Naruto came every Tuesday.
The visits had started the week after the sentencing, ostensibly as part of his duties as a village representative monitoring Obito's progress. But as the weeks passed, it became clear that the schedule had less to do with official oversight and more to do with Naruto's apparently unshakeable belief that isolated people needed regular human contact.
"You don't have to keep coming," Obito said during the fourth visit, watching Naruto arrange takeout containers on the small table with the enthusiasm of someone planning a feast. "I'm sure you have better things to do with your time."
"Probably," Naruto agreed, opening a container of ramen with practiced efficiency. "But this is what I want to do with my time, so here I am."
The simplicity of the response was typically Naruto—direct, honest, and somehow completely disarming. Obito had spent years studying the boy's psychology, learning to predict and manipulate his reactions, but this straightforward kindness was still difficult to process. There was no angle, no hidden agenda, just genuine concern for someone the world had written off as irredeemable.
"Why?" Obito asked, accepting the chopsticks Naruto offered.
"Why what?"
"Why do you care what happens to me? I orphaned you. I spent years trying to destroy everything you protected. I used your pain against you during the war. By any reasonable measure, you should hate me."
Naruto was quiet for a moment, concentrating on his ramen with the kind of focus he usually reserved for complex jutsu. When he finally looked up, his expression was serious but not unkind.
"You want the honest answer?"
"Yes."
"Because I understand what it feels like to be hated by everyone around you. To have people look at you and see only the worst thing you've ever done. To feel like you're carrying a burden that's too heavy for one person to bear."
The parallel was obvious once stated, but it still caught Obito off guard. Naruto had grown up as a jinchuriki, feared and reviled by villagers who couldn't separate the child from the demon sealed within him. He had experienced isolation and hatred and the crushing weight of being defined by circumstances beyond his control.
"That's different," Obito said. "You were innocent. You never chose to be the Nine-Tails' container."
"No, but I chose how to respond to that treatment. I could have become bitter, could have decided that a world that hated me wasn't worth protecting. Some days, I wanted to."
"But you didn't."
"No, I didn't. But it was close sometimes. Closer than I like to admit." Naruto set down his chopsticks, his expression growing distant. "The thing that stopped me was knowing that there were people who believed I could be better than my worst moments. People who saw something worth saving even when I couldn't see it myself."
"And you think I'm worth saving?"
"I think everyone's worth saving. Even people who don't think they deserve it. Especially people who don't think they deserve it."
The conviction in his voice was absolute, unshaken by doubt or qualification. It was the same faith that had sustained him through years of rejection and mistrust, the same belief in human potential that had allowed him to look at enemies and see future friends.
"That's a dangerous philosophy," Obito observed.
"Maybe. But it's my philosophy, and it's gotten me this far."
They ate in comfortable silence for a while, the sound of the village's daily life filtering through the barred window. Children calling to each other as they played, merchants haggling over prices, the distant clatter of construction as damaged buildings were repaired. The soundtrack of a community healing itself one ordinary interaction at a time.
"Tell me about the letters," Naruto said eventually.
Word of the correspondence had spread through official channels, apparently reaching Naruto's ears through his network of village contacts. Obito had been expecting this conversation, had even been dreading it slightly. The letters felt private, personal—an attempt at accountability that wasn't meant for public consumption.
"What about them?"
"Are they helping? Writing them, I mean."
Obito considered the question. Was the letter-writing helpful? Each one was an exercise in confronting his crimes without flinching, in acknowledging individual deaths rather than abstract casualties. It was painful work, exhausting in ways that physical labor couldn't match.
"I'm not sure 'helping' is the right word," he said finally. "They're necessary. Whether they make me feel better isn't really the point."
"What is the point?"
"Recognition. Acknowledgment. Making sure that the people who died because of me aren't just numbers in a casualty report."
Naruto nodded slowly, apparently processing this explanation. "How many have you written?"
"Forty-three so far. I'm trying to work chronologically, starting with the earliest deaths I can directly trace to my actions."
"How many more will you need to write?"
The question hung in the air like a challenge. How many people had died because of choices Obito had made over the course of fifteen years? How many families had been destroyed by the cascading consequences of his actions?
"Thousands," Obito said quietly. "Maybe tens of thousands, if I include indirect casualties from the war."
"That's going to take a long time."
"Yes. Probably the rest of my life, if I'm thorough about it."
"Good," Naruto said, surprising him.
"Good?"
"Good that you're thinking about the rest of your life. Good that you're planning for a future instead of just waiting to die."
The observation was more perceptive than Obito had expected. Naruto was right—the letter-writing project implied a future, a sustained commitment to accountability that extended beyond immediate guilt or punishment. It was, perhaps, the first real evidence that he was beginning to think of himself as someone who might continue existing rather than simply enduring.
"I'm not sure I deserve a future," Obito said.
"Maybe not. But you have one anyway, so the question is what you're going to do with it."
"And you think writing letters is the answer?"
"I think doing something constructive with your guilt is better than just drowning in it. And I think the people who died because of your choices would probably prefer to be remembered than forgotten."
It was a simple point, but one that cut to the heart of why the letters felt necessary. The dead couldn't be brought back, their suffering couldn't be undone, but they could be remembered as individuals rather than statistics. Their names could be spoken, their losses acknowledged, their lives honored even in the context of examining their deaths.
"The families don't have to respond," Obito said. "Most of them won't, I suspect. Some probably don't want any contact from me at all."
"But some might. Some might want to know that their loved one's death mattered to the person responsible for it."
"And if they write back? If they want to tell me how much they hate me, or how my actions destroyed their lives?"
"Then you listen. You read what they have to say, and you accept it, and you let it change you if it needs to."
The prospect was terrifying and necessary in equal measure. Obito had spent years insulated from the human consequences of his actions, protected by ideology and distance and the comfortable abstraction of strategic thinking. Direct confrontation with individual grief would strip away those protections, would force him to face the reality of what he had done without any comforting filters.
"You make it sound easy," he said.
"It's not easy. It's probably going to be the hardest thing you've ever done. But it's also the only way forward that doesn't involve giving up entirely."
As the afternoon wore on, their conversation drifted to other topics. Naruto told stories about his training, about missions he was undertaking, about the slow process of rebuilding relationships with villages that had been devastated by the war. His optimism was infectious but not naive—he acknowledged the difficulty of the work while maintaining faith that it was possible.
"I should go," Naruto said eventually, beginning to clear away the empty containers. "I've got a mission briefing in an hour."
"Naruto." The name felt strange on his tongue, weighted with years of manipulation and conflict. "Thank you. For coming, for the food, for... this."
Naruto paused in his cleanup, studying Obito's face with the kind of attention he usually reserved for complex problems requiring innovative solutions.
"You don't have to thank me," he said finally. "This is what people do for each other. Or what they should do, anyway."
"Even for people like me?"
"Especially for people like you. The people who think they don't deserve kindness are usually the ones who need it most."
After Naruto left, Obito sat at his small desk and pulled out writing materials. Forty-four letters to write tonight, forty-four names to honor, forty-four opportunities to practice the kind of accountability that might eventually grow into something resembling redemption.
It was slow work, difficult work, work that would probably continue for the rest of his life. But for the first time since beginning the project, it felt like something other than penance.
It felt like purpose.
He picked up his brush and began to write, Naruto's words echoing in his mind like a promise: Everyone's worth saving. Especially people who don't think they deserve it.
Maybe, eventually, he would learn to believe that about himself.