Their enemies in the war could have wiped out the whole world. Many said it was a great stroke of fortune for them to have ended the war with ‘only this many lost’.
But that wasn’t how Shikamaru saw the matter.
Even one victim was one victim too many.
In the last war, he had his lost his friend Hyuuga Neji. Shikamaru didn’t think the pain of Neji’s loss was the only case out of ten thousand. A similar pain to losing Hyuuga Neji must have been felt for every other one of those victims.
In the death of only one person, there were emotions you couldn’t separate yourself from by simply by saying they were “just one sacrifice”.
It was for that reason…
It was for that reason that war couldn’t ever be allowed to break out again.
“I wonder just how many of those missing shinobi could’ve gone to the Country of Silence…” Kakashi muttered the same thoughts that were going through Shikamaru’s mind.
It was exactly as Kakashi said. Within all the shinobi who had been lost during the last war, there must have been a small amount who had survived but stayed out of reach.
The Shinobi Union’s Headquarters had been the first one to notice that.