"Take it. When the time comes, you'll know how to use it." Uchiha Jie pressed the item into Hyuga Yue's cool hand, then turned to look at Sarutobi Kou.
"You have something for me too?" she asked.
Uchiha Jie really did pull a scroll from his clothes. It was small, but surprisingly thick.
Scrolls of this kind were generally not used to seal items or record Ninjutsu. Even important intelligence wasn't written on them.
They were so small that some commonly used Sealing Techniques wouldn't fit, so only Genin regularly used them. They were usually for recording missions, since ordinary D- and C-rank missions didn't require especially tight security.
"Isn't this a little too casual?" Sarutobi Kou weighed the scroll in her hand, then glanced at the test tube in Hyuga Yue's. She wasn't envious at all. She didn't want the Sharingan one bit.
She was about to unroll it and see what was inside that could possibly rival the Sharingan.
But no matter how hard she pulled, the scroll wouldn't budge, as if it had been welded shut.
"Hey! It's such a tiny scroll, and you still put a seal on it?"
After looking closely, Sarutobi Kou spotted a small, tangled seal in the gap where the scroll was rolled together.
"It isn't for you, and you can't open it anyway. It's for Lu Yu. I'm just asking you to pass it on to her," Uchiha Jie explained.
After hearing that, Sarutobi Kou simply stuffed the scroll into her clothes and stopped worrying about whether she could open it. If it was for Lu Yu, then even if she painstakingly broke the seal, she wouldn't understand what was written inside.
Those two were always coming up with codes and secret phrases. They claimed they were testing each other, but to her, they were just writing love notes in code so she wouldn't understand them.
At first, Sarutobi Kou had thought becoming a Jonin squad leader was an honorable, easy job. But when she received the list of assigned teammates, her head started to ache.
A Hyuga, a Uchiha, and a Nara.
The Hyuga Branch Family was a little easier to deal with. Most of them acted like the walking dead, like puppets on strings, as if they'd lost all hope in life. You could tell them to do anything, and they'd do it. They were good at completing missions, but that was all.
They didn't want to talk much or grow closer to their teammates. They were like cold machines; you could only feel a little warmth when you touched them.
The Uchiha Clan were troublemakers through and through: arrogant, conceited, and disdainful of everyone. She'd heard the elders talk about it since she was born. Getting the Uchiha to behave was incredibly difficult.
Never mind being their Jonin squad leader. Disobeying orders and challenging you every other day were par for the course.
If the last teammate had been a civilian ninja, things would have been easier to smooth over. All she'd have needed to do was firmly put the Uchiha troublemaker in his place and establish her authority as squad leader.
But the last teammate to join wasn't a civilian ninja. She was a young girl from the Nara Family.
The little ninjas from the Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi Clans usually formed teams together. It was a longstanding custom among the three clans. But even with miraculous chakra, having children wasn't something you could do whenever you wanted.
So, naturally, some children from these clans had to team up with other ninjas.
The ninja in charge of assigning teams wanted to curry favor with the Young Miss of the Sarutobi Clan, so he gave her this deluxe squad.
The Hyuga would handle reconnaissance and close-quarters Taijutsu, while the Nara would serve as the strategist and use their Shadow Secret Technique to restrain the enemy. Finally, the Uchiha, who excelled at Fire Release, would finish the fight.
But when Sarutobi Kou took charge of the three little ninjas, she found that apart from her, there wasn't a single person on the team who was normal in the usual sense.
The little ninja from the Hyuga Branch Family was supposedly excellent at Gentle Fist, but she preferred to fight with the short blade at her waist. According to her, "If you can kill an enemy with one slash, why bother wearing yourself out with Sixty-Four Palms?"
But using a blade wasn't the only thing. She was especially cruel. During their first C-rank mission, the bandits she killed were left so mangled they were barely recognizable, as if someone had slashed them with Sixty-Four Palms.
As for the child from the Uchiha Clan, he hadn't even awakened his eyes and spent all day grinning. No matter what kind of mission they took, he acted like they were going on a spring picnic outside the village. Whenever she saw his radiant smile, she wanted to give him a good punch.
The little girl from the Nara Family was even harder to handle. During missions, she was lazy and acted like none of it had anything to do with her. But as soon as they had a moment to rest, she'd come over and ask about the meaning of life, the value of existence, why she was alive, and things like that. She was more exhausting than she was during missions.
Everyone said the Nara were brilliant, so why did this little girl have so many bizarre, nonsensical questions? She hadn't figured them out herself yet.
These three troublesome little ninjas had nearly driven her to ask her Clan Head to relieve her of her Jonin squad leader post. But in the end, whether out of a sense of responsibility for her team or because she didn't want to rely on her clan for everything, she stuck with it.
In less than half a year, everything changed. Nara Lu Yu stopped pestering her with questions and instead spent every free day clinging to Uchiha Jie.
Another year passed. After they'd completed an extremely dangerous A-rank mission, Hyuga Yue also started spending all her time around that Uchiha brat.
Nara Lu Yu now wore her hair in a high ponytail and had on a Chunin flak jacket, its chainmail gleaming as if it had just been polished.
Though she wore the standard Konoha uniform everywhere else, she had on a pair of black boots that covered her toes. She took the scroll from her squad leader and slipped it into her pocket without even looking at it.
"Aren't you going to take a look?" Sarutobi Kou asked, puzzled.
"There's no need, Teacher Kou." Nara Lu Yu gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. Looking at Sarutobi Kou, who had put her Anbu mask back on, she said with certainty, "Looks like you got a remarkable gift too, Teacher."
Even with her mask on, Sarutobi Kou felt as if Lu Yu had seen right through her. Her face grew even hotter than it had when she'd said goodbye to Uchiha Jie, so she hurriedly changed the subject.
"Uh, about getting him ready to leave the village—we've taken care of everything. There's nothing you need to help with, so just stay home and take it easy. I'm about to leave Anbu, and I'll need you to help me out then."
"Is it the Security Force? Looks like I'll finally be able to put some of my ideas into practice." Nara Lu Yu didn't press her further. She followed her teacher's lead and continued the conversation.
"Mm-hmm. I'll be counting on you then, little Lu Yu. I don't want to spend every day hunched over a desk like the Clan Head," Sarutobi Kou replied, pressing her palms together.