Memories, Cards on the Table

The crow arrived before darkness fully fell. It landed on the windowsill, facing downstream, carrying no note.

It spread its wings, then folded them.

It knew the roads beyond the old ferry crossing, too.

It brought back only one message: words could no longer be passed along. Return to the hollow beneath the bridge.

They had stopped using that hollow only last month.

Shisui himself had given the order.

There was just one reason to use it again: what needed saying could not be conveyed by messenger.

Words that could not be passed along had to be spoken face-to-face.

Kiyoshi left at an off hour. The crow flew a little ahead, landed, waited for him, then flew on.

When he arrived, he first pulled out a broken twig and tossed it into the hollow, listening. Nothing stirred to suggest someone was hiding inside.

The brick dust at the entrance was undisturbed. No one had brushed against it.

Only after checking did he enter, choosing a sheltered spot with a view of the entrance.

Shisui arrived without a footstep. He stood at the entrance, saw where Kiyoshi was sitting, and paused.

"Good choice of spot."

It was the spot Shisui himself would have chosen.

Kiyoshi shifted inward, making room on half the stone.

Shisui sat opposite him and got straight to the point.

"Eagle Spring's end is settled." Shisui unfastened the sword from his back and laid it across the edge of the stone. "But when I was wrapping things up, I discovered that not one of the eyes he'd collected was left in storage. They were all merchandise, with suppliers and buyers."

He looked at the river outside.

"As for who sits at the table at the end of that chain, I have someone in mind. I've suspected him for six months. But suspicion is one thing, investigation another." He turned back. "Why him? This time, deductions don't count. I need something I can see. Right?"

"I have it," Kiyoshi said. His hand was already reaching inside his clothes.

He opened the book, slipped his fingertips into the hidden compartment in its spine, and pushed out something the size of a fingernail, setting it on the stone between them.

The object lit up. Silently.

Images rose in the darkness, as though someone had lit a lamp at the back of the hollow that only the two of them could see.

A candlelit room.

A man with bandages around his right eye sat in the shadows. Files beside him were stacked higher than a person. He turned the pages slowly, one at a time, studying them closely.

The image shifted to a stone table and jars.

Every jar held eyes tinged with red, soaking one by one, gleaming in the candlelight.

Another shift revealed a ledger. Line after line recorded where the eyes had come from and where they had gone, with dates at the foot of each page.

Shisui watched from beginning to end without a word.

During the images of the jars, the fingers resting on his knee curled once, then relaxed.

During the images of the ledger, he moved his gaze away from the dates at the bottom.

As though he had recognized something he did not want to recognize.

"That face isn't in the Anbu records." Shisui never took his eyes off the images. "The Anbu records have never included this man. But there isn't another person in Konoha who bandages his right eye like that."

"Shimura Danzō." Kiyoshi pressed the compartment in the book's spine shut. "The leader of Root. The hand the village entrusts with its dirty work."

"Eagle Spring collected the merchandise." Shisui spoke those last words very softly.

The images showed the ledger turning to its last page.

The dates at the bottom stopped a month ago.

The image lingered, then went dark.

Darkness settled over the hollow again, while the river flowed past outside, its sounds rising one after another.

Neither of them spoke first as the darkness returned.

"Eagle Spring collected eyes for him." Kiyoshi pressed a hand against the book he held. "Danzo is the driving force behind the clan massacre. The blade that carries it out is Itachi."

"Where did you get-"

Shisui had barely begun the question.

Kiyoshi raised his hand, plucked the little object off the stone, and returned it to the compartment. He closed the book and held it against his chest again.

"I can show you the accounts. The bookkeeper's identity isn't for sale."

Shisui looked at him for a while, then swallowed the rest of his question and returned to business.

He left Danzo's name alone. His first question concerned Itachi.

"Itachi wouldn't do this."

He said it without emphasis, simply laying the words between them and leaving them there.

He glanced outside.

Only a few lights were visible in the village at night. The Hokage Building's direction was dark.

"But in these past six months, not one piece of information you gave me has failed to hold up. The defenses, the bases, and this tonight." He paused. "I believe eighty percent of it."

"Twenty percent remains. Ten is still with Itachi. He wouldn't do this. Even now, I haven't fully swallowed that claim. The other ten is in the Hokage Building." He tilted his head toward the village outside. "Even if we laid everything from tonight before that old man, do you think he'd move against Root?"

He answered himself. "He'd stall. Even if he stalled until the river ran dry, he might never act."

He had no intention of setting that doubt aside.

But whether he could set it aside or not, the work still had to be done.

"So we can't wait." Shisui turned to face him directly. "We have to finish this ourselves."

Silence lasted half a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was still warm, but his words had taken on a different backbone.

"He's short on merchandise."

"Once Eagle Spring's route is cut off, he won't wait for the clan to produce another Eagle Spring. Of the supply he's watched for six months, only one item remains." Shisui raised a hand and pointed at his own eyes. "He'll have to come take it himself."

"So we need to give him a reason to act." Kiyoshi drew the book on his knees closer to his chest.

"We don't need to invent one." Shisui shook his head. "Every ten days, I spend one night patrolling downstream alone. That routine hasn't changed in six months. He knows it. We'll let that opening show itself once more."

He spoke evenly, as though reciting his night patrol route.

"He'll succeed. I need him to truly succeed. Losing an eye-the pain has to be real for the setup to hold. Only if he believes it can that line be written in the files. Once it's written, that night will follow his schedule. He'll hold the date, and we'll hold the game."

"The eyes are his secret account. The people are our open one," he continued. "Before the night he acts, we move people out. Children and anyone a single glance can knock unconscious go first. Ordinary people, too. The difficult jōnin-we don't force it. Leave them until last."

"How do we move them?"

"I carry them." Shisui patted his shoulder. "But the more people there are, the more attention we'll draw."

"I have a genjutsu." Kiyoshi withdrew his hand from inside his clothes. "It can cover a group. Each use leaves me with one fewer."

"Then use it where it counts." Shisui nodded. "The younger generation comes first. The fewer people who know, the better. Most of them need to be in the dark for that night's performance to look real. And that place up on the slope-we won't call it temporary anymore."

That settled the division of work.

Kiyoshi pressed the closed ledger itself against his knees.

These words could only remain in the hollow.

[Face Value +200, current 1150]

Shisui gazed at the river and brought up one last thing.

"That night, Itachi will follow."

Kiyoshi looked up.

"He's been watching me, just as I've been watching the clan." Shisui lifted his chin toward the Hokage Building. "Once I expose that opening, I can hide it from the sentries, but not from him. Let him see."

"Let him see?"

"Once he sees it, that old man will have something to hold over him, to force him to take up the blade." Shisui's voice was steady. "Only by taking the blade can he get inside. And only then will we have one of our own on the inside that night."

As he said it, he watched the river without blinking for half a breath.

They were done talking. Shisui sat a little longer, then suddenly spoke. "Take the well-lit way back." His tone was as gentle as ever.

Kiyoshi rose. The crow perched on a dead twig jutting diagonally from a crack in the brick ceiling. It had not made a sound the entire time.

He nodded to it, a handover of duties: it had heard tonight's words, too, and future messages would still go through it.

"It remembers only the routes, not the words." Shisui stood as well.

"All the better." Kiyoshi did not stop walking.

Outside the hollow, the river wind skimmed over the water and caught up with him.

Shisui did not leave. He was still sitting in the sheltered spot, looking at the river a little longer.

Kiyoshi went over the night in his mind. The plan was settled.

He was still alive.

Next: make "Shisui" die for the entire village to see.