At 1 p.m., the sun stood directly overhead.
It gave off the heat peculiar to summer.
At this hour, when demons and monsters were most afraid, inside the top-floor office of a building shaped like a rice cooker,
The four people who nominally held the most power in Konohagakure sat upright beside a familiar tea table.
As a medical-nin wrapped layer after layer of bandages around him, a Danzo everyone knew well appeared before them.
He raised a hand slightly, and the medical-nin understood. After bowing, the medical-nin left the office.
Clang!
The office door slammed shut!
The smile vanished from Utatane Koharu's face in an instant.
Only just in her thirties, she was not yet as old as she would be during the story.
She looked at the intelligence report in her hand and smelled the faint scent of blood spreading through the room.
Her ample chest rose and fell with her rapid breathing.
After raising a soundproof barrier with one hand, she demanded furiously, "Hiruzen, what were you thinking, agreeing to a demand like that?"
"And what exactly happened to Danzo's eye? We were prepared to be humiliated, but why is he missing an eye?"
"You're a ninja. You should know what losing an eye will do to Danzo!"
She had held it in for a long time after reading the report.
With subordinates present earlier, she couldn't lose her temper at the man known as the Third Hokage.
But now, only their own people remained in the room.
As a companion who had been with him for nearly twenty years, she vented her anger at Hiruzen Sarutobi without the slightest restraint.
Listening to her roar beside him, Hiruzen Sarutobi blinked, his eyes nearly dazzled.
He explained, "If I hadn't signed, would Danzo and I have made it