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The bond was already downloaded.
The main menu loaded differently. The usual sunlit Konoha logo was dim, storm clouds rolling over the Hokage faces. His save slots: three empty. Then, a fourth slot, grayed out, reading:
The credits rolled, but the names were wrong. Not developers. Usernames. Hundreds of them. Players long offline. And at the very end: naruto shippuden kizuna drive save data download
The screen went white. The PSP's UMD drive spun up—a sound Arata hadn't heard in a decade. Then, the secret cutscene played. Not the Three-Way Rasengan-Chidori. Something older. Grainier. Two generic avatars—one orange, one blue—sitting on the Hokage monument at sunset, sharing a digital popsicle.
Arata thought of Kei. Of the last time they'd played, laughing, losing, promising to "try again tomorrow." Tomorrow never came. The hospital did. The bond was already downloaded
He loaded it.
Arata's hands trembled. He followed the marker. The forest became the old PS2-era textures, then lower-res, then wireframes—like the game was falling apart. The music stuttered. Then stopped. His save slots: three empty
But on his memory stick, a new folder had appeared: Inside, one file. 144KB. Named "Arata_and_Kei."