Rinto woke to the pain in his fingertips.
It wasn't a fresh burn, but the cuts that had split open before. He had slept clutching his pen, and the stiff, dried gauze had stuck to the scabs. Any movement tugged at them with piercing pain. He lay dazed for a long while, his eyes too sore to open, his lids stuck together. Only after rubbing them for ages could he make out the mess before him: scrap paper covered in chaotic sketches, his hands stained with charcoal dust and iron filings, half a piece of starfall iron tossed on the table, and the remains of an overturned ink bottle.
The sky outside was a dull gray. He couldn't tell whether it was evening or the early hours of morning. How long had he slept? A day? Two? His throat felt as though it had been rubbed with sandpaper; even swallowing hurt. He braced himself against the table and stood, but his numb legs buckled, nearly sending him face-first into the workbench. He muttered a "fuck" and held on to the edge for a long while before the pins and needles finally faded.
He looked for water. The bottles on the table and in the corner were all empty, not making so much as a sound when he shook them. Irritated, he hurled an empty bottle to the floor. The clatter was especially harsh in the quiet room. After rummaging through the drawers for ages, he found half a bottle of cold water at the very back, with no idea how long it had been there. He unscrewed it and gulped it down. The cold made his stomach seize, and he grimaced for a long while before catching his breath.
There were still two cold rice balls in the corner that Kabuto had left earlier, their plastic wrap untouched. He unwrapped one and took a bite. The rice was hard against his teeth and too dry to swallow. He chewed for a long time, then spat it out anyway and tossed it back into the garbage bag.
Only once he had collected himself did he remember yesterday's work. He grabbed the piece of triple-nature starfall iron from the table, walked over to the steel target plate, and fed chakra into it. Lava Release, Explosion Release, Lightning Release-he switched back and forth more than a dozen times. The transitions were smooth, but the chakra residue in the corners of the channels still wouldn't clear completely. By the fifteenth switch, the starfall iron was too hot to hold. He hurriedly withdrew his chakra and swore.
It still didn't work.
The core reconstruction anchor he had modified earlier could smooth out the nature changes, but the anchor reconstructed too quickly to carry away the residual chakra in the channel corners. After enough switches, it accumulated in the grooves. At best, it overheated; at worst, it blew out outright. Making it through twenty switches yesterday had been luck. If he actually put it to use, something would go wrong sooner or later.
He tossed the metal onto the table, pulled over a chair, and sat down. Grabbing a charcoal pencil, he started to revise the plans, but stared at the blank paper for ages without making a single mark. His mind was a jumble. One moment, he wanted to lengthen the clearing circuit and run it all the way around the channel; the next, he wanted to slow the anchor's reconstruction rhythm, waiting until the residue cleared before building the new structure. But the former would slow switching speed, while the latter introduced an unusable delay. It was all robbing Peter to pay Paul.
He drew two drafts, but the longer he looked, the more wrong they seemed. He crumpled them into balls and hurled them hard at the wall. The paper balls bounced back and rolled into the scrap pile. He raked irritably through his hair, which was as messy as a bird's nest, scattering charcoal dust and iron filings all over himself.
He forced himself to engrave a simplified version with an extended clearing circuit first, just to try it. He clamped the starfall iron into the vise with a click. Only when he lowered the engraving blade did he realize the gauze around his fingertips had long since hardened. Gripping the blade tugged painfully at his wounds. Impatiently, he ripped the gauze off, tearing open the scabs. Beads of blood seeped out. He wiped them casually on his trousers, grabbed the fresh gauze Kabuto had left at the edge of the table, wrapped it haphazardly around his fingers twice, tied a crooked, tight knot, and went on engraving.
When he tested the finished piece, the channels cleared cleanly, but the switching delay was absurd. Switching from Explosion Release to Lightning Release meant waiting half a second before he could perform a jutsu, as though it had jammed. It was useless. He muttered a "fuck" and hurled the scrap metal into the scrap bin. The bin was already full, and the metal rolled all over the floor. He couldn't be bothered to pick it up.
He changed tack again, trying to synchronize the clearing circuit with the anchor's reconstruction, diverting the residue as the old structure was dismantled. He worked on the plans for ages, but the more he drew, the more wrong it seemed. He simply couldn't pin down the synchronization timing. The slightest discrepancy would send the chakra colliding and blow the whole thing out. Still unwilling to give up, he grabbed a piece of crystal jade and engraved a simplified timing structure. The moment he fed chakra into it, it exploded with a crack. Fragments struck him all over the face, and a small cut on his cheek stung fiercely.
"Fuck!" He smashed the fragment in his hand onto the floor and kicked a table leg, making himself grimace in pain as his anger surged.
While he was still fuming, two soft knocks came at the door. Kabuto pushed it open and poked his head inside. Seeing the mess all over the floor, he stepped even more lightly. He was holding a blank scroll.
"Mr. Rinto, sorry to disturb you," Kabuto said quietly. "The concealment pattern you modified for Lord Orochimaru's Cursed Seal still leaked a little fluctuation around the edges when he tested it. He asked me to fetch the original draft so he could check whether the parameters weren't adjusted correctly."
Rinto stared blankly for a long while before remembering. It had been a few strokes he had casually sketched last week, and he had long since forgotten where he had tossed it. Frowning, he rummaged through the tall pile of wastepaper on the table, sending sheets flying. After searching for ages without finding it, he crouched down and searched the floor, pulling apart all the crumpled paper balls scattered there. Finally, in the wastepaper pile by the corner of the table, he found the wrinkled sheet, still stained with ink and iron filings.
"This one." He tossed the paper to Kabuto, his voice still full of lingering irritation. "I marked the curvature of the anchor at the corner. He didn't read it properly himself. That has nothing to do with my drawing."
Kabuto hurriedly caught it and carefully smoothed out the sheet. Glancing at the annotations, he nodded quickly. "All right, all right. Sorry for the trouble." He paused, then couldn't help adding a couple of complaints. It wasn't a deliberate report, more like venting some pent-up frustration. "The Anbu at the entrance are getting more and more annoying. When I went out to collect materials this morning, they stopped me and questioned me for almost ten minutes. It was all about you-what you've been doing lately, whether you've left the research and development department. Such a nuisance."
Rinto said nothing. His brow only furrowed more deeply.
Kabuto added, "The head of the research and development department downstairs cornered me twice yesterday. He asked me to bring you a box of imported conductive crystal jade, along with a few ninja tool blueprints they can't figure out, hoping you'd take a look. I already turned him down, but they forced the things on me. I didn't dare put them in your room, so I left them by the door. I'll take them away and throw them out later."
"Don't let them bother me again." Rinto's tone instantly turned cold. "If it happens again, don't bother coming here yourself."
"Understood. I'll turn them all away," Kabuto hurriedly assured him, setting the insulated container and fresh water bottles he was carrying in the corner. "I brought you hot porridge and some side dishes, along with fresh povidone-iodine. The wounds on your hands are bleeding through. Remember to change the dressing."
Rinto ignored him, his eyes still fixed on the plans on the table, his brow tightly knotted. Kabuto said no more and quietly withdrew, closing the door without making a sound.
He was alone in the room again. He stared blankly at the plans for a long while, then suddenly remembered that before falling asleep yesterday, he had drowsily sketched an idea for optimizing the anchor. It seemed to have been a solution to the residue problem, but after waking, he had forgotten which sheet he had written it on.
Instantly energized, he began searching through the wastepaper on the table and floor, going through it sheet by sheet until paper was strewn everywhere. He searched for almost an hour, going through every discarded draft in the laboratory. Finally, inside a crumpled paper ball by his feet, he found the sheet-he had crumpled it up and thrown it away yesterday, then stepped on it several times. Most of the ink had smeared. Only a few crooked lines remained legible; all the crucial parameters were blurred.
"Fuck!" Furious, he slammed the paper down on the table, wanting to slap himself a couple of times. He had been dead tired yesterday, sketched it casually, then just as casually thrown it away. Now he couldn't remember a thing.
Without any ideas, he grew even more irritated. He sat in his chair, staring blankly at the Shukaku scroll from earlier. He looked it over again and again; there would be no residue. But what he wanted to make was a switch between three completely independent natures. It was fundamentally different. The more he looked, the more he felt that all his earlier ideas had been nothing but patchwork.
He tossed the scroll aside and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes, unwilling to move. After grinding away for most of the day, his stomach started growling again. Only when hunger left his stomach feeling hollow and unsettled did he remember the hot porridge Kabuto had brought. He shuffled over and opened it. It had long since gone completely cold. Too lazy to find something to heat it with, he lifted the container and drank straight from it. As the cold porridge poured into his belly, his stomach cramped in waves, but he paid no attention. He gulped it down in a few mouthfuls and ate a couple of bites of the side dishes with it, finally suppressing the burning sensation in his empty stomach.
After eating, he had no inclination to engrave anything new. He pulled over the half-written Chakra Configuration Experiment Log, intending to fill in the earlier dual-nature and triple-nature experimental data. He picked up his pen and wrote down two parameters, then couldn't continue. Until the residue problem was solved, this thing couldn't be considered a success. Writing it down would be pointless. Irritated, he tossed the pen aside and pushed the experiment log back into the blast-proof cabinet.
Outside the window, the sky had gone completely dark. He didn't turn on the light, merely sitting in his chair in a daze by the faint light filtering in from outside. His mind shifted from the residue that wouldn't clear, to the Anbu's relentless questioning, to the Tailed Beast scroll Orochimaru had tossed him. It was all tangled together. The more he thought, the more his head hurt.
Only after sitting for who knew how long did he stir and reach over to turn on the desk lamp. Its stark white light made him squint. He didn't touch the engraving blade again or draw any more plans. He simply went through the materials ruined by earlier explosions, picking them up one piece at a time to examine the fractures and the traces of residual chakra. His hands ended up covered in iron filings, but he found no clues.
He kept searching until well past midnight, when sleepiness came over him again and his eyes grew terribly sore. He tossed aside the scrap metal in his hand and swore, "Fuck it. Tomorrow."
He haphazardly shoved the plans on the table to one side, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. The laboratory was silent. Only the night breeze blowing through the vent stirred the discarded drafts scattered across the floor with a soft rustling. He paid it no mind, remaining slumped in his chair as his breathing slowly deepened.