I Like Enthusiastic Responses

Yagami had no property in Konoha, no relatives, no home.

After joining ANBU, he had to handle internal chores as well, so he lived there.

Now that he had three days off, he couldn't keep staying in ANBU. What if ANBU received a mission and the captain saw Yagami there, ruining his vacation?

Yagami changed into ordinary clothes and slipped out of the Forest of Death, where ANBU was located, with an extremely furtive air, then wandered through Konoha.

He stopped and turned to look at Hokage Rock in the distance.

The massive faces of the First Hokage, Second Hokage, and Third Hokage gave off an almost megalophobic sense of dread.

The closer one got to the foot of Hokage Rock and the Hokage Building, the more oppressive those enormous faces felt.

This village had none of the youthful vigor of a shonen manga from the original work—only the suffocating gloom brought by death.

Everyone was like Kakashi in the original work: teammates dead, teachers dead, friends dead. More or less, they all had some mental illness.

This was a village where everyone was mentally ill.

During the Second Shinobi World War, most shinobi were on the front lines, leaving Konoha somewhat desolate.

After wandering aimlessly for half an hour, Yagami decided to find a cheap place to stay.

"Where's my wallet?"

Only when he reached for money did he realize that his Ninja Tool Pouch did not contain his wallet.

After thinking it over carefully, Yagami figured he could only have left it at Tsurutsuki Izakaya, so he headed there to look for it.

Outside the izakaya, the voluptuous, glamorous proprietress had just gone to the street corner to throw out the trash. When she saw last night's shinobi approaching in the distance, her teeth began chattering with fear.

It's over.

Has my identity as a spy been exposed after all?

That handsome young man from last night had stabbed her fellow spy to death.

To prevent intelligence from being leaked after his death, her teammate had never met her and had never seen her face. So why had she still been exposed?

What should I do?

Pretending not to see him, the proprietress turned and went back into the izakaya.

Clutching a sharp fruit knife tightly, she sliced lemon wedges behind the bar.

When Yagami sat down in front of her, she looked up and asked, "Another pot of sake?"

"Give me back my wallet first. Then I'll have money to order sake."

"Huh?"

The proprietress stared in astonishment at the Konoha Ninja before her. The fruit knife in her hand loosened, then tightened, then loosened again.

He wasn't here to arrest me?

"Why are you spacing out? Give me back my wallet!"

"Wallet? What wallet?"

He was looking for a wallet?

The excuse was too absurd to sound fake.

After that wild emotional swing, joy flooded the proprietress's chest, making it rise and fall uncontrollably.

Yagami hopped down from the tall stool and headed to the side, making straight for the back courtyard.

But the proprietress immediately blocked his path.

"Sir! The back courtyard is under renovation. You can't go in!"

The proprietress was terrified.

When she had awakened last night, there had been no one in the room.

Her underground teammate had vanished, and that handsome guest had vanished as well.

She had tried using a special method to contact her fellow spy, but received no response.

There was a patch of differently colored ground, as though someone had dug something out from underground and then restored the surface.

Yagami brushed aside the proprietress's hand and entered the back courtyard, only to discover that it really was under renovation.

The floor tiles had all been pried up. He had no idea what they were repairing.

"I told you it was being renovated. How about this, sir? Go upstairs and rest first. I'll go into the back courtyard and look for your wallet." The proprietress wrapped both hands around one of Yagami's arms. "I recognize you—you were here last night! Why did I pass out? Why did you leave? Didn't you say we were going to discuss Yin Release and Yang Release?"

"After you fell last night, you hit your head on the ground and passed out. I like enthusiastic responses, not someone lifeless."

With his arm enveloped in softness, Yagami went upstairs with her and asked, "What's your name?"

"Kyouko."

Sitting in a private room on the second floor, Yagami said:

"Kyouko, there are 150,000 ryo in my wallet. You have to find it. You have to pay me back!"

Konoha Ninja were famously underpaid.

After carrying out missions in ANBU for a month and constantly dancing along the edge of death, he had only earned 100,000 ryo. The remaining 50,000 had been demanded from his captain last night.

Kyouko went downstairs to look for it.

She searched the backyard, searched the side rooms, searched beside every table and chair, but she still could not find the wallet.

She went back upstairs, composed her expression, and entered the private room with seductive eyes.

"Sir Ninja, I really couldn't find your wallet. I'm so stupid—how did I only realize now that you didn't really come here to look for a wallet? ...Even though I couldn't find it, I can compensate you in other ways."

Kyouko had heard that Yagami liked passionate responses, so she used every trick she had.

In the large Izakaya hall on the first floor, the first customers of the afternoon came in for drinks.

More than ten minutes later, the customers looked up.

Dust sifted down from the gaps between the wooden boards overhead.

The floorboards creaked and groaned.

More than twenty minutes later, the door to the private room on the second floor opened.

Kyouko pulled her strap back onto her shoulder, breathing heavily as she closed the door.

Inside, Yagami lay lazily on the bed and said, "You said that if you lost my wallet, you'd let me stay here for three days!"

"I'll make it up to you in every way I can."

Yagami was thoroughly satisfied. He lay on the bed and pretended to sleep.

Still too young. Too inexperienced. Last night, he had actually thought it was fine that it wasn't soft or trembling—pretty good, even.

Three days later, Kyouko saw Yagami off at the door with a broken heart.

That Konoha Ninja really kept his mouth shut. Three whole days, and she had failed to pry even half a word out of him.

The Izakaya's floorboards had even been reinforced once. Were all Konoha Ninja this capable of keeping secrets?

Still, she was certain that the handsome ninja had not come to investigate her.

Under the cover of night, Yagami returned to ANBU.

After entering ANBU, he saw his wallet inside his own locker!

He picked it up in stunned disbelief. Why was his wallet here?

He had been very careful, very cautious. When he left ANBU three days ago, the wallet had definitely not been in his locker!

His captain's voice suddenly came from behind him. Once again, the captain had appeared without him knowing when.

"Fox, I took back my 50,000 ryo and left you the 100,000-ryo reward for the B-rank Mission. That means there are now 200,000 ryo in your wallet. Count it."

Whether he counted it or not no longer mattered.

Yagami only wanted to know why that beautiful proprietress, Kyouko, had been so passionate these past few days... Ah... Mm?

Wait. That proprietress had been far too enthusiastic toward him. Excessively so.

Could she be a spy?

Whatever. Whether she was a spy or not had nothing to do with him. That was Konoha's problem, not his.

Even if Konoha were destroyed, it would have nothing to do with him.

A female spy was good. Female spies needed frequent investigation—deep investigation.

His captain said, "Let's go. We have a mission. The spy we brought back came from Iwagakure. We're going to follow the trail."

Yagami put on his fox mask and sighed behind it.

Last time, a squad had also gone to follow the trail, and they had all died. Spies who dared operate in Konoha had some skill. It was hard to say who would end up tracking whom.

After putting on his ANBU iron vest, strapping on his standard-issue ninja sword, and checking every detail, Yagami followed his captain and two other teammates as they vanished from the ANBU entrance.

Hopefully, they could just complete a simple C-rank Mission.

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