By the time the sealing wax distribution records were retrieved, the atmosphere in the Conference Room had changed.
At first, the senior officials had only wanted to limit the scope of the review.
Now, facts on paper kept forcing that scope wider.
Pages added after the fact.
Blank receipt acknowledgments.
A blind archives ninja.
Bitter-resin sealing wax.
None of these directly established guilt.
Yet each made it harder for Danzo to dismiss the problem as "post-disaster chaos."
The sealing wax records sent over from the Archives Room were missing a corner.
But the main portion remained intact.
One week before the Night of the Nine-Tails, the Hokage Office had indeed collected standard sealing wax.
The Konoha Military Police Force had also collected a small amount of sealing wax for patrol use.
All of those entries checked out.
But midway through the records, an irregular collection appeared.
It had been listed as auxiliary supplies.
The quantity collected was small.
The purpose field was vague.
Temporary archival sealing.
Gen's gaze darkened when he saw that line.
"The time."
Che immediately cross-checked it against the time the old access point had been used.
They were less than half a day apart.
Itachi then cross-checked the gap in the pages added after the fact.
That lined up too.
Uchiha Jun muttered a curse. "That's one hell of a coincidence."
No one corrected him.
There were already too many coincidences.
Danzo finally spoke.
"Sealing wax circulates widely. Similar impurities are no grounds for expanding the accusations."
Gen still did not argue that the wax was exclusive to anyone.
Following the approach Gen had laid out beforehand, Fugaku said, "We are not claiming the sealing wax was exclusive to anyone. We are asking to identify who collected this irregular batch and trace its distribution route."
That