After the wartime contact number was confirmed to have never been deactivated, the Review Group did not immediately discuss whether Obito Uchiha was still alive.
This was exactly the outcome Gen had wanted.
Because once the meeting moved on to deciding whether Obito was alive, Danzo would pin every issue back on the Uchiha.
Now, there was only one question on the table.
Who had collected the keepsakes?
The number register was spread open.
That wartime contact number had no name attached.
No active-duty registration.
No deactivation stamp.
And no explanation of how it had subsequently been filed.
It was like a blank tag inserted among the death records.
Mitokado Homura studied it for a long time before finally saying, "Temporary wartime numbers did not necessarily correspond to specific individuals."
Danzo immediately picked up the thread. "Precisely. Battlefield filing was chaotic to begin with. A blank number proves nothing."
Hearing this, Gen actually relaxed a little.
Danzo was downplaying the number's significance.
That meant the number mattered.
Fugaku did not argue with the claim that it "proved nothing."
He simply asked the head of the Archives Room, "If the number did not correspond to a specific individual, should it have corresponded to a team?"
The man nodded.
"It should have."
"Where is the team record?"
The man continued leafing through the registers.
This time, he searched even more slowly than before.
Finally, he pulled a thin appendix from the bottom.
The appendix was labeled "Temporary Wartime Contact Teams."
The number ranges were clearly listed.
The team names were clearly listed.
The assigned areas were clearly listed.
Only the entry corresponding to that number had a diagonal line drawn through it.
It had not been deactivated.
It had not been invalidated.
It was unassigned.
Yet an unassigned number appeared on the