Jiraiya left the House of Diviners with his thoughts running ahead of his feet.
Whatever Orochimaru had gotten himself into — it wasn’t the minor affiliation he’d been assuming.
The woman in that shop had reacted to something real when she’d pushed deeper.
The cracked crystal ball, the shattered mirror, the colour draining out of her face — none of that had been performance.
He’d watched people perform fear before and he knew the difference.
He walked through Yugakure’s steam-threaded streets and turned the geography over in his mind.
Central shinobi world.
Not far from the Land of Hot Springs.
That narrowed it considerably.
A handful of smaller countries: the Land of Grass, the Land of Waterfalls, the Land of Rice Fields, the Land of Iron.
Not the Land of Fire — too visible, too much surveillance.
The Land of Rice Fields was the closest candidate and the most plausible for the kind of work Orochimaru did.
Start there.
He picked up his pace, made his decisions, and was out of Yugakure before the afternoon light changed.
The sun was well past its peak when Keiko finally allowed herself to stretch.
She’d been sitting in the shop since morning.
One customer, two hundred thousand ryō, one cracked crystal ball, and one destroyed mirror.
For a first day she was choosing to consider it a success.
She glanced at the hour.
The squads that had gone out should be returning soon.
She locked up, stepped out into the street, and turned toward the training ground.
The route took her past the Suiyun hotel.
She slowed without meaning to.
Through the carved archway at the entrance, she could hear the particular ambient sound of a premium establishment in full operation — soft voices, water, the cultivated ease of people who had paid well to relax.
Through the gaps in the screening shrubbery, shapes moved in the hot spring pools beyond.
Keiko looked at this and felt something that took a moment to identify.
Envy.
Specifically: I used to dream about this.
In her previous life, sneaking a look into a women’s bath had featured in a significant number of adolescent daydreams.
Now she was biologically equipped to walk straight in through the front door and nobody would say a word.
And she had absolutely no desire to do it.
It felt wrong from this side.
The thought of being seen — of her body being seen — produced the opposite of what it had produced in those old daydreams.
This is genuinely the worst, she thought, and kept walking.
She bought tofu pudding from a street stall a block further on and ate it while she walked, which helped somewhat.
Sweet tofu pudding remained one of the reliable constants.
The timing was good.
As she came through the training ground gate, the three squads were filing back in — Lin leading the first group, the other two rogue nin heading the second and third.
Everyone was present.
Nobody was missing.
Everyone was also comprehensively blood-stained, and most of them were carrying something that Keiko’s tofu pudding had not adequately prepared her to look at directly.
Several had three.
“Lord Keiko.”
“Mission complete.”
“We’re back.”
The greetings came in overlapping waves as thirty tired, bloodied shinobi arranged themselves in front of her with the specific energy of people who had done a hard thing and wanted that acknowledged.
Keiko looked at the collection in front of her and found, to her mild surprise, that the tofu pudding had become entirely unappealing.
She set it down, clapped her hands once.
“Lin — get a count.
Rank of each kill.
If anyone can’t remember, record it as Genin.”
“Yes.” Lin was already moving, finding paper, organizing the other two into managing the queue.
The count took half an hour.
Keiko looked at the result when Lin handed it to her.
Thirty shinobi, one day, operating in three squads: seven Chūnin, thirty-one Genin eliminated.
She checked it against the System’s running tally.
[Task 4 — Clear surrounding rogue nin: Chūnin 6/10, Genin 31/20]
The Genin threshold was cleared.
The Chūnin count was one short of what the physical tally said — either a recording error, a memory gap, or someone being cautious about claiming a rank they weren’t certain of.
The discrepancy was small enough that manufacturing an explanation for it wasn’t worth anyone’s time.
The more interesting piece was the mechanism.
Lin and the other two had taken the Sequence 9 potion, which meant the System had classified them as her subordinates.
The thirty Yugakure shinobi, operating under their leadership, had apparently been pulled into that classification by association.
Which meant their field kills counted toward her tasks.
Interesting, she thought.
The System defines a force by chain of command, not direct Beyonder status.
She tucked that away.
“Good work,” she said, raising her voice to carry.
“Tomorrow — same assignment.
Full day, out of the village, same structure.
Don’t come to the training ground.” She let her eyes move across the assembled faces.
“Formal training starts the day after.
Dismissed — go rest.”
Thirty people dispersed with the controlled energy of people who had somewhere specific to be and knew what came next.
Lin and the other two fell in alongside her as she turned back toward the accommodation.
Back in the room, Keiko sat down and looked at the three of them.
“What’s your name?” She pointed at the first of the two door guards who’d taken the potion that morning.
“Arashi,” he said immediately, straightening.
“And you.” The second.
Keiko nodded and began assigning.
“Tora — find the three that went into the village for reconnaissance.
I want a report on what they’ve found about the Jashin Cult presence here.
And while you’re at it, have them start spreading word about the House of Diviners.
The message is simple: if you can afford the price, it can find anything.” She paused.
“Keep it vague.
Vague travels further than specific.”
“Understood.” Tora’s eyes carried the particular warmth of someone who would walk through a wall for her, which she had long since stopped finding as useful to think about as it probably should have been.
“Lin — go to Takisuke.
Ask him to put the village’s weight behind promoting the shop.
He’ll do it.”
Lin nodded once, clean and efficient.
“On it.”
“Arashi—” She considered for a moment.
“Get me a rough count.
Nobles currently in Yugakure and its surrounding area.
Orphans in the village itself.
Approximate numbers only.”
“Yes, Miss Keiko.”
“Go.
Don’t be late tomorrow.”
They filed out.
The room settled into quiet.
Outside, Yugakure’s night crowd was finding its rhythm — the sound of the hot spring district in full evening operation drifting through the window, laughter and conversation and the faint mineral smell of the steam.
Keiko looked at the ceiling for a while.
Then she went to bed.
In the upper floors of Yugakure’s tallest building, Takisuke stood at his window long after Lin had delivered Keiko’s request and left.
The village at night spread below him, lamp-lit and busy.
He’d already dispatched people to promote the House of Diviners — that had been his first move, before Lin had even finished passing on the message.
He’d been looking for a reason.
He’d also, separately and some time earlier, tasked his intelligence people with finding out anything about Keiko’s background.
The report had come back almost empty.
First appeared in the Land of Fire.
No records beyond that.
No clan affiliation, no village registration, no known associates prior to arriving in Yugakure.
The trail into the Land of Fire hit a wall.
Takisuke had expected this.
A woman who arrived in a small village with no chakra signature, no visible affiliation, and that particular quality of self-possession — the kind that didn’t come from privilege or training but from something deeper and less categorizable — didn’t leave the kind of paper trail that intelligence officers found easily.
If she’d been easy to find out about, someone else would have found her first.
He stood at the window and watched the lights.
The curiosity he felt about her was not a comfortable thing.
It had been a long time since anything had felt like this.