Where had he gone?
Where had that Hada Ichiba gone?
His pale yellow vertical pupils kept shifting around. The Sound Village's Jonin instructor swept his gaze across the surroundings without a trace. Though his expression remained unchanged, as time passed, his eyes slowly began to widen.
Had he gone... to verify whether it was real? Or...
But the substitute was still here!
If he wanted to probe me, he shouldn't have done this! What was going on?
At this moment, a string of questions surged through his mind. Faintly, his mind went somewhat blank in that instant.
"Because I no longer need to test you."
Just then, a voice suddenly sounded behind him.
What! At those abrupt words, his slightly widened eyes snapped fully open. Almost instinctively, he was about to turn and look behind him, the two words nearly slipping from his mouth.
However, he was not the sort of incompetent fool who would lose composure and blurt out his thoughts at the slightest surprise. Though the shock had nearly made him cry out, he ultimately held it back.
Even his suddenly widened eyes quickly returned to normal. Even the alarm that had uncontrollably surfaced in his gaze at the sudden shock vanished in an instant.
Almost at the very moment he cried out inwardly, he had already reined in the shock caused by that sudden voice—the voice he had been watching for all along.
Though his heart still trembled, to anyone else, the alarm on his face had merely flashed past.
"Were you looking for me, Teacher Orochimaru?"
At that moment, a voice rose leisurely at his side, seemingly carrying a faint smile.
Had he seen it? Or had he not?
In that instant, the expression that outsiders would have seen as merely a fleeting flash of alarm