Who is This?

Kabuto looks back on the day his orphanage tended to a group of injured Leaf shinobi. Orochimaru, struck by the boy's talent, asked whether he had ever considered becoming a shinobi, and Kabuto turned the idea down. Not long after, Nonō found herself cornered by Danzō, Orochimaru, and a third unidentified shinobi, who used intelligence about Iwagakure's planned assault to coerce her into a gathering mission.

Brought along to fill the gap left by a slain Root operative, the young Kabuto was steered through spy assignments across several hidden villages, reaching into the major shinobi nations. During one such operation inside Iwagakure his disguise fell apart, and while trying to flee he ran into an enemy ninja. He struck with a chakra scalpel, badly injuring the foe.

To his horror, the wounded ninja proved to be Nonō. As Kabuto scrambled to heal her, she showed no sign of knowing who he was, a blow that shattered him. He fled the scene as Kitsuchi and another Iwa ninja arrived. Left reeling and questioning his own identity, Kabuto was met once more by Orochimaru, who remarked on how capable a shinobi he had become.

Orochimaru first recruits interest in the young Kabuto at the orphanage. Danzō and Orochimaru blackmail Nonō into an intelligence mission and bring Kabuto to replace a dead Root member. On an Iwagakure job Kabuto's cover breaks, and he wounds a ninja who turns out to be Nonō. She fails to recognize him, devastating the boy.

Belonging to the Fourth Shinobi World War: Climax arc and volume 61, the chapter fills in Kabuto's backstory, framing the loss of his connection to Nonō as the wound that defines his search for identity.