"Captain! Why? Why did we sign the treaty? Shouldn't—shouldn't we wait for word from Lord Third Tsuchikage? And Konoha was clearly the one that killed Lord Rando, so why were we the ones who had to sign a treaty in the end?!"
Inside the residence where Konoha was hosting Iwa's delegation, Iwama sat slumped in a chair beside the table. After hearing him explain that the scroll he had signed on this very table and handed to Taki Chiba was the treaty for this Peace Alliance, Hui Tian, the youngest of the guards, could no longer hold back and began shouting.
"Exactly! Then what was Lord Rando's death for? Captain, have you lost your mind? Or were you caught in Konoha's genjutsu? How could you do this? How are we supposed to face Lord Rando now?!"
Hui Tian's outcry was quickly echoed by the other two guards. Perhaps overwhelmed by grief and fury, they no longer bothered to understand and instead began blaming Iwama.
Yet in the face of his subordinates' reproaches, Iwama said nothing. He merely stared silently at the table and the tea set upon it. But blood slowly seeped from between his tightly clenched hands.
At that moment, the kindly face of an elderly man kept surfacing in his mind, along with the image of that old man sitting at this table, calmly sipping tea.
If there had been any other way, why would he have signed that peace treaty? The treaty Taki Chiba had handed him was far from favorable. It was an agreement somewhere between the second treaty and the generous third treaty that Konoha's Hokage, Minato Namikaze, had offered during the negotiations. Although it was generally fair and in line with a normal peace treaty, it was still a crushing agreement for the Land