Three short whistle blasts.
They came from the lodging area, one hard on the heels of another.
Before the third had faded, someone in the Konoha Military Police Force duty room was already getting up.
Kiyoshi was on duty for the latter half of the night.
The ledger lay open on the desk, his pen resting at the foot of the page. He was out the door first.
His outer robe hung over the chair in the duty room. He grabbed it and pulled it on as he walked.
The whistles sounded again. Dogs barked in two places, and footsteps raced along the other side of the wall.
The village slept deeply in the small hours.
He did not run. Officers on duty were not supposed to run, but his pace quickened a fraction.
A semicircle had already gathered beneath the long wall of the lodging area.
The special unit's night shift had arrived first. They stood around the perimeter, none of them entering the scene.
Only Kiyoshi went in.
The outer ring opened a path, then closed again behind him.
Several narrow grooves had appeared in the long wall, running upward along the bricks and stopping at the eaves.
Fine, grayish-white sand was embedded in them.
The grooves were spaced apart at even intervals, as though measured with a ruler.
The highest reached the eaves, disappeared over the edge, and vanished among the tiles.
A finger brushed across them could not wipe the sand away. It only sank deeper.
The grooves did not look like marks left by climbing hands and feet. They looked more as though something had swum up against the wall, moving a stretch, then pausing.
The well stood in the shadows, its rope still swaying.
The bucket was dry, and there was no mud on