"Kikyo, when did you discover Yugao was there?"
Kikyo looked utterly bewildered. "Yugao has been following me all along? How come I didn't know?"
Anyo sighed. "Stop pretending. Since Yugao didn't come out with you, you must have used some trick to sneak away."
Seeing her "outstanding" performance exposed at once, Kikyo gave a sheepish laugh. "I found out ages ago, but you kept hiding it from me, so I had to pretend I didn't know. Actually, I really hate being protected in secret like this. I don't want special treatment just because I'm the Hokage's daughter. It's far too unfair to the other ninja."
"Fair?" Anyo's gaze turned cold, and his tone grew stern. "There's never been any such thing as fairness in this world. This treatment you enjoy didn't come out of nowhere. Your father earned it through blood and battle, and your mother paid for it with the tragic deaths of all her loved ones. That play I put on back then was for Tsunade, but it was also for you. Do you know that you matter far more to your mother than you could ever imagine?"
It was the first time Kikyo had seen Anyo speak so harshly to her, and she froze. Only after a long while did she lower her head and say in an aggrieved voice, "Dad, I know I was wrong."
Anyo couldn't bear it and said apologetically, "I'm sorry. I lost my composure."
"Something happened, didn't it?" The clever Kikyo immediately realized something was wrong.
Regaining his composure, Anyo said with a faint smile, "It's nothing. Go break the barrier. I'll cover you from behind."
"Okay." Kikyo asked no more questions and sprinted toward a point marked on the map.
Anyo's gaze grew complicated. It wasn't that he refused to tell