After the Sealed Records Room was closed, the first check was not a search for the Uchiha.
It was to establish exactly when the intrusion had occurred.
The personnel from all three watch rotations were questioned separately.
The first watch remembered patrolling outside the door and exchanging passwords with the second watch during the handover.
The second watch remembered checking the barrier and seals, but could not recall which side of the door the first watch had stood on during the handover.
The third watch remembered seeing the second watch leave after taking over, but neither guard could describe which direction the other had gone.
Everyone remembered being at their post.
Yet there was a brief stretch during which no one truly remembered anyone else.
The hourglass records showed that the gap had lasted eleven breaths.
The timing barrier outside the Sealed Records Room had never stopped, ruling out anyone tampering with the hourglass afterward.
When the three guards recounted events in separate rooms, they all placed the gap at the same point in time.
Their memories had not been erased wholesale.
The first watch still remembered hearing water drip from the eaves, the second remembered resting a right hand on a sword hilt, and the third even remembered someone changing shifts in the distance.
Only their attention to the entrance of the Sealed Records Room had been erased.
It seemed more like precise manipulation, steering everyone's gaze away from the same spot at the same time.
An ordinary hypnotic genjutsu would have struggled to achieve such consistency without making the contents of their memories identical.
Eleven breaths were not enough to defeat both locks, open the filing cabinet, alter the impression, and restore everything to its original state.
Unless the intruder had never needed to open the door.
A