The old man from Zeshimo Town rummaged through the backpack he had brought, took out a small iron pot, and set it over the campfire. He poured in water and rice and began cooking porridge.
The rice had been recovered from the batch Kabuto had requisitioned from Sawada Village. Dozens of unused sacks of grain had been piled in Otogakure's storeroom. The old man had checked them one by one until he found the marks sewn with hemp thread onto the sacks from his village.
He carried every marked sack outside the main gate and told Guy that this rice belonged to Sawada Village, and they were taking it back.
But the dozens of remaining sacks troubled him-there were too many to carry away.
Guy told him to let the villagers who came later take whatever they could not carry. From now on, Otogakure's storeroom would be jointly managed by Sawada Village and Zeshimo Town.
The old man froze for a moment, then broke into a broad grin. The gap where a front tooth was missing showed in the firelight. It was not a handsome smile, but it was utterly genuine.
Chisen came out through the main gate when the porridge was ready.
The brace on his right knee had been rewrapped. Saki had found a roll of elastic bandages and a bottle of anti-inflammatory spray in the storage room's medical cabinet, and Chisen had used them to give himself a more professional compression dressing than before.
The pocket of fluid on his knee was still there, but the swelling had stopped spreading, and his limp was less pronounced than it had been during the day.
He sat on the gravel beside the campfire, accepted a bowl of porridge from Tenten, and used his scalpel as a spoon to scoop