"You want me to test these for you," Yorozu repeated, letting the words hang in the air. She set down her brush and wiped her hands on her apron, eyeing the stack of papers Soseki had placed on the counter. Then she sighed, long and overly exaggerated. "I figured you'd ask eventually. Can't say I'm thrilled about it, but I'm not surprised either.
She picked up the first page, her eyes narrowing as she scanned the second, then the third, her fingers moving faster with every page. Her expression didn't change, but her touch lingered on the edges of the paper, tracing the lines of ink with a practiced familiarity.
She began contemplatively, "Seven seals... and three copies of each." Then her tone shifted into slight surprise. "Wow. Real impressive." She noted it more to herself than to him. "To draw these all by hand. How long'd it take yah?"
Soseki shrugged. "Couple weeks and some change."
"And you understand them?"
"I'd like to think so." he replied.
She stared at him for a beat before her gaze drifted to the bottom of the stack, where two remaining pages caught her eye. Unlike the others, these were written differently than any standard seal, the strokes layered and far more complex. A vague sense of recognition rippled through the shapes, but the details blurred the harder she tried to lock them down. Still, she kept the realization to herself. She didn't name them, and she didn't ask.
She just picked up the stack again and held it out.
"Alright, let it rip, whatcha got for me?"
Soseki blinked, taking a beat to adjust. "I thought you were going to test them."
"I am," Yorozu said, leaning her elbows against the wood. "But first, I want to hear you explain them. Anybody can trace lines off a scroll. I want to know if you actually understand what you put on those tags."
He took the stack back, spreading the paper tags across the counter.
"Storage," Soseki said, his finger resting on the first paper tag. "It's the simplest version of the craft. Store and release. Just a vessel with no extra complications. You push an object into the paper, it vanishes into the pocket, and you pull it back out when you need it."
Yorozu nodded, letting him keep his momentum.
"Container follows the same principle, but applied to an access point instead of an object," he said, sliding his finger to the second tag. "It locks a box, a scroll, or a pouch from the outside. You're securing the entry until the right method opens it."
He moved his hand to the third paper.
"Unseal-Only doesn't hold anything at all. It acts as a remote trigger linked to another seal somewhere else. When you pulse this tag, the linked seal releases. It showed me that fuinjutsu works like a network across distance."
Yorozu's eyebrow twitched, subtle enough that anyone else would have missed it.
"Tracking was where I had to rethink how the basics work," Soseki said, his hand lingering over the fourth tag. "At first, I assumed the ink was designed to ping outward like a beacon. Looking closer at the geometry, I realized it functions as a paired system instead."
He tapped the tag once, then slid it slightly to the side.
"It needs two components created as a closed loop. An anchor tag placed on the target, and a companion tag you carry in your hand. The anchor bleeds a faint, directional signal into the air, while the companion seal reads that specific frequency and converts it into a physical cue. A subtle pull or a warmth against your palm. The paper handles the sensing for you, so you don't need any natural sensory talent to follow it."
Yorozu stayed quiet for a beat, her face completely unreadable as she looked between him and the tags. Then her expression broke into a broad, dramatic grin.
"Ahhh, so maybe you do have a little talent for this after all!" She gave him a wink, tapping her finger against the counter.
"I guess so," Soseki said, his tone completely flat.
"Well, after a lecture like that, I'm dying to see if these babies actually work." She clapped her hands together, already rounding the counter toward the back door. "Come on, kid. Let's hit the field!"
She led him through the back room, navigating around stacked crates of blank scrolls and jars of ink before pushing open a heavy wooden door. Outside lay a cleared patch of earth enclosed by a low fence, with a wide field stretching between her shop and Tetsu's forge next door. The moment they stepped into the open, the rhythmic clang of his hammer carried across the grass, accompanied by the faint drift of coal smoke and hot steel.
"Testing area," Yorozu announced, sweeping her arm across the open dirt. "Far enough from the building that if something goes wrong, we won't lose any valuable inventory. Just maybe an eyebrow."
Soseki stared at the dry patch of ground without blinking.
"Relax, I'm joking," she added, pausing for effect. "Mostly."
She dug into the pouch at her hip and pulled out a tag. Soseki gave it a funny look. The paper was thicker than what he was used to, and the ink was darker, the lines more densely packed.
"Fuse seals," she said, tapping the back of the paper. "My own design, modified off the standard issue stock. It lets me trigger a seal remotely without standing right over the paper. That way, if your work decides to backfire, I keep my hands. If everything works properly, we both keep our eyebrows."
"Can I learn it?" Soseki asked, his eyes remaining locked on the tiny, dense script.
"No."
"Why not?"
Yorozu quieted, the playful spark in her eyes giving way to a rare, grounded seriousness. She held the tag between two fingers, looking from the paper back to him.
"Because if I hand you my template, you'll just copy it," she said, her voice unusually direct. "And you're already past the point of copying other people's work. You drew seven functional formulas by hand without chakra, without a master looking over your shoulder, and you actually grasp the underlying logic behind every stroke. That isn't just memorization, Soseki."
She held his gaze, letting the weight of the praise settle between them.
Soseki didn't push back. The reasoning was sound. Taking her blueprint would only trap his thinking inside her approach. He gave a single, quiet nod.
"When you unlock your chakra, I'll hand you the standard issue fuse seal as a gift," Yorozu continued, her tone easing back into its usual light rhythm. "But you're not getting my personal formula. You're going to design something better."
"Now," she said, turning toward the center of the yard, "let's see if any of that understanding actually translates to working paper."
She walked over to a thick wooden post near the fence, smoothing Soseki's Storage Seal against the grain and pressing her fuse tag over the top edge. Soseki took a step back, his eyes locked onto the ink.
Yorozu closed her eyes, channeling a fine thread of chakra into the fuse before drawing her hand back.
For a long second, nothing shifted. Soseki's chest tightened, a sharp spike of doubt hitting him as the paper lay inert against the timber.
"Maybe I—" he started, taking a half-step forward to re-examine the linework, to spot the flaw before she did.
Without a word, Yorozu drew a kunai from her hip pouch and hovered the iron blade over the center of the tag.
Soseki froze mid-step.
She pressed the steel flat against the paper. The tag didn't burn or tear—the ink flared in a sudden, soft blue shimmer that rippled outward through the script, and the kunai simply vanished into the paper.
Soseki let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding.
Yorozu stared at the flat, silent surface of the tag where the weapon had been, her face completely unreadable. Slowly, she turned her head to look at him.
"First one's a success," she said.
One by one, Yorozu worked her way through the rest of Soseki's tags, layering her fuse seals over the paper, pulsing her chakra, and watching the mechanics unfold.
The Container tag locked a wooden box tight until she triggered the release, popping the latch open.
Stepping to the far side of the yard, she pulsed the Unseal-Only tag—across the grass, the post's Storage Seal flared in response, ejecting the swallowed kunai onto the dirt.
For the Tracking tag, she closed her eyes as the companion paper generated a gentle, directional warmth against her palm, pulling back toward the anchor by the fence.
The Message tag glowed, bleeding Soseki's written line across the paper before echoing his own flat voice back into the air in a faint, tinny rasp.
The Seal Removal tag smothered an active seal into total silence, leaving the underlying ink completely unharmed when she lifted the suppressor away.
And finally, the Item-Specific Storage accepted her iron kunai instantly, but when she tried pushing a wooden practice stake against the paper, the seal flared red and bounced the wood right off the surface.
When the last tag settled back into stillness, Yorozu straightened her back and brushed the dirt off her hands.
Soseki glanced over the row of spent tags, gathering the paper as he processed the results. "Thank you for testing them with me. I appreciate you taking the time."
Yorozu waved a dismissive hand, her smirk returning. "Don't get soft on me, kid. You did all the heavy lifting, so the least I could do was lend you the spark."
She began gathering the used tags, but stopped when her fingers caught the two extra sheets at the bottom of his stack. They were the ones she had spotted earlier on the counter, set apart from the core seven.
"What about these?" she asked, turning them over in her hand.
Soseki stepped closer to inspect the ink. "Those are modifications. My own variations on the standard formulas."
Yorozu raised an eyebrow. "Modified how?"
He pointed to the first paper. "That one is an attempt to shorten the release response time. I took the base Storage array and tightened the distance between the primary control strokes to compress the trigger sequence. It was mostly educated guesswork, so the line density might overload and burn through the paper."
"And the second?"
"A delayed release. I integrated a secondary buffer loop into an Unseal-Only trigger linked to a Storage tag. It should hold the activation charge for a few seconds before releasing.
Yorozu examined both papers carefully, running a thumb along the edge of the dense ink without saying a word. Finally, her eyes drifted back up to Soseki.
"You want me to run these through the fuse tag too?"
"I do," Soseki said. "Though I should warn you, I'm not entirely confident in either stroke design. Especially the release compressor."
Yorozu let out a short laugh. "So you're comfortable using me as a test dummy?"
Soseki blinked, taking her question at face value. "You have your fuse seals. You said it yourself, you will be standing far enough away to retain your hands."
"Uh-huh. Very considerate of you."
"I thought you would appreciate a clear risk assessment."
Yorozu shook her head, a grin breaking across her face. "Alright, let's see what you cooked up."
She walked back to the wooden post, smoothing the first modified tag, the one with the compressed stroke spacing, against the grain. Layering her fuse seal over top, she stepped back to a safe distance and pulsed a thread of chakra into the paper.
The tag smoldered instantly. A thin curl of grey smoke rose from the edges as the ink scorched black, going entirely inert.
Yorozu tilted her head, inspecting the scorched paper. "You compressed the channels too tightly. The chakra chokes in the array before it can complete the circuit, so it overheats and burns out the medium before the trigger ever fires." She glanced back at him. "Decent guess on the kanji structure, though."
She moved to the second tag for the delayed release. Pressing it to the post with a fresh fuse seal, she backed away and pulsed her chakra once more.
One second passed. Two. Three.
The tag flared with a double pulse of blue light, and the kunai materialized in mid-air, dropping straight into the dirt with a sharp metallic clatter.
Yorozu stared down at the blade resting in the dust, then nudged it with the toe of her sandal. "Primitive delay loop. Unrefined, but functional."
"That was the one I had more confidence in," Soseki said, his eyes fixed on the fallen kunai.
Yorozu stooped down, scooped up the kunai, and tossed it back to him. "Interesting."
Soseki caught it awkwardly with both hands, making sure his fingers stayed clear of the edges. Lacking a weapon pouch of his own, he carefully slid the iron tool into his inner coat pocket blade-up, pointing the sharp tip straight toward his ribs.
"I appreciate you taking the risk to test them," he said, entirely oblivious to the hazard.
Before Yorozu could comment on his weapon storage or offer another sarcastic comeback, the steady striking of Tetsu's hammer across the field came to a sudden halt.
Heavy boots crunched against the dirt near the fence. Tetsu leaned against the fence, wiping black soot from his forearms with a greasy rag. His gaze drifted lazily over the scorched wood, the scattered scraps of paper, and finally settled on Soseki.
"I thought you outgrew blowing up failed seals, Yori," he said, his voice a low, casual rumble. "Smells like scorched paper all the way over at the anvil."
"Those weren't mine, and they didn't fail," Yorozu boasted, resting a hand on her hip with a proud smirk. "The kid drew seven for seven. Pure paper geometry. No chakra needed until I supplied the spark."
Tetsu raised an eyebrow, looking from Yorozu down to Soseki. His eyes caught on the sharp tip of the iron kunai sticking straight up out of the boy's inner coat pocket.
"You're going to stab yourself," Tetsu said flatly.
Soseki glanced down, gently tapping the outside of his coat to check the weight. "It is lodged firmly. It will not fall out."
"It's pointed directly at your ribs," Tetsu mumbled, "One bad stumble and you puncture a lung."
"I will refrain from stumbling," Soseki replied, entirely serious.
Tetsu rubbed a soot-stained thumb across the bridge of his nose, taking in Soseki's absolute confidence. He cast a quick look at Yorozu, who offered nothing more than a bright, thoroughly unhelpful shrug.
Giving up on arguing with the kid, Tetsu turned toward the shop and jerked his chin toward the open doorway.
"Come on," he muttered, stepping back toward the heat of the forge. "I've got a spare sheath sitting on the bench."
The shop was warm, the air thick with the heavy scent of coal smoke, machine oil, and heated iron. Racks of weapons lined the walls, each blade and tool arranged with a precision that bordered on reverence.
Tetsu walked over to a crate near the back, digging through scraps of leather and spare hardware. He spoke without turning around.
"She's fond of you, you know," he said, his voice a low rumble. "And she doesn't exactly hide it when she takes a shine to someone."
He tossed a worn strap aside and kept digging.
"You've got Yoihoshi's habits," Tetsu continued. "That same quiet way of looking at things. Standing there sizing up the whole yard like you're calculating stress points before you even touch a tool."
Soseki held his tongue. He didn't have a rehearsed answer for people bringing up his mother, so he just stood his ground, watching Tetsu sort through the hardware.
Tetsu pulled out a hard leather sheath with reinforced copper rivets along the seam. Stepping back over, he held it against Soseki's hip, eyeing the fit.
"Loop's too wide for your belt. It'll slide all over the place." Tetsu set it on the workbench. "I'll tighten the strap and punch a couple new holes so it stays put. Free of charge."
He tapped the iron blade against the wood. "I'll keep the kunai safe here until you come back for the sheath."
He glanced sideways at Soseki. "Pay me back by dropping by the forge once in a while. I can always use an extra pair of hands."
Soseki looked at the sheath resting on the bench. It was simple, sturdy, and built to last.
"I can do that," Soseki said. "Thank you."
Tetsu let out a short grunt, already turning back toward his tools. "Good. Now get going before Yori finds another excuse to waste the rest of your day."
Soseki stepped out into the bright midday light. The sun was still high in the early afternoon, leaving him with plenty of daylight to burn before he needed to be anywhere.
He took a relaxed path back toward the center of the village. The main thoroughfare was alive with its usual mid-day noise, merchants calling out prices and children weaving between produce stalls.
Then he spotted Arashi across the crowded market square.
The boy was hauling a heavy wooden crate nearly twice his size toward a fruit vendor's stand. He set it down with an easy laugh, exchanged a quick greeting with the old woman running the shop, and was already moving to the next task before she could finish thanking him.
A minute later, Soseki caught sight of him down the line, helping a farmer load heavy sacks of rice onto a cart, laughing and clapping the man on the shoulder like they had known each other for years. Shortly after that, he was kneeling in the dirt beside a toddler with a scraped knee, saying something low until she giggled through her tears.
He was everywhere at once, a relentless current of movement and warmth, stepping in wherever someone needed a hand without waiting to be asked.
Soseki stopped walking. He watched from the shadow of an awning, his face quiet as he calculated the sheer output of motion.
'He is not even winded.'
Arashi's energy seemed entirely self-sustaining. The charm was completely effortless, moving through Konoha with an unthinking certainty that he belonged to everyone in the village, and everyone belonged to him.
Then Arashi turned his head. His eyes swept across the crowd and locked onto Soseki, his expression instantly splitting into a wide, energetic grin.
"Hey! Soseki! What are you up to?"
A/N: NGL, This should have been a double upload, but good things comes to those who wait. Ama right?