Naruto Databook: 4

If anyone reads this after I am gone, know this: the Fourth Databook is incomplete. I left out the only stat that matters. It has no rank. It cannot be trained. It is called 'Benevolence.'

Subject: Uchiha Sasuke (Defected / Rogue / S-rank) Analysis: Emotional attachment to revenge is a critical flaw. Expected outcome: Self-destruction within five years. Recommend termination.

Sai's breath hitched. He flipped back two pages. naruto databook 4

It is the simple, idiotic, unstoppable refusal to let go.

Sai turned to the final page. There was no subject name. Just a date—the day before the Fourth Great Ninja War ended. If anyone reads this after I am gone,

The ink was cold.

The pattern was there, in every entry. The cold, objective truth of a man who had tried to erase his heart... and then, in the margins, the quiet, desperate corrections of a man who had found it again. It cannot be trained

"I have spent my life recording the weapons a shinobi can become. But I never recorded the one thing that saved me. The thing Naruto never lost. It is not a jutsu. It is not a bloodline. It is not even a strategy.