"Jingle... jingle... jingle..."
Amid the sudden, fierce night wind, beneath eaves carved with koi, the wind chimes rang again and again, growing ever more frantic.
"W-what? What exactly are you?!"
Suddenly, a terrified roar shattered the stillness of the night.
"Thud!"
Then, amid a dull impact and increasingly anguished screams, a huge cloud of smoke abruptly rose from the rooftop.
Under the moonlight, the enlarged, distorted shape within the smoke and blood suddenly shrank, eventually becoming a human silhouette that sat quietly atop the roof.
"I... I really should have... listened..."
After that came a weak, broken voice filled with regret.
In the end, everything returned to silence.
"Truly... terrifying. Is that his true form?"
At that moment, from a shadow-shrouded pavilion opposite the rooftop, in a position with a clear view of what was happening there, the soft voice of a white-haired young man wearing glasses rang out with a sigh.
"But... is this really all right? That Sound Village ninja..."
Beside him, Sunagakure's Jonin—and the supervising Jonin of the Genin Sunagakure had sent to the Chunin Exams—Baki turned back to look at Kabuto Yakushi, Orochimaru's true liaison, and spoke with some hesitation.
"It's fine. He no longer has any value."
Kabuto Yakushi merely watched the boy beneath the moonlight, seated atop the koi carvings with a gourd on his back and seemingly unchanged. An unknown gleam flickered in his eyes, while a faint smile slowly appeared at the corners of his mouth. He spoke with utter indifference.
As if he were discussing something he did not care about in the slightest.
Dosu...
That guy must have been hiding something. If he could conceal it from Lord Orochimaru, then his abilities must have been far greater than what he showed.
Taking this chance to get rid of him