As soon as he entered,
Hoshino saw that Temari, Kankuro, and Gaara were already seated at the table.
Temari was animatedly telling Kankuro something, while Kankuro looked disgusted but couldn't help listening.
Gaara sat quietly to one side, his eyes fixed on the tabletop.
When he saw Hoshino enter, a barely perceptible glimmer flashed in his eyes.
"Hoshino, over here!"
Sharp-eyed Temari spotted him at once and quickly waved him over.
Hoshino smiled as he walked over and sat down. "Something held me up on the way. Sorry about that."
Kankuro curled his lip. "What could have held you up? Don't tell me you've taken a fancy to some girl?"
"Get out of here. I'm not dating anyone until I'm eighteen!"
Hoshino laughed and gave Kankuro a shove, then looked at Gaara. "How have your missions been lately?"
Gaara raised his head. "All right, just pretty boring."
Temari chimed in, "Yeah, they're all little jobs like delivering letters and running errands. They're boring as can be."
Then she leaned closer to Hoshino, her eyes sparkling.
"Come on, tell us, what's life in the Anbu really like? Is it really exciting?"
The Anbu were practically synonymous with mystery.
Wearing Anbu uniforms and fearsome masks, coming and going without a trace-just thinking about it was cool.
"Life in the Anbu, huh..."
Hoshino smiled and said with an air of mystery, "It is pretty different from being an ordinary ninja. But some things are classified, so I can't just talk about them."
Temari immediately pouted in dissatisfaction. "Hey, we grew up together. What could you possibly have to hide from us?"
Although Kankuro and Gaara said nothing, their gazes quietly turned toward Hoshino too. Clearly, they were also somewhat curious about life in the Anbu.
Seeing this, Hoshino smiled and shook his head. "All right, all right. Actually, Anbu missions aren't anything special either. They're just a bit more dangerous."
"For example, a few days ago, I went to the Land of Rivers to hunt down a missing-nin."
Although he couldn't discuss the details of the mission, no one would look too closely into something of this size.
Besides, the people present were no ordinary group; they were the Kazekage's children.
Who would be so blind?
"The Land of Rivers?" Temari's eyes lit up. "Isn't that close to the Land of Fire? Did you run into any Konoha ninja?"
Hoshino said, "Of course not. If we really had run into them, you might not have seen me again."
Hearing this, Kankuro put down the mutton in his hand and wiped his mouth.
"I heard Anbu training is especially strict. Is that true? What do you usually train in?"
Hoshino replied, "Besides regular Ninjutsu and Taijutsu training, we have to learn special skills like infiltration, reconnaissance, and assassination."
Temari listened, enthralled, and couldn't help exclaiming, "That sounds so cool. I want to join the Anbu too!"
"Oh, give me a break. With your personality, your captain would probably chew you out of the Anbu on your first day."
Kankuro immediately poured cold water on her enthusiasm.
Temari glared at Kankuro, unwilling to concede. "Hmph, what do you know? I'm very levelheaded!"
Hoshino smiled and smoothed things over. "All right, the Anbu aren't as mysterious as you think. A lot of the time, our missions are much the same as yours."
At that moment, Gaara suddenly spoke. "Then... do you ever feel lonely?"
Hoshino froze for a moment, then smiled. "It's all right. I have teammates with me, after all."
That much was true.
When the Anbu carried out missions, absolute trust was essential; they could entrust their backs to one another.
The four ate and chatted.
The conversation gradually shifted from life in the Anbu to their daily training and missions.
Temari was still full of curiosity about the Anbu and pressed Hoshino for details from time to time.
Kankuro, meanwhile, was more interested in improving his Puppet Technique.
Although Gaara didn't say much, he occasionally added a word or two, and the atmosphere was very harmonious.
At the table,
Hoshino looked at the three companions before him and felt a surge of warmth.
The Sunagakure Quartet wouldn't be complete without even one of us.
After the meal, the four leaned back comfortably in their chairs, their hearts full of contentment.
But the conversation grew increasingly dangerous.
"Did you know? I went to the market to buy ninja tools today and saw an old woman selling puppet parts she'd made herself..."
Temari's voice grew quiet.
"She said her son died in the Third Shinobi World War, and she could only rely on that to make ends meet."
Hearing this, Kankuro paused with his hands on his puppet Crow, and his flamboyant expression instantly dimmed.
"I know something like that too! The water pipe in the eastern district broke again, for instance, and lots of people can only cook with salt water."
Hoshino's teacup hovered by his lips.
The shocking figures in the Anbu files suddenly took on a vivid form.
Last year, Sunagakure's noncombat casualty rate was 27 percent, and more than half of those casualties were elderly people and orphans who had starved to death.
Temari suddenly snapped her Three-Star Fan shut with a clap.
"We're sitting on the richest metal ore veins on the entire continent, and the supplies we offer the daimyo as tribute would be enough to feed over a thousand people!"
"But look at the village's puppet masters..."
She pointed out the window, where several young ninja were crouched on a street corner, repairing cracked puppet shells.
"They can't even afford basic protective coatings!"
As the Kazekage's children, Temari and the others hadn't known about these things before.
But over this period, they had done all sorts of odd jobs.
They had gone deep into every corner of the village and met all kinds of villagers, gaining some understanding of the village's general situation.
Only then did they realize with a shock that the village's current state was far worse than they had imagined.
Kankuro said bitterly, "Those nobles only know how to squeeze benefits out of the village. They don't care whether it lives or dies!"
"Whenever there are good resources, they get first pick, while the ninja risk their lives on the front lines and get pitifully little in return."
Gaara suddenly looked up and asked, "Father... doesn't Lord Kazekage do anything about it?"
Hoshino thought for a moment before saying, "Lord Kazekage surely wants to deal with it, but the forces in the village are tangled together like gnarled roots. A thorough cleanup is by no means something that can be accomplished overnight."
Kankuro said indignantly, "I want to change all of this, but I don't know how."
"Hoshino, you're the smartest of the four of us. Don't you have any ideas either?" Temari looked at Hoshino with hope in her eyes.
But for once, Hoshino fell silent at the question.
Change was easier said than done.
Sunagakure's power structure was extremely complex, with the Kazekage faction, the elders' faction, the ninja clan faction, the noble faction, and the civilian ninja faction.
These five factions were the village's main forces, and the remaining motley assortment of minor factions was too numerous to count.
The situation was much more complicated than in Konoha, the strongest village, or Kirigakure, which had the most ninja clans.
It would be no exaggeration to say that shallow waters were full of turtles.
Bringing the village's forces together was harder than climbing to the heavens.
Hoshino sighed helplessly. "We're not strong enough yet. Acting on impulse would only hurt everyone. We can't rush this."