Takisuke was quiet for a moment, fingers tapping once against the desk.
“Giving you land isn’t out of the question,” he said.
“But I need to know what you’re planning to grow and what the purpose is.”
Keiko leaned forward slightly and lowered her voice.
“Takisuke-san.
The improvement you saw in Lin — ten minutes, complete transformation — that was because of what comes out of that ground.”
Takisuke’s eyes narrowed.
“Aren’t you worried about…”
“Not with you,” Keiko said, and smiled at him with complete sincerity.
“I trust you.”
The silence that followed had a specific quality to it.
Takisuke looked at her for a moment longer than necessary, something moving through his expression that he didn’t put into words.
Then he let out a slow breath.
“All right.
I’ll grant you the land.
But I retain the right to reclaim it at any time — how long you keep it depends entirely on you.”
Keiko was already nodding before he finished the sentence.
“Of course.
You’re the village leader — whatever you decide goes.”
She stood up, came to attention with an expression of exaggerated sincerity, and announced: “Mission accomplished.”
Takisuke laughed despite himself — a real laugh, the kind that surprised him into it.
“I hope you keep your word.
I’d rather not have to deal with you about this later.”
“Never a problem.” She was already moving toward the door.
“Can I go now?”
“Go, go.” He waved her off with the resigned warmth of someone who had stopped pretending to be unmoved.
“Someone will have the paperwork sent to you.”
“Thank you, Takisuke-san.”
She was out the door before he finished raising his hand in farewell.
Takisuke sat for a moment in the quiet she left behind.
That girl, he thought, was going to be a significant problem for his peace of mind.
Keiko walked back through Yugakure’s evening streets with the particular satisfaction of someone who had just gotten exactly what they wanted by being pleasant about it.
The land was granted.
The paperwork was coming.
And the clause about reclaiming it at any time was, practically speaking, meaningless — once she had a cultivation operation running and thirty shinobi trained on-site, the logistics of taking it back would be considerably more complicated than the words suggested.
She filed that and went home.
Late that night, when Lin and the others had long since gone to sleep — she could hear the combined snoring from the hallway — Keiko got up. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
She worked quietly.
Face-blur applied, the familiar handful of powder scattered over her, the single word spoken under her breath.
“Invisibility.”
She slipped out into the street.
Yugakure at this hour was not truly quiet — the hot spring district maintained a low hum of activity until well past midnight — but the residential corners were still, and she moved through them without difficulty, stepping around the patrol routes she’d already memorized.
The room she was looking for was in a less-trafficked part of the village, the kind of place that attracted no particular attention.
She pushed the door open and went in.
The room was dark.
She deactivated the invisibility and let her night vision do the work.
Three figures, seated, waiting.
They’d been expecting her — she could tell from the absence of startlement when she appeared.
And from the expressions on their faces, which were exactly what they always were: the particular combination of relief and devotion that she had stopped examining too closely.
“Miss Keiko.”
“We’ve been waiting.”
“That blockhead Lin wouldn’t let us anywhere near you — we haven’t seen you in days–”
She let the noise run down on its own and looked at them steadily.
“Report.”
They exchanged glances.
The discomfort in the exchange was visible even in the dark.
After a beat, the one nearest the door answered.
“We haven’t found anything.
We’ve been asking everyone we could reach — traders, locals, visiting shinobi, a Genin we…” he paused, “persuaded to talk.
Nothing.
Nobody in this village has ever heard the name.
Some of us started to wonder if the organization even exists.”
He caught her expression and added quickly: “Not doubting you.
Just — reporting the situation.”
The other two nodded.
Keiko turned this over.
She knew the Jashin cult existed.
She knew it from the source material in a way that didn’t require confirmation — Hidan was from the Land of Hot Springs, Jashin’s influence was real, the organization operated somewhere in this region.
The absence of visible traces meant they were careful, not absent.
“Keep searching,” she said.
“They’re hidden, not gone.
Careful organizations slip eventually — watch for the edges.
And expand your search beyond Yugakure itself.
The surrounding countryside, the smaller settlements nearby.”
“One more thing.
If you’re ever found out, don’t let my name surface.
You understand what that means.”
“Yes.” No hesitation in any of the three.
She gave them a few more minutes of specific direction, then left.
Behind her, in the closed room, two of the three took up positions at the door.
The third was already on the floor, curled inward, working through something that was going to take until morning to run its course.
The Sequence 9 potion’s integration process had a long tail in some cases, and his had been particularly unforgiving.
He endured it the way he’d been enduring everything since Keiko had come into his life — by not stopping.
Morning came sharp and bright.
Keiko dressed quickly, ate, and handed Lin a file that had arrived from Takisuke’s office the previous evening.
“Take the thirty to this address.
I’ll meet you there.”
She headed out with Arashi and Tora behind her.
The land was on the eastern edge of Yugakure, where the village thinned out into quieter ground before the tree line took over.
She reached it before the others and stood at the boundary for a moment, taking it in.
It was good land.
Flat, well-lit, soil that looked like it would hold what she put in it.
The surrounding trees were old growth — straight trunks, dense canopy on three sides, providing cover without choking the light.
The area was considerably larger than she’d expected given what she’d asked for.
From this, she revised her opinion of Takisuke’s generosity slightly upward.
Lin arrived with the thirty shinobi half an hour later, the group moving with the organized energy of people who had been doing hard things together for three days and had developed a rhythm.
Keiko looked them over.
Then she looked at the land.
“Split into groups.
Weeding and clearing on the east side, stones and debris on the west.
I want this area workable by end of day.” She turned to Lin.
“Take whoever you need and start on shelter — two structures, maybe three.
Simple construction, nothing elaborate.
We need them standing before it rains.”
Lin was already organizing before she finished speaking.
Thirty people spread out across the land and got to work.
The sound of it — tools on earth, movement, the particular ambient noise of people doing something useful — filled the morning.
Keiko stood at the center of it all and thought about what grew here next.