True Purpose

Konoha Anbu prison, directly beneath the Hokage Building.

In a clean, sanitary cell, Rinto wore bear pajamas and lay leisurely on the not-so-soft bed with his legs crossed.

It was a square room of less than ten square meters, with no windows. The door, made of special materials, had a small sliding hatch.

The hatch was just wide enough for a plate to pass through.

Inside, there was only an iron bed and an iron table.

A dim oil lamp on the table illuminated the small space.

The rest of the table was cluttered with several empty plates and a few books with little figures drawn on their covers.

Leaning against the bed, Rinto held a book in one hand and a skewer of Takoyaki in the other, leisurely reading by candlelight.

"Creak!"

The scrape of metal shattered the silence.

The hatch in the door opened.

A familiar dog mask appeared.

"Number 233, mealtime!" the familiar voice called.

Hearing the sound, Rinto skillfully tossed aside his book, sprang up from the bed, and landed on his feet.

"Yo, Dog Brother! What are you doing here?" Rinto greeted him enthusiastically as he walked to the hatch and craned his neck to look outside.

Outside, Earth Dog cautiously took two steps back. Beneath his mask, the corners of his mouth twitched helplessly as he cursed inwardly.

What do you mean, what am I doing here?

I'm fucking bringing you food!

Damn Rinto, you're in the Anbu prison and you still won't behave. You even want to order meals.

Look at the life you're living. Is this how a prisoner lives? Food delivered right to your mouth, clothes brought to your hands, and you even need someone to bring you toilet paper when you take a dump!

Other prisoners get one Ration Pill a day. You, on the other hand, have seaweed rice balls for breakfast, a mishmash of meatballs for lunch, and grilled meat for dinner!

Five hundred Ryo isn't even enough for you to blow through in one meal!

The more Earth Dog thought about it, the angrier he became. His gaze passed through the hatch and fell on the few books casually strewn about the cell, their covers stained with grease, and his heart bled.

Bastard! Take better care of my collection!

If you hadn't begged me back then, I never would've lent you the complete The Tale of Genji series!

Besides, you haven't even grown all your hair yet, and you're already reading adult literature?

Unaware of all the complaints being hurled at him in secret, Rinto stared eagerly at Earth Dog.

"Dog Brother, what are we having tonight? Charcoal-grilled meat from that place in Narasaka?"

At those words, Earth Dog's expression beneath the mask immediately turned strange. He glanced at the black lumps on the plate in his hand and said in a muffled voice, "No. Your sister made you an—pfft—loving dinner. Heh, heh, heh, heh."

With that, he shoved the plate through the hatch, slammed it shut with a click, then turned and left.

Listening to the waves of obnoxious cackling from beyond the door, Rinto's face darkened.

What left him speechless was that the unidentified object on the plate was even darker than his face.

Mother of god... what the hell is this?

At that moment, Rinto felt as though he had returned to the first time he held that huge bottle of poison in the Jashin Cult's dungeon. Just like back then, he was equally hesitant and afraid.

With a sigh, Rinto held the plate and swallowed the unidentified lumps whole.

Sticking out his tongue and staggering crooked-mouthed toward the bed, he picked up the adult book he had been halfway through and reclined against the bed again.

However, Rinto's ears twitched faintly from time to time.

Time passed, and in the blink of an eye, a full day and night went by.

Inside the Konoha building above Rinto's head, the place had now been emptied out.

The village's classified documents had all been transferred to the underground storage room of the Intelligence Division. Other than the necessary guards, the building no longer retained its former bustle.

The sky gradually darkened.

Rinto still lay on the bed with his eyes closed, silently counting his heartbeats as he muttered softly.

"It's been two days and one night since I was locked in the Anbu prison.

During that time, the Anbu patrols never stopped, twenty-four hours a day, and the intervals between patrols were never fixed.

Sometimes, someone passed by the door every thirty seconds. Other times, it took five minutes before anyone came by. There was no pattern at all.

Tobirama Senju really knew his stuff. It looks like the Anbu patrol schedule is randomly refreshed every day.

Sure enough, the reason Naruto Uzumaki was able to infiltrate the Hokage Building and steal the Scroll of Seals back then must have been because that old man Sarutobi allowed it.

But then again, maybe that Scroll of Seals was a fake! Maybe it only recorded the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu.

After all, the techniques in it weren't very friendly for Naruto at that age!

Things like Five Elements Unseal, Reaper Death Seal, and the Eight Inner Gates Formation weren't exactly proper techniques.

But if that Scroll of Seals was fake, then it all made sense.

After all, even if Mizuki stole the Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu, it wouldn't have been much of a problem.

If they couldn't recover the forbidden technique, they could just recover the person who knew it!"

While Rinto muttered away, Tobirama Senju sat in a temporary office in the distant Land of Moon, carefully reading a scroll. An Anbu knelt on one knee before him.

It was intelligence sent from the village, and it concerned Rinto.

Rather than intelligence, it was more like the Anbu's history of blood and tears.

Although Rinto neither shouted nor caused trouble, he got hungry with terrifying punctuality. His stomach became hungry exactly on schedule, never even a second off.

Whenever the Anbu failed to bring his food on time, that bastard would start pounding on the door like mad, clamoring for food.

And whenever Rinto started yelling, the prisoners in the surrounding cells would yell along with him.

The hellish part was that these prisoners had already learned to recite dish names from Rinto.

"Steamed lamb, steamed bear paw, steamed deer tail, braised flower duck, braised young chicken, braised gosling, salted duck stew, soy-braised chicken, cured meat, pine-patterned eggs, pork belly sausage, air-dried meat, sausage, assorted Su-style platter, smoked chicken, white tripe, steamed eight-treasure pork, and glutinous rice-stuffed duck."

They were all dish names no one had ever even heard of. The most fucked-up part was that he never repeated the same dish name twice.

Even through the scroll, Tobirama Senju could feel how unreliable Rinto was.

Suppressing the urge to unleash a torrent of complaints, Tobirama Senju looked at the Anbu before him.

"Go back and assign more personnel. Keep Sakuta Rinto under watch twenty-four hours a day. I have a feeling that brat is plotting something!"

"Yes!" The Anbu nodded heavily.

Time slowly passed, and before anyone knew it, the clock went from six in the evening to two in the morning.

In the quiet cell, the candle on the table had burned nearly to its end. Only a soybean-sized flicker remained, illuminating the tiny patch beneath the candlestick.

In the faint firelight, Rinto abruptly opened his eyes, and a strange smile curled across his lips.

"Scroll of Seals, here I come!"