One representative from each household

On the fifth day of school, just after dawn, Kiyoshi was alone at the training ground by the alley entrance.

The morning mist had not fully cleared, and dew still clung to the wooden posts.

He finished his shuriken practice.

The last volley left his hand and embedded itself in a small circle on the wooden post.

His clone retrieved the last three for him and put away the equipment, then took half a beat longer than usual to disperse, lingering as wisps of white smoke before finally vanishing.

Sasuke passed along the edge of the training ground. He spoke without slowing down.

"Your clone lasts three seconds longer than mine."

"It's a matter of feel."

His tone was like someone reading off product specifications, without a single extra word.

Sasuke stopped and turned to stare at him.

He stared much longer than that brief exchange had lasted. The tips of his ears were a little red, but he still held himself stiffly.

"Next week. We compete."

Kiyoshi nodded once, briefly.

At that, Sasuke turned and left, walking faster than he had on his way over.

A head popped up at the bottom of the slope. Naruto clung to the pile of equipment. "Was he just trying to make friends with you?"

Kiyoshi did not answer.

"He definitely was!" Naruto answered himself, his voice carrying those words far across the grounds.

Two or three classmates in the distance exchanged looks, one shaking with suppressed laughter. "Make friends" traveled halfway around the grounds on the morning breeze. Sasuke's retreating figure stiffened for half a step. He did not look back, only walked faster.

[Awkwardness value +100, current 610]

He had accepted the challenge.

He remembered the timing clearly: next week.

Last term, he cornered me to compete. This term, he asked me.

Asking means he isn't being a sore loser.

After school that evening, he went home first.

A note lay weighed down on the table. His father's field assignment had been extended to the end of the month, and his mother was on duty until nightfall. A small line had been added at the bottom: sit up straight, and talk less.

He took the Clan Meeting notice out of the ledger, folded it, and tucked it into his pocket.

One representative from each household. That vote had fallen to him.

After leaving home, he first detoured to the base of the Clan Grounds' outer wall.

The swept strip of footprints was still there, smooth and so fresh it looked pale.

Today, there was no human silhouette in the shadowed alley at the end of the strip. Even the spot where that person had stood was empty.

Watching somewhere else now.

Kiyoshi put the matter behind him and headed for the meeting hall.

He ran into Izumi at the alley entrance. She was headed the same way. Seeing him walking alone, she gave him a thumbs-up without asking anything.

The meeting hall was the old wooden building at the center of the Clan Grounds.

A clan elder checked names at the door, calling them out and letting people in one at a time.

With one representative from each household, more than half the benches were occupied. The central rows were reserved for the main family and the elders.

Kiyoshi was short. Sitting in the last row of the branch-family section, his feet did not reach the floor.

The main family's seats were right at the front.

Fugaku sat in the central seat, his Konoha Military Police Force uniform buttoned all the way to the collar.

Mikoto stood slightly behind him to one side, topping up tea for the households. As she passed the branch-family rows, her gaze settled lightly on the child who had come alone and sat at the very back. Only after taking a look did she turn away.

Fugaku opened with public security.

Over the past six months, the village had stripped the Konoha Military Police Force of patrol authority over two streets, and talk of relocation grew louder by the day.

He spoke slowly, each sentence measured: their authority remained, their people remained, and they would negotiate patiently rather than confront the village head-on.

The second agenda item was consolidation.

From now on, workers employed in the clan households' shops outside the compound would all be registered through the Konoha Military Police Force, rather than independently taking jobs from the village administration.

After reading it out, he raised his eyes and surveyed the room, waiting for objections.

As his words settled, someone in the back stood up.

He was in his thirties, from a branch family, and stood ramrod straight.

Nearly half a row rose behind him. Kiyoshi vaguely recognized all their faces: those cut from the Konoha Military Police Force, those who had pressed their fingerprints onto the relocation lists, and those whose families had suffered trouble.

Someone in the last row recognized him and murmured a few words down the bench: Uchiha Eagle Spring.

"Clan head." Eagle Spring's voice was quiet, unnaturally steady. "I've counted. Over these six months, the Konoha Military Police Force's powers have been taken away one by one. Relocation orders bear down on us day after day. We take a step back, and they push an inch forward. How long are we supposed to endure this?"

Fugaku did not look up. His pen kept moving across the paper.

"Until we reach an agreement."

"An agreement?" Eagle Spring smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. "When they've taken the last street and moved out the last of our people, will you still want to negotiate? Better to act first than wait to die."

At the words "act first," the room went silent for a breath.

People on several benches straightened their backs. Others lowered their heads and looked at their hands.

Shisui remained seated without moving. The fingers of the hand resting on his knee curled in, then relaxed.

Only then did Fugaku look up.

He did not slap the table or change his expression. He set down his pen, his voice as level as when he had discussed public security:

"Act how? And afterward, where will the clan's old and young live? What will they eat? If you can answer that, I'm listening."

Eagle Spring could not answer.

But he did not sit down, nor did the half-row behind him.

Fugaku did not hurry him.

He simply watched, one breath, then two, waiting for the disturbance in the back to subside on its own.

He held the room under control. It did not erupt.

"The clan will submit the joint relocation petition together," he said at last. "No one is to act alone. Dismissed."

Sitting in the last row, Kiyoshi had watched the entire scene.

He had taken in which households occupied the first three branch-family rows, which huddled at the back, and even who had brought a message from their family today.

That man stood straight. He wasn't afraid of the clan head.

His words weren't an argument. They gave the people behind him somewhere to stand.

That half-row refusing to sit was the real weight of the problem.

The clan was splitting, cracking outward from the center. Today's meeting hall held the first sliver of light coming through that crack.

Fugaku said nothing more.

He picked up his pen again and signed off on the agenda items one by one, unhurriedly.

His hand was steady beneath the lamplight, so steady that it betrayed nothing of what he had lost over the past six months.

Shisui sat in his household's allotted seat, not far from the main family.

When Kiyoshi looked over, he happened to meet Shisui's gaze.

Neither moved, and neither mentioned that slip of paper.

Shisui tilted his head toward him ever so slightly, like an elder acknowledging a younger relative at a meeting. No one could have read anything more into it.

The meeting ended, and the household representatives rose.

Eagle Spring followed the people behind him toward the exit. Passing the branch-family section, his gaze swept over the last row and the child whose feet did not reach the floor. He did not pause before leaving.

Kiyoshi met that glance without moving.

That night, his notebook lay open again.

The number from that morning still sat at the top of the page, larger now. Even the system's exchange rate had gone up.

Below it, he recorded the Clan Meeting.

Under Eagle Spring, he wrote two points: he was unafraid. He was impatient.

Only someone impatient would speak in such absolutes.

His path would only split the clan faster. Those few in the village were desperate for an excuse.

This argument at the Clan Meeting had greased the countdown.

He wrote most slowly under Fugaku.

He kept the entire meeting under control, then signed at the end, unhurriedly.

That hand beneath the lamplight:

The hand that signed did not shake.

Wind rose in the courtyard, and the paper window rustled once.

Someone that steady either truly had something to rely on, or had already calculated the worst.

Neither possibility was good news.

He pulled the notice out of the ledger and checked it again. Its obligations had been fulfilled today.

The next Clan Meeting would not be this quiet.

The next section was Shisui.

His pen hovered for a long time.

Last time, he had intended to look into things himself first.

Today, he had seen the first layer: where Eagle Spring's position, along with that of the people behind him, would lead.

Now that he had seen it clearly, it was time to decide whom to tell.

This time, he wrote in that section: Shisui should know what happened at the Clan Meeting.

Not long after he put down his pen, a crow landed on the windowsill, facing into the room for the first time.

Early the next morning, Kiyoshi took a half-street detour on his way to school and crouched before the stone lantern by the Clan Grounds' boundary wall.

Since last winter, there had been a gap between the bricks beneath this lantern that only two people recognized.

He tucked a small folded slip of paper into the gap, stood up, and brushed off his knees.

After turning and taking two steps away, he looked back once. The gap lay flush, no different from its surroundings.

Before dark, the crow would carry his message.

Once Shisui saw the sign, he would know it was time to meet.

Kiyoshi did not look back as he walked away.

Tomorrow after school, he would take this street again.