He’d been gone nearly ten minutes.
“The bond between those two… can it really resonate across completely different wavelengths?” Yoru muttered, thoroughly baffled.
Not that it dampened his mood.
He happily tapped open the system balance screen.
Looking at the sky-high figure — the balance had jumped by nearly another 2,000 points — the corners of his mouth curled up all over again.
Whatever.
Who cares about the process when the money rolls in while you lie back?
With a windfall like this, tonight called for a proper spending spree in the system shop.
As for the two classmates currently questioning their existence outside a public restroom — there’d be plenty of time to fleece them again tomorrow.
The Konoha night breeze drifted past.
All was peaceful.
Yoru hummed a nameless tune, hands in his pockets, and walked through the gate of the Uchiha clan compound.
Meanwhile, on the street outside the Konoha public restroom:
A boy in a green bodysuit, caked in mud, barefoot.
And a thick-browed boy crouched shirtless inside the restroom doorway, his face pure hopelessness.
The two knelt in the sunset, their shadows stretched long.
Neither spoke.
Because some pain lies beyond words.
The gate of the Uchiha compound stood tall and imposing.
Two stone pillars carved with the fan crest cast long shadows in the twilight.
Yoru whistled his nameless tune and sauntered across the threshold.
His mood was at an absolute peak.
The reserve of Emotional Damage Points in his account was enough to bankroll a long stretch of splurging in the system shop.
Just as he turned onto the compound’s main road, a fully armed squad of the Konoha Military Police came walking toward him.
Four to a squad — standard patrol formation.
Uniform high-collared dark trench coats, the red-and-white Military Police armband on every arm.
Swords at their waists, forehead protectors polished to a shine.
Normally, the Military Police mobilizing in full gear meant a serious incident somewhere in Konoha.
Yoru stopped and stepped to the roadside to let them pass, sweeping his gaze across the group.
And quickly picked up on an extremely subtle wrongness.
The squad leader in front — a bearded, middle-aged man — was strolling along at a leisurely pace, even turning his head to chat with the man beside him.
Behind him, a young squad member yawned openly in the middle of the street and casually adjusted his coat collar.
The entire squad radiated a deeply strange laziness.
One of them even snuck Yoru a thumbs-up!
Is that any posture for police work? This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
It looked more like an after-dinner stroll.
Hands in his pockets, Yoru stepped aside and watched the squad amble out through the compound gate.
Interesting.
Before he could chew on it further, a burst of heavy, hurried footsteps came pounding around the street corner.
“Yoru! Wait up! YORU!!!”
Obito came sprinting from the intersection, hollering at the top of his lungs.
He was drenched in sweat, goggles hanging crooked off his forehead, about to slide down to the bridge of his nose.
He was panting hard, his face flooded with the relief of a man who’d dodged catastrophe.
The moment he got close, Obito grabbed a fistful of Yoru’s sleeve, doubled over, and heaved five or six wild breaths before looking up.
“You… you’re seriously fast! I was waiting for you at the front intersection forever! You got back early — thank goodness!”
Yoru raised an eyebrow, letting Obito hang off his sleeve, his tone flat.
“Why were you looking for me? Weren’t you off helping an old lady across the street?”
Obito stamped his feet in agitation, dropped his voice, glanced left and right, and leaned in to Yoru’s ear.
His tone was exaggerated to the point of conspiracy.
“Forget old ladies! Something huge happened! Do you have any idea Konoha nearly got turned upside down today?!”
Yoru obligingly raised an eyebrow.
“What huge thing?”
Obito swallowed hard, eyes going wide.
“Just now, in the Third District — a lunatic went on a rampage!”
“I passed the Third District shopping street on my way — the whole street’s been wrecked!”
“Fruit stand flipped over, apples rolling everywhere! Every trash can on the block knocked flat!”
The more Obito talked, the more worked up he got, hands carving wild shapes in the air.
“In broad daylight, out of nowhere, some raving madman —”
“— carrying a construction-grade red brick, THIS big, THIS thick —”
Obito spread his hands to sketch a wildly exaggerated brick, nearly half a head in size.
“The kind they use on building sites! Solid! One of those to the forehead and you’re done, on the spot!”
“And that lunatic was chasing Asuma — Lord Hokage’s own son — down the street trying to kill him!”
“Oh,” said Yoru, blinking innocently.
“That serious? Who did it?”
Obito grew more and more animated, spit flying.
“According to the bystanders, the guy isn’t even human! Runs faster than a dog, and the whole time he’s sizing up Asuma’s forehead with the brick!”
“When I went past, I saw the flipped fruit stand with my own eyes! Asuma ran so hard his shoes flew off! Scared clean out of his mind!”
Obito patted his chest, still visibly shaken.
“That Military Police squad just now? They got reports from the shopkeepers along the street and went out specifically to arrest this thug for wrecking Konoha’s public order!”
“They say someone saw the window of the Hokage’s office swing open!”
“The Anbu might already be combing the streets for that psycho!”
Yoru studied Obito’s spit-flecked face, feigned utter shock, and drew a sharp breath.
“Chasing the Hokage’s son with a brick? That’s bold. Is he tired of living?”
Even as he played along on the surface, Yoru was running the numbers in his head.
From the moment he’d finished “outlining” Asuma with four kunai in that dead end, nearly twenty minutes had passed.
The Military Police — the core law-enforcement arm of Konoha’s public security — were garrisoned right here in the Uchiha compound.
The Third District was a three-minute run away.
Twenty minutes to mobilize.
At that response speed, even a turtle would have beaten them there.
Konoha was only so big, and the Third District was a bustling area.
And the Military Police, the force responsible for the village’s public order, were only now lazily assembling and heading out.
There was exactly one explanation.
Hiruzen Sarutobi didn’t dare intervene.
Yoru sneered inwardly.
Shrewd old man.
He’d watched the whole live broadcast through his crystal ball — and he would never give the order to step in.
The reason was simple.
The reason Yoru had dared to chase Asuma across half the village with a brick in the first place was that he’d already calculated Konoha’s current political situation at the top.
Even if the old man was smashing his crystal ball to pieces in the Hokage’s office this very moment — he would never dare order the Anbu to arrest Uchiha Yoru.
Why?
Because when you boiled it all down, this was a scuffle between two six- or seven-year-old Academy freshmen.
The cause: Asuma running his mouth on the playground, and both sides agreeing to settle it after school at Training Ground 7.
Yoru had merely relocated the venue to the main road and substituted a red brick for the kunai.
Neither side had used lethal force.
Asuma didn’t have a single serious injury.
The whole thing was psychological intimidation.
Two Academy freshmen brawling — at absolute worst, it counted as bullying.
But the moment Hiruzen Sarutobi used the authority of the Third Hokage to send the Anbu in and define the incident — its nature would transform completely.
A children’s personal grudge would instantly escalate into the Hokage’s line wielding the village’s authority — to openly target and suppress the most talented member of the Uchiha clan’s new generation.
In this frozen season of mutual suspicion between the Uchiha and Konoha’s leadership, with the balance between them stretched paper-thin —
Hiruzen Sarutobi, an old fox steeped in the art of political balance, would never light the powder keg of a village-wide internal crisis just because his son got embarrassed.