Keiko rose from her chair.
She brought her hands together, dipped her head in a small bow, and began to speak — low, measured syllables, the kind that carried weight without volume.
The incantation wasn’t strictly necessary for what she was about to do, but necessity wasn’t the point.
The gauze curtain stirred in the air that moved with her as she circled the table — once, twice, three times — drawing a symbol at each pass with the tip of her finger, the gesture precise and deliberate and completely invented for this purpose.
When she sat back down she placed both palms on the crystal ball, closed her eyes, and let her breathing slow to something that looked, from the outside, like deep concentration.
Jiraiya watched all of this with the expression of a man who had not expected his afternoon to go this direction.
“Is divination actually this involved?”
Keiko said nothing.
The slight curve at the corner of her mouth she kept below the threshold of visibility.
Ordinary divination doesn’t require any of this.
Only readings that touched genuine secrets — high-stakes questions, questions about people with power and concealment around them — demanded real ritual preparation.
And those were legitimately dangerous.
Everything she’d just done was theatre.
Very good theatre, performed for a very specific purpose: making sure the client felt the price was earned before she named it.
She opened her eyes.
“State your question clearly.”
Jiraiya considered.
Then, with the careful approach of someone who had learned to be thoughtful about what he put into the world:
“I’ve been searching for a child.
A prophesied child — one who will change the world.
I want to know where to find them.”
Keiko’s expression didn’t change.
Of course that’s his question.
“Choose something else,” she said.
Jiraiya blinked.
“What?”
“Questions that touch the future of the world are outside the scope of what I’ll attempt.
The consequences of a failed or misread divination on something that scale aren’t consequences either of us wants to manage.” She held his gaze steadily.
“Ask something else.”
A beat.
Then something shifted in Jiraiya’s expression — the performance falling away slightly, replaced by genuine reassessment.
A street charlatan would have taken that question and run with it confidently.
The fact that she’d refused it meant something.
“Fair enough.” He leaned back.
“Then — a former companion.
Someone I’ve been trying to locate.”
“More specific.”
“We fought together.
Shared ideals, for a time.
Then our paths diverged — differences in belief, in method.” A pause.
“He went somewhere I couldn’t follow.”
Keiko already knew the answer.
She had known it the moment she understood the shape of the question — there was only one person who fit that description for Jiraiya, only one former companion whose divergence had been fundamental enough to be worth this much searching.
She didn’t need the crystal ball for this.
But things couldn’t work that way.
Not if this shop was going to be worth anything.
She closed her eyes again, settled her hands on the crystal ball, and performed the divination properly this time — full attention, genuine spiritual investment, the real process underneath the theatrical framing.
A faint light gathered at the center of the ball, diffuse at first, then focusing.
Impressions rather than images: a figure working in darkness, surrounded by the particular energy of a place built for forbidden things.
Containment.
Experiment.
She opened her eyes.
“I saw unclear images.” Her voice came out slightly slower, carrying the weight of something that had actually cost her something.
“A figure in a dark space — conducting experiments, from the impression of it.
The atmosphere around them was dangerous in a specific way.
Contained but volatile.” She paused.
“That may be the person you’re looking for.”
Jiraiya had gone very still.
The ease had left him completely.
“Is there more?”
“There were others nearby.
Many of them.” She kept her voice even.
“Long dark robes — black with red clouds.
Their presence was substantial.
Not much weaker than the figure you’re searching for, if the impression holds.”
Something moved through Jiraiya’s expression that wasn’t quite surprise — more like a suspicion being confirmed that he’d hoped was wrong.
He’d been tracking Orochimaru’s movements for some time.
The reports suggested an organizational affiliation — something he’d initially assessed as a tool Orochimaru was using, a temporary arrangement for resources or cover.
That had been his read.
If the reading in front of him was accurate, that assessment needed significant revision.
An organization that could field multiple individuals at Orochimaru’s level wasn’t a tool.
It was a serious problem.
There’s something moving underneath all of this, he thought.
Something bigger than I’ve been accounting for.
“Where is he now?
And what can you tell me about the organization?”
Keiko held up one hand slightly.
“Patience.”
She waited a beat — for effect, and because Jiraiya visibly needed a moment.
“The person you’re searching for is currently in the central region of the shinobi world.
Not distant from the Land of Hot Springs.” She let that land.
“The organization is a separate question.
Separate price.”
Jiraiya’s eyes narrowed.
Then, with the particular expression of a man who had decided something was worth paying for:
“If the information is useful, the price is negotiable.”
Keiko nodded and closed her eyes again.
She reached toward the crystal ball with genuine intent this time — pushing past the first layer of the divination into the deeper reading, the one that required real investment.
The atmosphere in the shop thickened perceptibly, the quality of the air changing in a way that had nothing to do with the candles or the curtain.
She pushed further.
Something pushed back.
It arrived without warning — not a presence exactly, more like a wall, a weight, the sensation of reaching toward something and finding that something was already aware of being reached toward.
The crystal ball cracked.
A single line, spreading from the center.
The small mirror on the table split apart with a sound like a snapped branch.
Keiko’s eyes opened.
She was pale.
The spiritual reserves that had felt adequate thirty seconds ago had dropped sharply, the backlash from whatever she’d contacted hitting her system with the particular unpleasantness of running into a wall at speed.
Jiraiya was on his feet.
“What happened?
“Something.” Her voice came out unsteady, which required no performance.
“Something is there.
Stop the divination — don’t investigate further.” She pressed her palms flat against the table, steadying herself.
“Leave.
Leave this place — leave the Land of Hot Springs.”
“What did you see—”
“Nothing.
I saw nothing.” She closed her eyes, shook her head.
“Go.
Now.”
A beat.
“Leave the money.”
Jiraiya stood there for a moment, looking at her — reading her, with the sharp attention of a man who had survived as long as he had by knowing when something was real.
Then, slowly, he reached into his vest.
He set a stack of bills on the table.
Looked at her again.
Set another stack beside the first.
“I won’t push you for more.” His voice had lost the lightness entirely.
“I hope we meet again someday.”
He turned, crossed to the door, and let himself out.
The door swung shut behind him with a sound that was slightly louder than it needed to be.
Keiko opened one eye.
Checked the doorway.
Empty.
She let out a long breath, settled back into the chair, and allowed herself a grin that she had been holding back for several minutes.
Too easy.
She reached across the table and pulled both stacks of bills toward her.
Counted methodically, bill by bill.
When she finished, she leaned back and exhaled with deep satisfaction.
Two hundred thousand ryō.
Before the shop had even officially opened.
The crystal ball was cracked — that was a genuine loss, the backlash had been real, and she’d need to replace it.
The mirror was destroyed outright.
Both had been actual costs.
But everything else — the elaborate ritual circling, the drawn-out atmosphere, the trembling performance at the end — had been constructed entirely from memory and theatrical instinct, with no spiritual expenditure whatsoever.
She knew Orochimaru’s approximate location from basic knowledge of the timeline.
The figures in dark robes with red clouds — she knew exactly who they were and didn’t need divination to describe them.
What she hadn’t faked was the backlash.
That had been genuine.
Whatever the Akatsuki were — and she knew what they were, knew the shape and scale of them in a way that no one in this world currently understood — they had something around them that resisted divination at a fundamental level.
A concealment operating at a depth she hadn’t anticipated.
Which meant they were more dangerous, in ways that extended beyond raw combat capability, than even her prior knowledge had accounted for.
She filed that.
The more immediate calculation was strategic.
She had just told Jiraiya enough about the Akatsuki that Konoha’s intelligence apparatus would take notice.
That was intentional.
Konoha moving on Akatsuki meant the major villages moving on Akatsuki — the elder sibling of the shinobi world still set the agenda, and the others followed.
Which meant the Land of Hot Springs, and a small divination shop, and a growing organization in Yugakure, would not be worth anyone’s attention.
That was exactly what she needed.
She tucked the money away, looked at the cracked crystal ball for a moment, and started thinking about where to get a new one.