Actor

Houka took the scroll from the Anbu ninja, opened it briskly, and pulled out the files inside. After reading them, he finally understood what it meant when people said life was like a play—it all depended on acting.

Mizuki's file was practically an outstanding history of an actor's self-cultivation.

Jealousy?

Greed?

Brimming with ambition?

What a joke. The files clearly portrayed a Konoha ninja with no talent, yet one who had worked diligently and without complaint for over a decade!

'No wonder he was able to become an instructor at the Ninja Academy. If I were the Hokage, I'd like a ninja like that too.'

Of course, that was only on the surface.

But since Mizuki had disguised himself so well, digging up dirt on him would require more time and more manpower. The Inspection Department was already short-handed, and assigning people to deal with a minor figure like Mizuki would be a waste of talent.

Should he just kill him outright?

Houka thought about it, then shook his head.

It felt like knowing there was a rat dropping in a bowl of soup. To fish it out, he would need to use a little spoon and proceed slowly and carefully. If he acted too roughly, he might crush the rat dropping, and then its flavor would completely blend into the soup.

Houka agonized over it for a long while before suddenly coming to his senses and realizing something: the bowl of soup with the rat dropping in it was not his.

"Right, it's not my soup. Why am I in such a hurry? It's not like I'm the Virgin Mary."

The emperor was not worried, yet his eunuchs were worrying themselves to death.

Even Hiruzen Sarutobi, who treated the Ninja Academy as his private preserve, was sitting there calmly.