Root Came Calling

Kiyoshi hadn't slept.

He had jolted awake once in the small hours and hadn't closed his eyes since. He couldn't sleep.

The Clan Studies Primer lay open by the window. He hadn't turned a single page. His ears had stayed trained on the street.

Tonight, the street was too clean.

Usually, at this hour, some drunk would be humming at the mouth of the alley, and someone's dog would bark now and then.

Tonight, there was nothing.

It was so quiet, it felt as though someone had taken away every sound on the street.

He stared at the gap in the window.

Beneath the eaves diagonally across the street, that hat was gone.

Vanished.

When it was there, it meant surveillance.

When it wasn't, it meant they were coming over.

He sat up without lighting a lamp.

His right hand slipped beneath his pillow and gripped the Body Flicker Technique Talisman.

The corners of the paper were a little frayed from his gripping it over the past two days.

Can't use it. The noise it makes when I land, along with that finishing pose-the whole village would see. And using it indoors would be like writing "I'm hiding something" across my forehead.

Holding it didn't mean he intended to use it.

Holding it kept his mind from going cold.

He glanced around his room.

Both his parents were on duty today. He was home alone.

The tin beneath the bed.

An old cookie tin, containing the evidence against Danzo, the Silver Fragment, the Teleportation Card, and the Soldier Pill, with two pairs of old shoes piled on top.

For two months, he had thought he'd hidden it well.

He didn't think so anymore.

Anyone who could walk the length of that low wall on the Back Mountain couldn't possibly have left his family's garbage untouched.

He didn't know which layer the tin was hidden in had been recorded.

If he didn't know, he had to assume it was already exposed.

He waited. Waited for the other side to choose an approach.

A knock meant an open visit. A broken door meant an arrest. Root didn't knock.

Outside the window, something landed on the eaves.

A faint scrape of claws.

A crow.

The taut string in Kiyoshi's chest loosened a fraction. Shisui's crow.

It landed in the middle of the eaves, tilted its head, glanced toward him, then turned to look across the street.

Someone emerged from the darkness across the street.

A white mask with narrow eye slits stood outside his courtyard gate.

He neither came in nor hid.

He simply stood there, as though he'd been waiting a long time.

Kiyoshi got out of bed.

He hadn't changed. He was still wearing his pajamas, washed nearly white, with a grinning cartoon frog printed on the chest.

He hadn't thought of that earlier. Only after stepping outside did he remember. He wanted to go back and change, but decided that going back to change would look even more suspicious.

He pushed open the courtyard gate.

"It's late." The voice behind the mask was quiet and flat. "Where are your parents?"

"Mom and Dad are on duty. They aren't back yet," Kiyoshi said. "It's just me tonight."

The other man fell silent for a moment.

The hairs on Kiyoshi's back stood up.

He'd answered that too quickly.

When someone called a six-year-old out of his house in the middle of the night, his first reaction shouldn't have been to answer questions. It should have been fear.

He hadn't been afraid.

Not only had he shown no fear, he'd handed over the most important information as quickly as possible, as though he'd been waiting to be asked.

Too smooth. Too smooth for a child.

He lowered his eyes, gripped the hem of his pajamas, drew his shoulders inward, and softened his voice. "Mister, do you work with my dad?"

A patch job. He knew it was clumsy. His palms weren't even damp, and his voice was steady-so steady that even he thought it sounded fake. But the man wanted a "normal child," so he had to finish playing "normal," even if the performance was full of holes.

The masked man watched him for two seconds without responding to that.

"You take the street to the south every day after school."

"Yeah."

"You avoid the main street."

"When there are lots of people, they stop me and ask about village gossip," Kiyoshi said. "I'm in a hurry to get home for dinner."

"The soil on the Back Mountain has been turned over recently."

"School told us to exercise." Kiyoshi yawned, squeezing a little moisture from the corners of his eyes. "The playground's too small."

The yawn was fake, but halfway through, it nearly became real.

He yawned twice in a row, his eyes warm.

Three in the morning, standing outside his own courtyard gate in Frog Pajamas, chatting with a white mask.

If a third person saw this scene, he might as well not show up at school tomorrow.

[Awkwardness Value +10]

The masked man asked again, "What did you learn at school today?"

"The Substitution Technique," Kiyoshi said. "The teacher said it's saved lots of ninja's lives."

"How are you doing with it?"

"The teacher said I've improved the most."

That was the truth, too.

The truth was easiest. The more he made up, the more holes there would be.

The masked man asked no more questions.

He simply stood there, the gaze beneath his hat lingering on Kiyoshi's face, as though filing something away.

At the mouth of the alley, wings fluttered.

The crow landed first, settling on the courtyard wall between them. It didn't caw, just watched with its head tilted.

Then someone walked in from the mouth of the alley.

His footsteps were even-the pace of a stroll, not a patrol.

"Oh." The newcomer's voice was quiet, his tone as familiar as a neighbor's. "Kiyoshi?"

Shisui.

He wore a standard Anbu vest, his sleeves rolled up, and carried a lantern used for night patrols.

The lantern wasn't very bright. Its light just reached all three of them without fully illuminating any of them.

"Still awake this late?" Shisui approached and stopped half a step in front of Kiyoshi. His positioning was precise, placing only Kiyoshi and the masked man on opposite sides. "Don't you have school tomorrow?"

Kiyoshi looked at him, thoughts churning through his mind.

Was Shisui in this alley at this hour because his stroll had brought him here by coincidence, or had he never gone far since that crow appeared in the evening?

He wasn't sure. He knew only one thing: neither of these two men gave anything away in his act, and both knew the other's presence was no coincidence.

The masked man moved first.

He tilted his head slightly toward Shisui. It counted as a greeting, or perhaps merely confirmation.

"Night patrol," Shisui said. "The village hasn't been very peaceful lately."

"Is that so?" the masked man said.

"We keep watch over Uchiha territory." Shisui smiled. "And you are?"

"Just passing through."

Both men were smiling.

The lantern clearly lit both smiling faces, yet the temperature in the alley seemed to drop another notch.

The masked man withdrew his gaze, then gave Kiyoshi one final look.

"Go back to sleep, kid."

He turned and left the alley, disappearing into the darkness after a few steps, without a sound.

He'd made noise coming in, but none going out.

Coming in, he wanted you to know.

Going out, he didn't want you to know where he was headed.

Only one lantern remained in the alley.

Shisui hung it beside the courtyard gate, then crouched to meet Kiyoshi at eye level.

"Did he scare you?"

"I was okay."

"Okay." Shisui repeated the word and watched him for two seconds. "Mm. You were okay."

Kiyoshi understood.

There were two layers to that remark: your acting wasn't great, and I know you were acting.

"The man in the mask wasn't Anbu," Shisui said quietly. "He wasn't one of ours, either. Don't tell anyone about tonight. Not your teacher, not your family."

"Okay."

"They're watching you." Shisui paused. "Not to see whether you've done something wrong. To see whether you'll do something a six-year-old couldn't."

Kiyoshi's heart skipped half a beat.

"Get a good night's sleep." Shisui stood, picked up the lantern, and took two steps before looking back. "Don't take your usual route home tomorrow. The wind's strong on the Back Mountain lately, so stay away from the old spot for now. We'll go somewhere else. I'll bring something to show you."

He waved, and the swaying lantern disappeared out of the alley.

Kiyoshi closed and barred the courtyard gate, then returned to his room.

He didn't light a lamp. He sat in the dark for a while and counted through tonight's seven questions from beginning to end.

His route after school. The main street. The Back Mountain. School. The Substitution Technique.

How he was doing. The most improvement.

Seven questions, every one ordinary.

Not one word about money, the tin, or anything strange. It had sounded like casual conversation.

Precisely because it had all been casual conversation, it meant they'd already finished asking everything that mattered.

They hadn't come tonight to ask questions.

They'd come to study his face, to see whether anything showed on this child's face after they'd mapped out every route he took.

And he himself had already given them an answer: he answered too quickly, wasn't afraid, and even knew to volunteer information.

He didn't dare count exactly how much he'd given away tonight.

No more counting. The old method had to go.

He lay down on his stomach, dragged the tin from beneath the bed, and opened it.

He didn't need to see in the dark. His fingers knew where every item was.

The corners of the document containing the evidence had worn round. He folded it in half, then in half again, until it was the size of his palm.

Then he took the Clan Studies Primer that had lain open beside the window all night and opened it at the spine.

The cover was pressed from two layers, with a narrow, glued seam between them. He'd used it to hide his pocket money last year.

He slipped the folded evidence inside. It fit perfectly.

Once closed, the book looked like nothing more than a well-worn textbook.

Everything else-the Silver Fragment, the Teleportation Card, and the Soldier Pill-went into the innermost compartment of his schoolbag, mixed in with his stationery.

He rinsed the tin three times with clean water and set it upside down on the windowsill to dry.

From the bottom of his drawer, he dug out the five marbles he'd saved last year, along with a stack of candy wrappers, and stuffed them all into the tin.

A six-year-old's cookie tin was supposed to hold marbles and candy wrappers.

Once that was done, he lay back down.

He worked through the whole matter from beginning to end in his mind: from tonight onward, this evidence would travel with his textbooks, with his schoolbag.

He had considered many possible moments to play that card.

Even counting generously, there was less than a year until that night.

The best moment hadn't arrived. The most dangerous one had come first.

Then he'd carry it for now.

Keeping it on his person was better than letting the other side see it first.

[Awkwardness Value +25: receiving a late-night visitor in Frog Pajamas (+10), nearly exposing the act while adding a show of fear (+15).

Total: Awkwardness Value 347.]

[Face Value: 0.

Total: Face Value 100.]

Outside the window, far away, a crow cawed once.

Still watching. Kiyoshi closed his eyes.

Tomorrow, his schoolbag would hold something far heavier than his textbooks.