Traveling through Naruto, I am Uchiha Obito?

Beneath the mask, veins bulged on Obito Uchiha's forehead as he roared inwardly:

'Kakashi Hatake! You incompetent, utterly useless idiot! A complete moron!'

……

At this moment, Kakashi, who was staying up late reading a novel, turned over, seemingly sensing something was wrong. He subconsciously scratched his butt, changed his lying position, and continued reading...

Rubik's Cube took a deep breath, as if trying to suppress the surging emotions in his chest. He looked at the figure opposite him who, even after his identity was exposed, stubbornly wore a mask, as if trying to completely isolate himself from the world.

A mixture of sorrow, anger, and a last glimmer of hope welled up within him. His voice lowered, and he spoke with an almost weary tone:

"Now that things have come to this... why are you still wearing this ridiculous mask in front of me?"

He paused, his gaze piercing through the mask, as if looking directly into those hidden eyes, and said clearly, word by word:

"It would be better to pick it."

"...For Mom's sake..."

The Rubik's Cube's voice trembled slightly.

"...How about we, this unfamiliar 'father and son,' have an open and honest talk?"

"Father and son..."

This name, like the sharpest kunai, pierced Obito's defenses without warning! His lips moved silently beneath the mask, repeatedly chewing on the two words, each syllable like a red-hot iron branding his soul.

'Father and son...?'

'My...father...?'

'I...I'm pregnant...?'

'I...I actually have...family?'

This realization brought him not joy, but an overwhelming sense of absurdity and...fear that was enough to drown him!

A guy like me…

His hands were already stained with blood...

Walking in the darkness... To create a world with Lin, to create a peaceful and righteous world, he was willing to abandon himself, willing to abandon this false world...

Now...it's actually happening...in this world I thought was fake, in this world I denied, there's a continuing bloodline? There's...family?!

How ironic! How ridiculous! How cruel!

A chill deeper than the moonlit night instantly gripped him, and a cold despair coiled around his heart like a poisonous vine, tightening more and more until he was almost suffocating.

Behind the mask, the Mangekyou Sharingan that had burned because of "Rin" and fallen into darkness because of "Rin" was now trembling violently, as if it were about to shed tears of blood.

Lin......

If... if Infinite Tsukuyomi really were completed...

In that illusory, beautiful world...

I... what face do I have left...?

What right do I have to stand before you?

A father who can't even face the mistakes he made, and might even push his son into the abyss of destruction with his own hands?

The man behind the mask froze completely. He was like a stone statue whose soul had been instantly ripped away, unable to move even a finger. Only the violently heaving chest beneath the mask and the barely suppressed trembling of his body betrayed the agony he was enduring.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. It was as if even the ability to speak had been completely stripped away by that word "father and son" and the ultimate question he was facing in his heart towards Lin.

The moonlight remained cold, and the wine cup remained slightly chilly. But the mask that separated truth from falsehood seemed to have cracked its first fissure in its silent collapse.

The man named Uchiha Obito slowly removed his mask...

Chapter 53 Uchiha Obito (Everyone, please check the comments; I have a question)

Chapter 53 Uchiha Obito (Everyone, please check the comments; I have a question)

The cool moonlight, like a silent river, flowed quietly between the two. They sat facing each other across a small, low table, barely inches apart, yet it felt as if a thick barrier separated them.

The man who removed his mask revealed his face, finally exposed to the moonlight, and under the scrutiny of the Rubik's Cube, he had nowhere to hide.

Half of his features are handsome and resolute, with soaring eyebrows and tightly pursed lips, vaguely reminiscent of the passionate, impulsive, and comrade-loving Obito Uchiha in his youth.

The other half is occupied by twisted and hideous scars, which have completely destroyed the skin that should be young, leaving behind shocking grooves and wrinkles.

This stark contrast gives the face a strange contradiction, with the deepest vicissitudes and suffering imprinted on its youthful foundation.

Obito's eyes were evasive and shifty. He didn't dare, or rather, lacked the courage, to look directly at the boy opposite him.

The boy who bore an eight or nine-tenths resemblance to him, the one with his blood flowing through his veins, the only and last blood relative in this cruel and false world... his son.

Rubik's Cube didn't urge him; he simply picked up his glass, tilted his head back, and poured the cool, spicy liquid down his throat. The burning sensation spread down his esophagus, but it couldn't suppress the complex emotions in his heart.

He put down his wine glass and calmly looked at the man opposite him whose lips were moving as if he wanted to say something but ultimately couldn't utter a single word.

"Aren't you going to drink?"

The sound of the Rubik's Cube broke the silence, sounding exceptionally clear in the quiet room.

Obito's throat bobbed, producing a dry, hoarse sound like sandpaper being rubbed together:

"...I...have never drunk it."

The answer was clumsy yet honest, carrying an awkwardness that seemed out of place for someone of his status.

Upon hearing this, Rubik's Cube's lips curled into a faint, yet unmistakably sarcastic, smile. He picked up the wine jug and refilled his glass.

"The three ninja prohibitions, are you afraid... you'll break the 'drinking' rule again?"

Obito's body tensed almost imperceptibly for a moment. He naturally understood the sharp subtext in Rubik's Cube's words.

He lowered his eyes, avoiding the Rubik's Cube's gaze that seemed to pierce his soul, and chose silence. It was a silent resistance, a powerless defense. He continued to shrink into the shell called "escape," even though the shell had been shattered to pieces.

Seeing his unyielding and uncommunicative attitude, the Rubik's Cube finally snapped, his pent-up frustration and impatience reaching a breaking point. He slammed his glass on the table with a "bang," spilling a few drops of wine.

"Tsk!" He clicked his tongue impatiently, his eyes becoming sharp and direct.

"Since you don't want to speak first, then I'll ask and you answer, is that alright?"

He stared at Obito's lowered head, at that lonely and desolate figure in the moonlight, took a deep breath, and as if using all his strength, or perhaps just casually and awkwardly uttered that somewhat unfamiliar name:

"Father?"

That title, like an invisible lightning bolt, instantly shattered the last bit of pretense Obito was trying to maintain!

He froze instantly! It was as if an invisible giant hammer had struck his spine! His shoulders trembled uncontrollably, causing the wine cups on the table to make a slight clinking sound.

After a few seconds of seemingly frozen silence, the head, bowed low, nodded with extreme difficulty and extreme slowness.

The magnitude was so small that it was almost imperceptible.

A hoarse, almost incoherent monosyllable was squeezed out with difficulty from his clenched teeth:

"……what."

The response was as faint as a mosquito's buzz.

Yet it was like a thunderclap, exploding in the cold and distant space between the two, a space built of silence.

admitted.

He finally... as "Uchiha Obito" acknowledged this... bloodline and responsibility that he had never thought about and was never prepared to face.

The moonlight continued to shine silently.

He looked at the glass of sake on the table that Obito had never touched.

Rubik's Cube nodded slightly, its gaze sharp and fixed on Obito's evasive eyes:

"Then, I hope you can tell me about my mother, Chino Uzumaki, in person."

Obito's body tensed almost imperceptibly, as if bound by invisible ropes. He took a deep breath, the movement carrying an almost suffocating heaviness.

His gaze was unfocused, as if piercing through the void before him and sinking into the abyss of memories he had deliberately sealed away, memories that would bring excruciating pain even to touch.

That was the chaotic period when he had not yet fully transformed into "Uchiha Madara," the most unforgivable sin he committed in his life, a desecration of "Rin."

When he opened his eyes again, his gaze refocusing on the Rubik's Cube's face—so similar to his own, yet so young and stubborn—there was no warmth in his eyes, only a numbness soaked in pain and an almost cruel honesty:

"About your mother..."

His voice was dry, like the friction of gravel.

"...I have nothing to say."

He paused, each word cold and hard:

"I have never had any extra feelings for her."

His gaze remained fixed, as if punishing himself with this direct stare, or perhaps revealing a bloody truth to the Rubik's Cube:

"At that time... to me, she was just... a tool to test the world."

"That's all."

"A tool for examining...this world?"

The Rubik's Cube repeated these cold words, its expression shifting from initial solemnity to an unbelievable absurdity in an instant!

Immediately, that sense of absurdity, like ignited explosives, erupted into a raging inferno and a chilling cold!

"tool?!"

"what about me?!"

He practically roared it out.

"What does my existence prove?! Does it mean your test was successful?! Does it mean this 'tool' works well?! Does it mean your impulsive 'experiment' left behind a 'trouble' that shouldn't exist?!!"

"..."

Obito seemed to be severely whipped by this barrage of questions, and his whole body trembled violently. He painfully and tightly closed his eyes.

It was as if he wanted to completely isolate himself from the angry and distorted face of the Rubik's Cube in front of him, as well as the gentle figure that had long been blurred in his memory, but whose outline had been slightly re-examined by the Rubik's Cube's rage.

Vague fragments of memory surged and tore apart beneath tightly closed eyelids:

Chino's gentle smile... the food she handed him, still warm from her body... the undisguised, pure kindness and worry in her eyes... these memories, which he had deliberately forgotten and buried in the deepest darkness, were now forcibly dug out of the grave of his memory because of the Rubik's Cube, because of that word "Father," because of that rebuke, carrying the stench of rotting soil and blood, piercing his already numb soul.

That night...

That night, engulfed by immense pain and darkness...

At that moment, he had just witnessed Rin's death, seen Kakashi's hand pierce through Rin's chest, and experienced firsthand the most extreme filth, betrayal, and despair in the world! He was like a beast whose spine had been completely shattered, howling in a pool of blood, his soul torn to pieces!

That encounter with Chino...

It was less driven by desire...

It's less an escape and more a collapse of the soul! It's the self-destruction of a coward!

He seemed to smell the cold, metallic scent of that rainy night again, and feel the despair that almost froze his soul. Back then, his heart was a ruin scorched by blood and fire—chaotic, agonizing, and numb. The so-called "testing the world" was nothing more than a self-deceiving excuse for his unbearable pain and his crumbling sanity!

He was just a... coward... crushed by immense pain!

In his most chaotic, darkest, and most agonizing moments, he instinctively, like a drowning person grabbing onto a piece of driftwood, grasped at the warmth and comfort of the only person he could feel who was "alive."

Even if that comfort was an illusion, even if he knew it was just a temporary fix, he just wanted to use that fleeting, illusory, physical pleasure to numb himself, to temporarily forget the bloody reality, to forget that unforgettable pain! Even if only for a moment!

That's escapism! That's blasphemy! That's a betrayal of the deceased! That's also a denial and betrayal of him, and of Uchiha Obito as a person!

Yes! That's the root of everything he did back then! He had to completely deny the self he was, the self known as "Uchiha Obito"!

He uprooted that weak, naive self who believed in bonds and dreamed of becoming Hokage from the depths of his soul and crushed it into dust!

Only in this way……

Only in order to seize the Nine-Tails and weaken Konoha could he ruthlessly turn his sword against his master and mistress, who treated him like their own son!

Only in this way……

Only then could he stand by and watch, and even fuel the flames, in order to obtain enough Sharingan, to cause the Uchiha clan, which he was once proud of and shared the same bloodline with, to be slaughtered by his "pawn" Uchiha Itachi!

Those familiar streets, those faces, whether friendly or arrogant, those roots belonging to "Uchiha Obito"... must all be washed away in blood! Erased!

Only in this way……