When the damaged requisition slip was returned to the Hokage Building, Hiruzen Sarutobi looked even grimmer than before.
Only half the sheet remained.
The writing was incomplete, too.
But the words "Itachi," "handover," and "storage locker" were enough to bring that unnumbered Anbu mission to mind.
On its own, that scrap of paper would have proved nothing.
Yet it had appeared just after the Peripheral Supply Lines had been cleared out.
And its delivery method happened to match the one on Itachi's unnumbered note.
Often, evidence hidden in the shadows would never emerge in full.
Only a corner would show.
The question was whether the Hokage was willing to acknowledge that something lay behind that corner.
After reading it, Mitokado Homura did not speak immediately.
Utatane Koharu frowned as well.
They both knew perfectly well that this was not conclusive evidence.
But linked to the earlier sham interview, the Purge List, and the Shisui Night Trap, it formed a convergence of timing that could no longer be ignored.
Uchiha Gen stood before the desk, his voice steady.
"We aren't asking the Hokage Building to pronounce anyone guilty immediately."
Hiruzen Sarutobi looked at him.
Gen continued, "But if every incident targeting Shisui Uchiha and Uchiha Itachi leads back to the same supply network, the same timing gaps, and the same unnumbered procedures on Root's periphery, then the village must at least acknowledge one thing."
"What?"
"Someone is using Konoha's own shadows to push the Uchiha out of control."
Silence fell over the office.
Those words made Hiruzen Sarutobi deeply uncomfortable.
Because "Konoha's own shadows" all but pointed directly at Root.
And Root existed with his tacit approval.
Those missions that could never see the light, those judgments that could never be brought out into the open, those things he called necessary