It was autumn, three years after Lin Ye had disappeared.
Shikamaru had never become anyone important. He was still the Nara Clan adviser who would never sit if he could lie down. They had put him in charge of the newly built archive room in the Hokage Building. In practice, being "in charge" meant brewing a cup of barley tea every Wednesday afternoon and feeding the "anomalous phenomenon briefs" submitted by various countries into the shredder, page by page-because most supposed anomalies turned out to be villages unable to fix their own sewers or children playing pranks.
The original discarded draft of the "Bladeless Book" weighed down a corner of his desk, its edges worn fuzzy. Sakura had come by last week to retrieve medical records and stuck a note on the back of it: "Basic first aid was added to this year's high school electives. Not a word about chakra anymore. You won. Stop hiding to avoid reimbursing the medical bills."
The winter boots Kikyo had sent from the Land of Iron arrived, with a cryptic note tucked into the box: Frost Harbor's martial arts dais had become a secondhand book market. The samurai now cited your handwritten lists whenever they argued. Pretty annoying.
Teuchi had renovated Ichiraku's storefront last month. The new bowl mats were gaudy, with a village food map printed on the front and an excerpt from an old archive in tiny, tiny serif type in a corner on the back: "Notes on the Self-Limiting Nature of Chakra Backflow · Team 7 Auxiliary Review Edition." He said he had printed too many, and throwing them away would be a waste, so he might as well use them.
Fukasaku occasionally asked the Anbu patrolling the mountains to bring Shikamaru a couple of wild persimmons, always accompanied by