Box Cat

"Mm-hmm!"

One person nodded in agreement and added, "I'll submit a proposal to the higher-ups later and have this kid assigned there!"

"What are you talking about?" Qi Shuang asked drowsily from the chair.

He had only just woken up, and his head still felt somewhat foggy, so he hadn't heard everything they were saying.

He had only barely caught words like "Demon" and "unit."

Hearing this, one of them said meaningfully, "We're discussing how to arrange your future assignment!"

"Huh?"

Qi Shuang was somewhat confused.

The man gave him a complicated look and continued explaining, "Kid, we've thoroughly verified the circumstances surrounding the annihilation of your entire squad!"

"Although the death of Chunin Kamiya Ki wasn't entirely your fault, your actions were still difficult to accept!"

As he spoke, he seemed to recall something. He gave a self-mocking laugh and continued, "Actually, we people who graduated by killing our classmates don't have the right to criticize you either!"

"Still, I hope you remember this: this is a battlefield, after all. Anyone who casually abandons their comrades will one day be abandoned by those same comrades!"

"No one will trust you or entrust their back to you again!"

"The result will be that you'll turn yourself into a lone wolf. Without the support of comrades, that is extremely dangerous on the battlefield!"

"I hope you'll conduct yourself accordingly! Also..."

His tone shifted as he continued, "In view of what you did to Kamiya Ki, we've decided to propose that you be assigned to the squad led by 'Demon Zabuza.'"

"People as cruel and heartless as you are better suited to stay together!"

"Oh!"

Qi Shuang answered softly, seemingly somewhat dejected in the face of the man's accusations.

In reality, however, he was secretly delighted.

It seems the Intelligence Interrogation Department only asked about how our squad was wiped out. They didn't ask about anything else. My luck is pretty good! he thought to himself.

But then he thought about it and felt that their failure to ask about anything else was only natural.

After all, who would imagine that a child of barely ten possessed the soul of someone from another world?

As for directly delving into his mind to investigate his memories, that would be making far too much of a fuss.

They would have to be bored out of their minds for the Mist Intelligence Interrogation Department to deliberately find someone to examine his memories just to verify the details of their battle!

Furthermore, this body of his had no memories of another world. Only his soul possessed that thing that should never have appeared here.

If someone put in the effort to examine his memories directly, they could only see the memories originally belonging to this body. The things that no one should see were completely invisible to outsiders.

He guessed that only extremely advanced hypnotism, or the power of the Rinnegan: Human Path, could extract those unnatural secrets from him.

But then again, as long as he kept his mouth shut and revealed nothing...

The things hidden within him would be no different from nonexistent in the eyes of others, because no one would know that such things existed in the first place.

Naturally, no one would deliberately investigate them.

It was just like Schrödinger's cat. At first, people had no clues whatsoever about the cat's existence, so they would never deliberately investigate what was inside the box.

And in the eyes of outsiders, the cat inside that box was no different from nonexistent.

The memories of another world within him were that cat in the box!

All he had to do was keep his mouth shut, and everything would remain safe and sound.

His earlier worries had been somewhat unnecessary!

Seeing him "scared senseless" in the chair, one of them dismissed him without mercy. "All right, Genin Qi Shuang. You can leave now!"

At the end, the man added one more reminder.

"Remember our advice!"

"Oh!"

Qi Shuang slowly rose from the chair and left the camp where the Intelligence Interrogation Department was located, looking "dejected."

As for the battle to capture Uchiha Tai, he knew nothing about it and had no interest in asking.

He only knew that on the afternoon he returned to camp, a piece of news was spreading through the camp like wildfire.

The Mist had captured a Konoha jonin alive—and he was a jonin from the Uchiha clan.

Although he hadn't come face-to-face with that Konoha prisoner, he had just seriously wounded a Uchiha jonin. Then the Mist immediately captured a jonin prisoner, who also belonged to the Uchiha clan.

If the person they had captured wasn't Uchiha Tai, it would be far too much of a coincidence. Thus, Qi Shuang could almost be certain that the captured Konoha jonin was Uchiha Tai.

Immediately afterward, security and alert levels throughout the Mist's frontline camp rose to their maximum, leaving the entire camp in a state of readiness.

Just as the Konoha jonin prisoner was escorted into the Intelligence Interrogation Department, a proposal from the Intelligence Interrogation Department was placed on the desk of the General Headquarters.

One person opened the document and read aloud, "Mist Genin Qi Shuang used a dying comrade as bait and employed Explosive Tags in a mutual-destruction method to severely injure a jonin..."

"The Intelligence Interrogation Department now proposes assigning him to the squad of 'Demon Zabuza'!"

After reading it, the man glanced at the others in the tent and asked softly, "What do you gentlemen think?"

One person set down the document in his hands and said solemnly, "Such a cold-blooded and heartless fellow is a perfect match for that 'Demon.' I have no objection!"

"I second it!"

"I second it!"

The others nodded as well, expressing their agreement.

They still had plenty of official business to handle and didn't have the energy to waste on a child barely ten years old, so they didn't want to dwell on the matter any further.

For a proposal unrelated to the overall situation, simply approving it was enough.

The person holding the proposal immediately stamped it, then handed it to the subordinate beside him and said, "Have the Personnel Coordination Department arrange it."

"Yes!"

Taking the document, the man immediately left the main tent using the Body Flicker Technique.

Before long, a ninja holding an assignment order brought Qi Shuang to the outside of a tent.

"Is Chunin Ao here?" the man shouted toward the tent.

The person he was calling for was named Ao. He was a Mist Chunin and the captain of a squad.

"Who is it? How annoying! I just got back from a mission, and you won't even let me rest properly!"

Amid a string of grumbling curses, a young ninja dressed in blue emerged from the tent.

It was the very person he had come to find—Ao.

"Why is it you, kid?" He noticed one of the little boys outside the tent at a glance.

That child was the lucky survivor they had rescued earlier. It was also because of his warning that they had managed to share in the credit for capturing the Konoha jonin alive.

Immediately afterward, another boy and girl, both around ten years old, crawled out of the tent.

When she saw the little boy outside, the girl excitedly tugged at her companion and teased, "Zabuza, look! Your 'lucky' classmate is here!"

"Hmph!"

The little boy who had come out of the tent gave a cold snort and turned his head aside. Yet his dark, shining eyes secretly sized up his old classmate.

Clearly, his heart wasn't as indifferent and unconcerned as he appeared.