Taro followed the gentleman host of the private social club through the serene premises. The place was obsessed with silence. The carpet that lined the hallways swallowed the sound of his boots. The staff seemed to communicate through hand signs or whispers next to the ear. He had been to shrines that had more going on.
“Here we are, dear guest,” said the impeccably dressed host who made Taro conscious of his business casual shirt and pants.
He thanked the man and stepped into the dining area that was sparsely occupied and beautifully decorated. Three men in their fifties sank into their cushioned chairs like they were part of the furniture. No one looked up at him. The only sound was cutlery, the rhythmic scrape of silver nibs across paper, and the muffled tick of the grandfather clock. In the innermost corner of the hall, a table sat next to a tall window that stretched along most of the wall’s height.
“You like this sorta place?” Taro said as he sat down in the empty chair. “How much do you pay in membership?”
“I don’t. Perk of the job.” Takuma looked up from the newspaper that he then folded and put atop the pile of more regional and foreign newspapers. “The Fushio Diner is on the way to work, and they have quick service. The joint near the Police Force HQ has better food. Catering in the office can have my order delivered right to my desk. This place, it’s quiet—that’s its selling point—and the pool and sauna are perfect after training.”
Taro looked outside the window at the tall property walls that completely cut off the outside world. He could guess why Takuma liked it. The place offered moments of order in his increasingly chaotic life.
Takuma sipped on his glass of juice. “Hungry? Want to order something?”
“On you?” Taro asked—he wasn’t sure if he could afford the prices.
“On my tab, which the department pays.”
“Another perk?”
Takuma winked.
As Taro expected, the menu didn’t have prices. He ordered something light to accompany a coffee that was excellently brewed, probably among the best cups he had ever had.
“I could get used to this,” he sighed in contentment.
“Make chūnin, and I’ll vouch for your admission and pay your membership.”
“Sure, let’s do that in a decade.” Taro had no interest in making chūnin any time soon; he was amply busy with work and happy with his current situation—and regardless of whether he wanted the promotion or not, he wasn’t skilled enough to warrant it.
Takuma was a combat machine and a masochistic training maniac. Nenro and Masaaki were top talents from their academy who were screwed over by the jōnin test. Ai had great talent for iryō-jutsu and was bound to make chūnin one day. Taro had neither their talent nor the drive to train. He wanted to make chūnin one day to make his parents proud, but he realistically knew that it’d take him a very long time to train to attain that goal.
Unlike Takuma, he wasn’t in a hurry for the next promotion.
After both of them were done eating, Taro pulled out a dossier and began handing pages to Takuma. “Katsuji Jiro, a former Leaf shinobi who retired after fifteen years of service. Participated in a whopping eight chūnin exams, but never managed to get that promotion before deciding to retire from the service.”
“Shinobi to accountant,” Takuma commented.
“So says the sign outside his practice, but I visited his office thrice in the past week, and the place was never open. The neighbours say that it’s a miracle if he unlocks the door once a month. For a supposed money handler who works on commission, he doesn’t seem to be enthusiastic about adding clients or working at all.”
Takuma unclipped a photo of a beautifully designed single-family home from the file and showed it to Taro. “And yet, he lives in a big house in a great neighbourhood. That’s not something you can afford on a genin’s salary.”
“Probably has an office in there,” Taro said. “I followed the money. It turns out, Jiro does have clients. Not many, but very interesting, all of them.” It had taken some time to find the right documents, but he had managed to find Jiro’s numerous filings. “He handles accounting for a number of businesses, and when I looked into them, I found that all of them are owned by three clan shinobi.”
Takuma smiled. “Oh~?”
Taro rolled his eyes. Of course, Takuma would like that. He could guess that was the entire reason why he was given the assignment in the first place.
“Aburame, Inuzuka, Nara. What about them?” Takuma asked.
“They’re from the same academy batch as Jiro, which isn’t suspicious; friends often work together. What's suspicious is that three clan dudes don’t seem like they got enough dough that Jiro could earn himself that house. What did this guy do?”
“Poked his nose somewhere he shouldn’t have—probably got greedy—and got flagged. Good job on this.”
“There has to be something wrong with the businesses. Want me to look into it?”
Takuma closed the dossier. “No, I’ll take it from here. You should focus on the other thing.”
Taro groaned. “You know I liked this one because I could handle it from within the village. Why do you have to send me out of the village so often? I like sleeping in my bed.” Gosh, he was acting like one of those ambition-hungry hotshots who wanted to be stationed at the Hidden Leaf Village to be in proximity of the bigwigs, but instead of career advancement, he wanted not to travel as much.
“Because you’re good at your job,” Takuma replied as he got up and shot him a look that made Taro sigh. Yes, the job was tough—he knew that going in—but if he truly complained, Takuma would’ve adjusted the assignments.
As annoying as it was, Taro understood the importance of the work.
“You owe me big time.”
“Always.”
———
“You needed me, boss?”
Hippo stepped into one of Ratel’s many offices. He had one in each of his unit’s bullpens. There was even a separate bullpen reserved only for his clones to work in. He used to work alongside his subordinates—at a desk next to them—but that quickly became a problem when the people couldn’t relax with their boss sitting right next to them all day long. Now, if Ratel created a clone, they would always work in an office. It did wonders for morale.
Takuma pointed at the dossier on the table. “I need you to look into this.”
Hippo sat down and started reading the dossier. “Katsuji Jiro?”
“Yes, but he isn’t really the focus. I’m interested in the three clan shinobi working with him. Find out what he’s doing for them, if it’s nefarious—”
“Nefarious?” Hippo chuckled.
“—then I want to know how nefarious and if it’s usable.”
“It’ll be done,” Hippo said, flipping through the file that already had a lot of information that would allow him to hit the ground running instead of wasting his time trying to find his footing.
“How’s Yakushi Kabuto doing?” Ratel asked.
Hippo’s finger stilled on the page. He looked up at Ratel, who was reading a document. “I’m keeping an eye on his movements. He’s as diligent as ever at his job. As brilliant as he is at work, he still hides his true skill with iryō-jutsu. He has become popular with a certain type of patient who requires utmost privacy.”
Yakushi Kabuto had been moonlighting as a freelancer who treated people who, for various reasons, didn’t want their treatment—or their need for treatment in itself—to be public, and he was becoming an increasingly trusted iryō-nin for his private services. He had to be really good because a retired jōnin travelled to the Hidden Leaf Village under pretence just to get treated by him.
Ratel clicked his tongue.
Hippo didn’t know what the suspicious iryō-nin had done, but his boss was not a fan. Among the list of people Ratel kept an eye on, Kabuto was the rare one who felt like the reason for surveillance was personal.
“Are we still not sure what he is doing at the chūnin exams?” Ratel asked.
Hippo sighed. He had taken a major professional risk by developing an off-the-books confidential informant at Kabuto’s hospital, and a non-trivial amount of funds were utilised to keep track of his activities. However, for the past three years, Kabuto had participated in every single one of the bi-annual chūnin exams—that was an absurd six exam attempts in three years—which took him out of the village for a month or so each attempt.
Unfortunately, those months were a weak point in their surveillance as responsibilities shifted to the Foreign Branch, which was responsible for any operation on foreign soil, no matter how small. The Foreign Branch operatives claimed that Kabuto didn’t show any suspicious movements, but Ratel refused to believe them. However, he also couldn’t do anything about it because interjecting would challenge their sister branch's authority.
“They insist that he isn’t suspicious,” Hippo said, thankful that he wasn’t responsible for it. “Silver lining, we are hosting the next chūnin exam. Maybe we will get lucky, and he makes a move.”
“I don’t get how he’s able to take two or so months off every year, and they don’t fire his ass to the streets for it. They should just bar him from the exams; it’s clear that he’s not taking it seriously anyway.”
Without exception, Kabuto had forfeited before the final stage of every chūnin exam he had participated in.
What Hippo didn’t get was why Kabuto wasn’t already promoted to chūnin. He certainly felt like he had earned the promotion through his skill with iryō-jutsu and most probably had the other qualifications as well.
“Forget it, get this assignment done. I want to see if this guy makes a good bait,” Ratel said.
“On it, boss.”
———
At the end of the workday, Takuma found himself in his boss’s office for a routine report. He sat silently as his captain read a report drafted by one of his squads with the soothing sound of flowing water from a portable fountain in the background. In turn, he was given an intelligence report to peruse for his thoughts. However, his thoughts were somewhere else.
It had been a few months since the tragic day, and he had not seen Itachi cough up blood right in front of him during a training session. At first, he didn’t know how to feel about witnessing that moment. He knew the burden of knowledge better than most, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be burdened by that certain knowledge.
As Takuma’s boss and strongest backer, a healthy and strong Uchiha Itachi inspired confidence. And that was perhaps of the least importance because Takuma considered the letter he had penned to Mikoto about Danzō—which he believed had some part in the avoidance of the Uchiha Massacre—to be the most significant action in his two lifetimes.
More than the survival of the Uchiha clan and their jōnin, Itachi’s sole presence on the Hidden Leaf’s side was among the greatest boons. The world had a version of Itachi who wasn’t living a life of penance for committing filicide. Instead, he was now an ANBU Captain who could exert the Hidden Leaf and ANBU’s influence, doing what he thought was right.
And yet, something didn’t change.
“You’re staring,” Itachi suddenly said.
Takuma looked away and awkwardly straightened in his chair. “Your thoughts couldn’t be more obvious. An operative of your calibre should be better at hiding his emotions.”
“Can you blame me?” Takuma asked.
“I’ve told you repeatedly that you should move past it.”
“I find that hard to do, considering what I saw.”
“I’m fine now, Takuma,” Itachi said, still reading the report. “It was a minor issue that is now dealt with. I don’t know why you refuse to accept that.”
Because it was a lie.
Takuma frankly didn’t remember Itachi’s sickness until he saw him cough up blood. It was a complete and utter shock until he remembered that Itachi had been sick from a mystery illness, which had remained an unknown because the Uchiha family had kept the illness a secret. He wasn’t even sure how known it was within the clan. Itachi, Mikoto, and Fugaku had personally asked him to keep it a secret—and that was enough for Takuma to believe that the illness wasn’t as inconsequential as Itachi claimed. Even the Hokage didn’t know that one of his strongest jōnin was suffering from a potentially grave illness.
Itachi wasn’t as unflappable as others believed him to be. Takuma had tried to bring up the topic of health before, but he had very subtly avoided answering his questions and kept changing the subject.
It was only very recently that he began to claim he was in good health.
Takuma knew that Itachi wanted him to play along, but he had refused to do so. “It’s fine if you don’t want to tell me, but don't stop yourself from getting the best treatment from the fear that it would get out,” he said and put the intelligence report on the table, unable to concentrate on it.
The most frustrating part of it all was that he couldn’t do anything about it. He didn’t know anything about the disease, and even if he did, Itachi had tied his hands by asking him to keep it a secret.
Ironically, if he didn’t care about him, he would’ve already broken his word, but given their relationship, he couldn’t break the trust.
“Are you free tomorrow?” Itachi broke his silence after he finished the report.
“I can make time if it’s important. Why?” Takuma asked.
“It’s not work… It’s personal.”
“What is it?” Takuma asked, curious. It wasn’t every day that Itachi asked him to do something personal.
"I want you to meet Sasuke."