"You're here. Have some tea."
Watching Tenten leave and make a detour into the little grove, Chiba set the fruit tray on the veranda and looked toward the spot where a branch had been snapped. Then he spoke.
"Yes."
After those words, the sound of snapping branches rang out again. Accompanied by the sound, a figure slowly emerged from the woods.
"I thought you would use genjutsu to hypnotize Tenten."
As he watched the figure approach, Chiba smiled faintly, took out a cup of tea from the tray, and set it beside himself.
"That little girl is clever. She knew better than to look this way even once."
The newcomer answered with remarkable honesty.
To be honest, he had wanted to use genjutsu to hypnotize the little girl named Tenten. But for some reason, perhaps because she had already sensed that the owner of this house was no ordinary person and that something was happening here which she should not know about, the girl had not glanced in his direction even once, as if deliberately avoiding him.
And when she would not even look his way, he could not hypnotize her with genjutsu.
"Yes. The children on Team Guy are all quite good."
Chiba nodded and openly expressed his approval.
"Then... what about Sasuke?"
By then, the figure had already settled down beside Chiba. Wrapped tightly in a black robe, beneath the black hood gleamed two points of scarlet light.
"You should use the Sharingan as little as possible. With your current body, every minute you can save is a minute better."
Chiba did not even look at the black-robed figure beside him, though expectation seemed to radiate from beneath the hood.
"Yes."
The black-robed figure was exceptionally obedient. At once, the two scarlet lights beneath the hood went out.