"Uhm, so everyone who has won their match, even though one of you isn't here, congratulations!" - scatterbrained Jonin

"Well then...starting now I shall begin explaining the finals..." - Hiruren

Meanwhile, Hayate was accompanying Arina and the medic-nins until the medic nins stopped before a room and said to him: "Sir, please stay outside of the room while we treat her. After we are done, you can visit her without problems."

Hayate sighed and did as he was told.

He decided to go take some fresh air while waiting.

There was a balcony in this tower, with a great view of Konoha, but when he got closer he noticed the presence of two people discussing something in secret.

'Why would anyone be here at this time? Something is really fishy here...' - Hayate slowly got nearer until he could hear their voices.

"The preliminaries have concluded. They will now proceed to the finals."

"How tranquil...or rather how naively peaceful this nation has become while all the other countries are busy with military expansion races..."

"So if we strike now...?"

"Well, yes...although I doubt it would be any fun to kill that old feeble geezer..."

"!" - when he heard that, Hayate was sure that those two had bad intentions, so he decided to go nearer so that he could identify them and report them subsequently.

But when he saw them, he knew that he made a big mistake.

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Fear, as he has never felt before, overcame him and he was full of sweat.

His ears were ringing as a warning sign, but he didn't dare to move any muscle.

'I-Its Orochimaru! One of those legendary three...'

Hayate wasn't listening to their conversation anymore, because he was solely focused on not making any sound and trying to get his fear under control.

It seemed that their conversation was concluded and Kabuto was about to leave, when Orochimaru stopped him:" Kabuto...you...if you want to stop me, your only choice is to kill Sasuke now."

"!" - Kabuto

"There's no way you could kill me, eh? Even if you are strong, you're no stronger than Kakashi, so...heh, I'm joking. Now...you may go now! I'm putting my trust in you...oh right. On your way out, can you take some trash out?" - Orochimaru

"...I would have done it even if you wouldn't have said that"

'! I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE AS SOON AS PO-' - before Hayate could make up his mind to leave he was already struck by Kabuto's chakra scalpel.

"That's really weird, I thought everyone should be in the main hall listening to the old geezer. So why did a random Jonin decide to wander here around?" - Kabuto

Like that Hayate died.

It's ironic: Eiji tried his best to come up with all sorts of plans to save him, but even before the plans could play out, he died just like that.

Eiji relied entirely on his future knowledge and focused on the way Hayate would die originally, without considering the possibility that he may die in another way at another time.

Of course, theoretically, everyone could die at any time, so saving Hayate from any kind of danger would be impossible and wasn't a mistake on Eiji's side.

However, what was a huge mistake, was that Eiji should have known that in this world fate exists.

He knew that Naruto was destined to bring peace, so that means it is almost certain that everyone is in this world is affected by fate.

Wasn't it peculiar, that even though because of the presence of his team, many matches were different from the original timeline, but when it came to the important ones, like Neji vs Hinata, they were still the same?

It's almost like, there was a mechanism in this world, which made sure that everything stayed on its "right tracks".

Eiji should have noticed it - or rather he didn't want to notice it.

So did Hayate die because it was his destiny, or was it destiny that Eiji didn't pay attention to the possibility that he might die another way?

Right now, Eiji was still unaware, but soon he would come to learn of the cruelty of fate in this world and how hard it is to change.