The overhead lights were off in the old conference room on the west side of the Hokage Building. Only two warm yellow wall lamps were lit. The wooden table dated back to the Third's tenure, its surface polished smooth by use, its edges gouged with dents of varying depths-supposedly left by Naruto when he sneaked in as a child and tried to carve "Hokage" into it with a kunai.
By the time Serina arrived, Sakura had already brewed the brown rice tea. The ceramic cups were pleasantly hot, with two undissolved lumps of rock sugar resting at the bottom of each. Shikamaru leaned by the window, twirling a pen he had whittled from bamboo in the Nara Clan's grove, a tiny deer etched into its shaft. Temari's encrypted projection stood across the table, backed by the glaring red sand of Sunagakure's camp. Wind tossed the bangs over her forehead, and she still held half an unfinished coarse-grain cake-exactly like the ones Serina had seen in the dam district.
"Sit." Shikamaru set down his pen and pointed at the canvas bag in her hand. "Did you bring everything?"
Serina did not sit. First, she set her medical bag on the corner of the table, unzipped it, and took everything out one piece at a time: the Steel Ruler wrapped in insulating tape, a tin box of blood-sampling needles, a letter from Yeka in Sunagakure, the register from Otogakure's old site, and the half of a ginkgo leaf that had wrinkled after soaking in water. Last, she laid the stopped Broken Watch on top. Its cold metallic gleam looked especially jarring beneath the warm yellow light.
"They're arranged chronologically." Her voice was quiet as her finger passed over the register's scrawled entries. "The comma in the Land of Waves, the 'thank you'