In the Resettlement Zone, the hardest thing to contain was not the noise.
It was the emotion.
The moment someone shouted, "The Uchiha hit someone!" the crowd rippled like water struck by a stone.
Some pushed forward, eager to watch.
Some backed away, afraid the conflict would escalate.
Others repeated the accusation under their breath, as though saying it enough times would make it true.
Uchiha Toru stood in front of the medicine crate, his face livid.
He had not laid a hand on anyone.
But in a place like this, what often mattered was not whether you had done it, but whether others were willing to believe you had not.
Uchiha Gen did not rush to defend him.
The more anxious he seemed, the guiltier he would look.
"Let the Medical Ninja examine the injury first."
He repeated himself.
The man on the ground clutched his arm, his eyes darting.
"Of course you Uchiha want your own people to have the final say!"
Uchiha Gen looked at the female ninja in charge of medical care.
"She isn't an Uchiha."
The crowd quieted a little.
The female ninja looked displeased.
She clearly did not want to be dragged into this mess.
But she had just personally accepted authority over the injured patients' lane. If she backed down now, the entire Resettlement Zone's medical order would collapse with her.
She took a deep breath and crouched to examine the wound.
The man instinctively tried to pull away.
Uchiha Gen immediately said, "Don't touch him. Let the Medical Ninja examine him herself."
Uchiha Toru pulled back the foot he had just started to move forward.
Many people saw that movement.
The female ninja lifted the man's sleeve and studied his arm for a moment, then asked the logistics Chunin to bring clean water to wash away the blood.
Once the wound was exposed, several people nearby changed expression.
It was not a broad scrape from being shoved to the ground.
It was only a shallow, straight cut.
The female ninja frowned. "The edges are clean, as if a sharp fragment cut him. This wasn't caused by someone pushing him down and making him hit something."
The man on the ground immediately shouted, "I cut myself when I fell!"
Uchiha Gen nodded. "That's possible."
The man froze.
He had expected Uchiha Gen to argue.
Instead, Uchiha Gen turned to Uchiha Makoto.
"Draw the positions of the three lines."
Uchiha Makoto immediately took out a wooden board and drew a simple layout of the lines.
The lane for the injured was on the left.
The line for the elderly and children was in the middle.
The food distribution line was on the right.
The medicine crate was behind the entrance to the injured patients' lane.
Uchiha Toru had been standing in front of the medicine crate.
The man on the ground, meanwhile, was in front of the food line, at least two paces away from Uchiha Toru.
Uchiha Gen turned the board toward the crowd.
"If Toru pushed him down, he should have fallen in front of the medicine crate, or beside the lane for the injured."
He pointed to where the man had fallen.
"But he fell in front of the food line."
Then he pointed at the ground.
"There's no medicine crate here, and no footprints showing that Toru stood here."
The logistics Chunin looked down.
Dust covered the ground after the disaster.
It was not difficult to tell from the footprints who had stood where, or who had run past.
Uchiha Toru's footprints stayed in front of the medicine crate. He had indeed never approached the man on the ground.
The murmurs in the crowd changed.
The person who had shouted, "I saw it!" stiffened and quietly edged backward.
Uchiha Gen's gaze immediately landed on him.
"You said you saw an Uchiha push someone."
The man forced a smile. "It was so chaotic. Maybe I saw it wrong."
"You could have seen it wrong."
Uchiha Gen still did not move closer.
"Then please explain exactly who you saw pushing him, and where it happened."
The man opened his mouth.
He could not answer.
Because he had prepared only one sentence.
Once the crowd descended into chaos, a single "I saw it!" would have been enough.
But now the positions of the lines, the footprints, and the wound had all been laid out in plain sight. Anything more he said would only expose further holes in his story.
Uchiha Gen looked at Uchiha Makoto.
"Write this down. The first alleged eyewitness cannot identify who pushed the man or specify where it happened."
The charcoal pencil touched the board.
The man's expression changed completely.
He finally realized that Uchiha Gen was not arguing.
He was turning every lie into a record that could be checked.
The man on the ground suddenly scrambled to his feet and tried to slip into the crowd.
Uchiha Toru instinctively moved to stop him.
But Uchiha Gen said, "Let him go."
Uchiha Toru said urgently, "We're just letting him leave?"
"If he leaves now, everyone will see it."
Uchiha Gen watched the man's back as he retreated in panic.
"That's more useful than pinning him down."
Sure enough, the crowd opened a narrow path.
Even those who had spoken up for him earlier no longer offered him a hand.
A wound could be explained away.
So could a claim of having seen things wrong.
But when someone who claimed to have been attacked tried to leave before the injury report was finished, the implications were clear.
Uchiha Gen turned to the crowd.
"The Resettlement Zone isn't an interrogation room. The Konoha Military Police Force isn't arresting anyone today."
Quite a few people looked up.
"But supplies still need to be distributed, the injured still need treatment, and the elderly and children still need water."
His voice was not loud, yet it rose above the confused murmurs.
"Someone just shouted that an Uchiha had hit a man. Someone urged you all to grab the medicine crate. But think about it: if everyone fought over that crate, who would get the medicine first?"
No one answered.
Uchiha Gen continued, "Not the badly injured, and not the people who have waited the longest."
"It would be whoever was closest to the crate, had the quickest hands, and feared chaos the least."
He looked at the old man who had nearly been knocked down earlier.
"The people who truly needed medicine would be shoved to the back instead."
Leaning on his wooden walking stick, the old man moved his lips.
Uchiha Gen did not press him to speak.
He looked toward the food line again.
"If the food line falls into chaos, the elderly and children will be the first to fall. In the end, the report will say only that the Resettlement Zone lost control, and the Konoha Military Police Force failed to maintain order."
Several Konoha Logistics Ninjas darkened at those words.
They understood now, too.
Someone was not trying to stand up for the villagers.
Someone was trying to throw them into chaos.
The female Medical Ninja stood, her voice turning colder and firmer.
"Medicine is distributed according to the severity of injuries. I'll sign my name as a witness. Anyone who keeps spreading claims that medicine is being withheld should check the records with me first."
The logistics Chunin also spoke. "The quantities of food and blankets are updated every hour. Distribution records are open to the public."
Once these two non-Uchiha ninja spoke, much of the crowd's unease finally subsided.
Just then, an elderly voice rang out.
"Let me say a word for them."
Everyone turned.
It was the old man who had been knocked down earlier.
His hands were still trembling, but he stepped forward all the same.
"That boy stood in front of the medicine crate just now. He didn't draw his blade, and he didn't hit anyone."
The old man looked at Uchiha Toru.
"I was close by. I saw it."
Uchiha Toru froze.
The old man turned to the people around him.
"My son died last night, under the Nine-Tails' claws. I don't like seeing the Sharingan, and I don't want to speak well of the Uchiha."
His voice grew hoarse.
"But today, they let the elderly and children get water first, and the injured get medicine first. That's what I saw."
For a moment, the Resettlement Zone fell silent.
Those words carried more weight than any defense.
Because there was nothing gentle about what he had said.
He still disliked the Uchiha.
He still hated everything that had happened the night before.
But he had not let that hatred tell lies for him.
Chiyo Morikawa also squeezed through from the back of the crowd, holding her child. She said softly, "An Uchiha saved me last night, too. The Medical Ninja handed out this medicine today. The Uchiha weren't secretly withholding it."
Two more civilians who had been rescued nodded.
There were not many voices.
But they were enough to turn the situation around completely.
Uchiha Gen looked at Uchiha Makoto.
"Record this. Outcome of the first conflict in the Resettlement Zone: the Medical Ninja examined the injury and found no signs of injury caused by pushing; the logistics Chunin confirmed that supplies were distributed openly; a Villager Representative testified that separating the lines was effective."
Uchiha Makoto wrote quickly.
This time, the charcoal pencil in his hand did not tremble.
Uchiha Gen raised his head and looked toward the edge of the crowd.
The first instigator had already disappeared.
But farther away, a figure stood silently in the shadows of a rooftop.
He had the build of a teenage boy, with a short sword on his back and black hair stirring faintly in the wind.
From the outbreak of the conflict to its resolution, he had never intervened.
But he had watched every detail.
Uchiha Gen's two-tomoe Sharingan turned slightly.
The figure seemed to notice his gaze. In the next instant, he vanished over the edge of the rooftop.
He was as swift as a gust of wind.
Uchiha Gen already knew the answer.
Body Flicker Shisui.
He had finally noticed me.
Before you continue