"Oh, right, Sakumo. What happened a few days ago?" Uchiha Yi turned to Hatake Sakumo.
Since Yi had become Hokage, Sakumo had served diligently as Anbu Captain. And with Kakashi Hatake as Yi's student, Sakumo was one of Yi's trusted men.
But Sakumo had run into trouble recently.
Yi decided to get to the bottom of it at the meeting.
"Lord Hokage, I've let you down." Sakumo looked at Yi apologetically.
"Someone stole the village's spy intelligence?" Yi narrowed his eyes at Sakumo, plainly displeased.
Spy intelligence from the Shinobi World's largest village had been stolen right out of Anbu Headquarters?
They'd be laughed at if word got out.
"Yes," Sakumo said bitterly. "The responsibility is mine. Some Anbu members had grown careless and were ambushed. I went to save them, and the spies escaped."
Yi gave a cold snort. Unless he was mistaken, this was connected to the incident involving Sakumo.
Sakumo had taken his own life after causing Konoha enormous losses and finding himself unable to bear the blame, compounded by other political pressures.
At first, Yi had thought Sakumo had chosen to die by his own blade because he upheld the Will of Fire and had become disillusioned with Hiruzen Sarutobi, Shimura Danzō, and even Konoha. He had wanted to prove that his belief in the Will of Fire was not wrong.
But now it seemed the problem really was far more serious than that.
What Sakumo had done this time had caused serious trouble.
To save a group of Anbu members who had been ambushed because they had grown careless, if not outright negligent, he had disregarded the safety of Konoha's spies in other villages.
The Anbu members' lives mattered, but didn't the spies' lives matter too?
It was a tremendous loss for Konoha.
Sakumo had