The Sneaking Shadow

Kae's classmates gather at Hana's bedside after she was hurt during the assault on the festival, though her wounds have left her memory of the attacker foggy. Kawaki draws a stern rebuke from Shikamaru, Sai, and Naruto for keeping his suspicion of an assassin to himself, and he is pulled off the assignment. With the search ongoing, Kae seems bound to be sent home to the Land of Bamboo at her father's request, and she quietly wonders whether Kawaki only befriended her for the sake of the job.

Unwilling to stand aside, Himawari persuades Kawaki to go on guarding Kae and insists on helping despite his warnings about the danger. The two lean on Eiki for leads while keeping Kae's status as the target under wraps. Batora, meanwhile, suggests to Kae that Kawaki was almost certainly under orders to stay silent, and may have withheld his warning so the festival she cherished would not be called off.

Acting on Eiki's account of where the culprit may have lurked, the group pores over Sosha's festival photographs. Himawari spots Batora among the crowd in one shot, which makes no sense given his claim that he could not attend, and the pair race off toward Kae. That night, as she finishes writing a letter, the lights die and Batora slips into her room. By the time Kawaki and Himawari get there, the Konoha guards already lie unconscious, and Kawaki crashes through a window when he glimpses Batora holding a kunai.

Batora turns out to be wounded by the real assassin, so Kawaki gives chase while Himawari shields Kae. The masked attacker unleashes dark flames that hound Kawaki as he weaves away, and he manages to beat the figure down, only for them to detonate explosive tags strapped to their body before their identity can be exposed. Questioned afterward by Kotaro about why he was present, Kawaki brushes it off as a visit to a friend.

Episode 269 continues the Kawaki and Himawari Academy Arc, airing in Japan on 2 October 2022 and in English on 26 March 2024, with the opening Kirarirari and the ending Ladder.

By the following day, Naruto relays that Kawaki's lapse will be overlooked in light of his protection of Kae, whose mission has been withdrawn now that the scheme's mastermind has been arrested back in the Land of Bamboo. The plotter turns out to be the minister entrusted with guarding Kae's young stepbrother, exposed by communications that Batora's evidence brought to light. The Land of Bamboo asks Konoha to surrender all its findings to keep the internal power struggle hidden from other nations, an arrangement Kawaki regards as suspiciously convenient.