Silver moonlight shone upon the towering Hokage Building.
Hokage's Office.
Hayate Gekko and another Anbu member knelt on one knee on the office floor, having just finished reporting to Hiruzen Sarutobi.
"Is that what he said...?" Hiruzen Sarutobi took a deep draw from his pipe. Beneath the Hokage hat, his wrinkled face was heavy with worry.
A six-year-old child...
"It seems we guessed wrong." Hiruzen Sarutobi exhaled a thick cloud of smoke.
They had originally believed that the miraculous Lesser Flesh-Repair Pill was a secret formula never passed beyond the Hyuga Clan. They had been planning how to obtain the prescription from Hiashi Hyuga. At the very least, they had intended to establish cooperation with the Hyuga Clan and acquire a batch of Basic Flesh-Repair Pills for military reserves.
They had ignored Might Guy's claim that they could buy one from Neji Hyuga for five hundred thousand, because they had guessed Neji Hyuga possessed, at most, only one or two pills. That was far from what they wanted, and there was no need to bully a child or snatch food from a child's hands.
As the highest authority in the village, even if they could not obtain the Hyuga Clan's formula for manufacture, they still had plenty of ways to reach a cooperative agreement with the Hyuga Clan.
But they had never expected that a six-year-old child might very well be the creator of these pills—and that he wanted the Hokage himself to negotiate with him.
Did that sound like a six-year-old child?
Hiruzen Sarutobi's eyes narrowed behind the smoke. He kept wondering whether this might be bait cast by some other force, or whether Neji Hyuga had secretly betrayed the Hyuga Clan because of what had happened to his father.
Eighteen members of the Hyuga Branch Family had acknowledged