The second variable sent by the Masked Man

After the coded note was sealed away, Uchiha Gen did not immediately return to the Clan District.

He stood beneath the covered walkway outside the Hokage Building, watching the sky slowly darken.

The evening after tomorrow. Uchiha clan meeting.

Those few words were like a fine needle.

They pierced more than a single wound.

They pierced everyone's suspicions.

If the note came from Root, that meant Root already knew when the Uchiha clan meeting would take place.

If the note came from another village department, that meant someone inside the Hokage Building still saw the Uchiha as pawns they could move at will.

If the note came from within the Uchiha clan, that was even more troublesome.

Someone had passed the meeting time outside, then sent it on a circuitous route back into Uchiha hands.

A tactic like this was not meant to prove anything.

It was meant to throw the Uchiha into disorder first.

Shisui stood in the shadow of the eaves, his voice very low.

"You think it was Root?"

Uchiha Gen did not answer immediately.

"The Gray-Robed Ninja knew the Anbu's shift-change schedule. That looks like an outer link in Root's network."

Shisui heard the reservation in his words.

"But this note doesn't?"

"It doesn't."

Uchiha Gen said, "Root wants the chain of evidence to show the Uchiha losing control. They would fabricate accounts, authorization slips, and pressure from witnesses to make us slip up within the rules."

He looked toward where the note had been sealed away.

"This note isn't meant to make us slip up."

"It's meant to make us despair."

Shisui fell silent.

He understood the difference between the two.

Mistakes could be corrected.

Despair made people willingly give up on correcting them.

As the night deepened, someone quietly watched the Uchiha Clan Compound from the shadow of a tall building on the other side of Konoha.

A spiral-patterned mask concealed his face.

His single eye shifted slightly in the darkness.

"They still haven't reached that point."

He murmured to himself.

The Uchiha should have been pushed step by step into opposition against the village after the Night of the Nine-Tails.

Suspicion.

Relocation.

Surveillance.

Resentment within the clan.

Shisui's isolation.

Itachi being forced to choose.

These things should have linked together like a chain.

But now, someone had dismantled several of its links.

Uchiha Gen.

That name should not have stood out so much along the original course of events.

He was not powerful enough to reshape a battlefield.

Yet he was reshaping the direction of people's hearts.

That was more troublesome than raw strength.

The Masked Man raised his hand.

A thin letter settled into his palm.

The letter bore no signature.

Nor did it contain many words.

The shorter it was, the easier it was for people to fill in the gaps with fear.

He did not deliver the letter to the clan leader's residence.

Nor did he deliver it into Uchiha Gen's hands.

He chose the courtyard wall of a young clan member's home at the edge of the Clan District.

Someone in that household had lost family in the aftermath of the Night of the Nine-Tails.

Someone there had also openly criticized Fugaku for being too soft at the last few clan meetings.

People like that were not necessarily bad.

But they were the easiest to ignite with a single sentence.

Space rippled gently like the surface of water.

The next instant, the letter fell inside the courtyard wall.

The Masked Man did not linger.

He only wanted to test a single move.

To see whether Uchiha Gen could stop despair, too.

The next morning, a commotion first broke out at the edge of the Clan District.

A young clan member rushed into the Konoha Military Police Force headquarters with a letter in his hand.

His eyes were bloodshot, his voice carrying anger he could not suppress.

"Where is the clan leader?"

Uchiha Toru immediately stopped him.

"Uchiha Shin, what's wrong?"

The young clan member slapped the letter onto the table.

"You still have to ask?"

He pointed at the letter.

"The village never intended to trust us! They know about the clan meeting the day after tomorrow, and they're waiting for us to give them something to use against us!"

People immediately gathered around in the Conference Room.

Uchiha Gen was there, too.

He did not reach for the letter.

"Who gave it to you?"

Uchiha Shin was breathing hard.

"I don't know. It was in my courtyard this morning."

Uchiha Toru frowned. "You don't know who gave it to you, and you came here to make a scene?"

Uchiha Shin turned sharply toward him.

"A scene? My father died on the Night of the Nine-Tails, the village suspects the Uchiha, and Root used fake accounts to frame us. Now someone has even written the time of our clan meeting in a letter, and you still think I'm making a scene?"

Uchiha Toru was momentarily at a loss.

This was not a simple provocation.

Because everything Uchiha Shin had mentioned was true.

Precisely because it was true, it was all the easier for someone to use it to kindle a fire.

Uchiha Gen finally spoke.

"Put the letter down."

Uchiha Shin stared at him.

"Are you going to record everything again? Wait for the Hokage Building to witness it again? How long are we supposed to wait?"

Uchiha Gen did not argue.

He looked at the letter on the table.

"You're allowed to be angry."

Uchiha Shin froze.

"But you cannot carry out the final step for whoever wrote this letter."

The room fell silent.

Uchiha Gen had Uchiha Makoto fetch a pair of tongs and spread the letter open.

There were only a few lines on it.

The village has never trusted the Uchiha.

This so-called reform is merely surveillance in a more respectable guise.

After the clan meeting the day after tomorrow, every dissenting voice will be recorded.

Waiting for you to quiet down means waiting to separate you and settle accounts with you one by one.

Uchiha Toru's expression darkened.

This letter was more vicious than the coded note.

The note had merely provided a time.

This letter had turned that time into a blade.

Uchiha Gen studied the edges of the paper.

"Makoto, record who found it, where it was found, and when. Toru, go fetch the clan leader. Shisui, investigate how the letter got in."

Uchiha Shin sneered.

"The same old routine."

Uchiha Gen raised his head.

"Yes."

He said, "Because this routine is exactly what the person who wrote the letter fears most."

Uchiha Shin froze.

Uchiha Gen pointed at the letter.

"It has no evidence, no specific names, and no plan of action. It only gives you a conclusion, then leaves you to find the anger to fill it out yourself."

He paused.

"When Root acted before, they did their best to supply fake accounts, authorization slips, witnesses, and a timeline. Because they wanted the Uchiha convicted through the process."

"This letter is different."

Uchiha Toru asked, "How is it different?"

"It doesn't want to prove the Uchiha guilty."

Uchiha Gen's voice slowly grew grave.

"It wants the Uchiha to believe they have no way forward."

The anger on Uchiha Shin's face slowly froze.

Just then, Shisui dropped down beside the window.

"There are no ordinary footprints outside the courtyard wall."

Uchiha Gen looked at him.

Shisui continued, "There's only a very brief chakra disturbance, as though someone was there without passing through normally."

No one in the room understood immediately.

But Uchiha Gen felt a faint chill down his back.

It wasn't Root.

At least, not just Root.

Fugaku arrived then.

After reading the letter, he did not immediately reprimand Uchiha Shin, nor did he have anyone take it to the clan meeting to pass around.

"Seal it away."

That was all he said.

Uchiha Shin grew anxious.

"Clan leader, the clan should know!"

"The clan will know."

Fugaku looked at him.

"But they will not learn of it by watching you rush into the Conference Room and setting everyone against one another in suspicion."

Uchiha Shin's face flushed red.

"Then when?"

"At the clan meeting."

Fugaku said, "I will explain it myself, the recorder will write it down, and everyone will hear the full story together."

Those words quelled half of Uchiha Shin's remaining anger.

It was not that he was no longer angry.

He had finally realized that if this letter spread through the Clan District first, the meeting the day after tomorrow would no longer be a discussion.

It would become an interrogation, with everyone questioning one another.

Itachi stood to one side, watching Uchiha Shin's fists clench and then loosen.

He suddenly understood that anger could sometimes still be held in check.

Despair was different.

Despair made people feel that every explanation was a delaying tactic, every rule a shackle, every moment of waiting a betrayal.

What the letter's sender had truly delivered was not intelligence.

It was this feeling.

Uchiha Gen looked at Itachi.

The boy said nothing.

But his gaze was darker than before.

Gen knew that Itachi had already seen the most poisonous part of the letter.

The next instant, the system's voice rang out in his mind.

[A second source of external interference has appeared.]

[Identity tagging failed.]

[The current rewrite path has drawn the attention of an unknown variable.]

Uchiha Gen's fingers slowly tightened inside his sleeve.

He knew who it was.

But he could not say it now.

Because truth without evidence was just as dangerous as provocation without evidence.