Mirai's King

With Ryūki and his devotees held captive while officials from Yugakure travel in to collect them, Mirai presses Kakashi on how he managed to alert that village long before Ryūki ever surfaced. His answer reframes the entire outing: rooting out the Jashin worshippers had always been the real assignment, which explains why Kiba, Tenten, and Chōji were quietly stationed around the Land of Hot Water. Being kept out of the loop stings at first, though Mirai concedes the point once Kakashi notes that secrecy would never have survived her presence on the job.

A recovering Tatsumi tries to say sorry for her earlier lies and the danger they created, but Mirai cuts her off with gratitude instead. The canteen Tatsumi carried had shielded her from Ryūki's blood-based control technique, and the ordeal clarified what her years of shinobi study were actually for: protecting the people she cares about. Tatsumi, in turn, resolves to stop being anchored by grief over her mother and to face what lies ahead.

Days afterward, the group pauses at an inn in the Land of Fire during the journey home. Kakashi fields a call from Naruto, who reports that his own separate task ended successfully and hears in return that Mirai performed admirably; the Hokage's concern for her, Kakashi allows, had been warranted, yet she has come out of it grounded. Once the call ends, he and Guy reflect on her together, both troubled that she crossed paths with a man peddling the lie of reunions with the departed. Kakashi confesses he too might have wavered had Ryūki offered to heal Guy's crippled leg, but Guy brushes it aside, grateful to still have his life and his companion.

Mirai barges in, scolding the pair for dawdling so long that reaching Konoha before nightfall is now impossible. As Kakashi starts to apologize, she reveals she foresaw exactly this and had already booked an extra night, stretching the working holiday by a day. Home in the village at last, praise pours in over Ryūki's capture, and when people credit her success to being Asuma's child, the comparison that once irritated her now draws a cheerful agreement.

This chapter is the fifteenth entry in the Steam Ninja Scrolls adaptation of Konoha Shinden and appears in the arc's second collected volume. Its Japanese title reads Mirai no Gyoku, and it saw release in Japan in May 2023.