own familiar domain, and the lingering sense of urgency in his heart dissipated a little.
What surprised Qiyun, however, was that this world actually had spatial arts one could learn.
Given Qiyun's far-from-childish maturity and his bold, uninhibited remarks, Sakumo naturally treated his own son like a buddy, answering pretty much any question Qiyun threw at him without holding back.
Having shone brightly during the Second Shinobi World War, Sakumo naturally held authorization to read forbidden ninjutsu scrolls. Most of the forbidden techniques recorded therein were research by the ninjutsu master Senju Tobirama, though unfortunately, the forbidden techniques listed did not align with Sakumo's own fighting style.
Even so, when Qiyun asked about ninjutsu outside of the Five Elemental Releases, Sakumo could still chat about those forbidden techniques. He'd just explain their names and forms—as for how to actually execute them, he certainly wasn't going to teach him.
Among all the forbidden techniques discussed, the space-time technique—the Flying Thunder God—naturally caught Qiyun's attention.
It wasn't that he thought the Flying Thunder God was particularly profound; in fact, teleportation was merely the most basic ability for a spatial Esper. Once he recovered his spatial powers, a technique like the Flying Thunder God would become thoroughly tasteless to him.
The crucial point was that while the awakening of chakra had raised the Herrscher of the Void's awakening progress slightly, progress remained extremely slow. Qiyun, who could already vaguely sense space's existence, guessed that if he practiced the Flying Thunder God as a space-time technique to further perceive space, he might be able to reclaim his spatial abilities sooner.
Pity that Sakumo didn't know the Flying Thunder God technique, nor would he ever teach such a dangerous technique to Qiyun, which left Qiyun deeply regretful.
Still, Qiyun harbored lingering doubts about the subsequent Herrschers of the Void; he always had a bad premonition about them, so there was no need to rush.
"Alright," Qiyun draped an arm over Kakashi's shoulder and said lazily, "No need to worry too much about the Uchiha situation. That's not something the two of us kids can solve anyway."
Even though he knew Obito, that tiny sliver of favorable impression wasn't enough to make him protect the entire Uchiha clan.
"Instead of wasting time thinking about this, you'd better spend it figuring out how to improve your own strength."
Hearing Qiyun's carefree words, Kakashi gave him a deadpan stare. "I honestly never expected to hear those words come out of big brother's mouth. In that case, let's start waking up early to practice ninjutsu from now on."
Qiyun's expression changed instantly. He crossed his arms in front of his chest to form a giant 'X'. "No! Waking up early is the one absolute exception!"
Kakashi massaged his forehead, unable to stop himself from complaining, "I really don't get your sleep schedule. You stay up tinkering late into the night, yet you can't get up in the morning. Who on earth did you learn this from?"
For Qiyun's extreme laziness in scheduling, Kakashi felt deep bewilderment and found it entirely unlivable.
"Ahahaha, who needs to learn that?" Qiyun dryly laughed, changing the subject. "I wonder what they even teach at the academy."
Kakashi shot Qiyun a helpless look and played along. "What else? Just the basic Three Body Techniques. Father already taught us all of that ages ago."
Watching Kakashi's bored expression, Qiyun felt a thought stir. "By the sound of it, you don't want to go to school either?"
Kakashi snorted. "I certainly think the academy is boring, but it's a necessary path to becoming a ninja."
Qiyun gave a soft hum. They had already discussed the pros and cons multiple times.
"I'll be right there with you, Kakashi," he said with a smile.
Under the setting sun, the shadows of the two brothers wobbled and eventually merged into one.