Chapter 6: Chiyo: Yes!
Both Puppet Technique and Medical Ninjutsu require a high level of Chakra manipulation and sensory ability.
Chiyo, who excelled in both, sensed no traces of Chakra in the forge upon arrival. Therefore, the Puppet she deployed was merely a basic humanoid shell.
It was not meant to guard against a lingering enemy but purely to test for hidden traps.
After a brief initial scan, the gray-haired kunoichi silently stepped through the main door.
Although she was long accustomed to the scent of blood and had anticipated the scene, seeing the couple lifelessly slumped in their own gore, even the usually jesting Chiyo was too annoyed to crack a smile.
After all, Sunagakure was a Village that was simultaneously wealthy and poor to the bone; the higher up the ranks, the less they liked seeing money wasted.
"Hmm?"
However, Chiyo quickly spotted a few abnormalities amid the wreckage.
'Is that the family's child…'
Her gaze fell upon the blood-streaked trail extending toward the back wall, a mark left by dragging or climbing. The image of the child—who occasionally peered out curiously from the doorway, with hair like fire—surfaced in Chiyo's memory.
Truthfully, perhaps because her own son also had red hair, she was rather fond of the boy. However, his parents did not want him to become involved in the Shinobi World, so Chiyo never had much of a chance to interact with him.
The child was always well-protected by the couple—the very reason they had exposed their identity to Suna. It was possible he had some life-saving item that allowed him to survive.
Judging by the size of the blood trail, the child must be very weak. If he was truly alive, he wouldn't have run far.
The speed of her Chakra-enhanced sight and mind allowed this thought to occur in an instant. Just then, she suddenly heard a subtle but definite sound.
"…!"
The Chakra threads connected to the Puppet tightened rapidly at her fingertips. The doll-like Puppet charged toward the living quarters deep inside the forge. With a loud crash, the door was blown inward, flying into the room amidst a cloud of dust.
But at the same time, Chiyo felt her Puppet was entangled by something, and its operating movements were slightly distorted.
Before she could feel surprised, the Puppet's left arm completely lost control. Exploiting the brief opening, a figure with blazing red hair, clutching a kunai, desperately rushed out of the doorway.
However, in the eyes of a Jōnin, that speed was still ridiculously slow.
With a look of slight pity and astonishment, Chiyo's hand movements did not pause. She didn't even need to twitch her wrist; she simply flexed her fingers slightly, and the crude Puppet shed the rags draped over it. With a thud, it wheeled around and pinned the running figure to the ground, simultaneously disarming him of the kunai in his hand.
The Puppet's force was not heavy; in fact, it was quite 'gentle,' clearly taking into account the child's injured state and acting only to intercept him.
Confirming her suspicion through this attack, Hiiro Rinko finally felt reassured.
"Cough—Puppet Technique… Sunagakure shinobi…?"
He coughed as if choked by dust, his trembling voice revealing his extreme weakness.
It was genuinely trembling, genuinely weak, and not an ounce of acting. It was all sincere emotion.
To ensure he could produce such a convincing display, he had reopened the wound on his abdomen before she arrived, using the very kunai that was now stuck in the Puppet's left shoulder joint.
"Ah, yes, I am a shinobi from Sunagakure. You might have seen me a few times before."
Seeing Rinko's deathly pale face, Chiyo quickly moved the Puppet away. While trying to soothe him with reassuring words, she turned him over. Noticing the freshly torn wound on his abdomen, the gray-haired kunoichi's expression turned serious. She immediately placed her hand over the injury.
A faint green glow lit up in Chiyo's palm, prominent in the dim forge. Her neat, ear-length gray hair and her determined, handsome face were now clearly visible.
Noticing Chiyo's concerned gaze, Rinko was slightly surprised. Turning his head, he remembered that he was the last surviving member of this Uzumaki Clan family, and a Sunagakure shinobi should treat him this way.
Driven by her Chakra, his wound rapidly healed, and even the lost blood was restored to a certain extent.
'So this is what true Medical Ninjutsu looks like…'
Feeling the Medical Ninjutsu, which was far more efficient than his own self-healing using the pendant, Rinko's curiosity surged again.
'Ah, speaking of which, that kunai was really well-made. It didn't get any blood on it.'
Feeling that his expression was in danger of losing control, he turned his head away from Chiyo, mentally thinking about other trivial matters to distract himself.
"Child… can you tell me what happened here?"
After treating Rinko's wound, Chiyo, worried about poking at his emotional pain, hesitated for a moment but carefully phrased her question.
Hearing the question, Rinko's shoulders trembled slightly. Already turned away to avoid eye contact with Chiyo, he fully curled up, burying his face into his knees.
"What else could it be? Can't you see it yourself…?"
Even muffled by his legs, the tremor in his voice was quite obvious.
"Some shinobi came out of nowhere and killed Mom and Dad. It's that simple."
"…You are very strong, child."
Chiyo was momentarily speechless.
She was not the type to comfort others. She was excellent at pranks and scaring people by playing dead, but in this situation, asking her to say something comforting was too much.
She was so choked up that the only thing she could say was a phrase that felt like rubbing salt in his wound. Realizing what she had said, Chiyo reached a hand toward Rinko's head, wanting to stroke his hair, but froze awkwardly in mid-air.
"If being sad did any good, I promise I'd cry louder than anyone else."
If the original child had been there, he would have been weeping by now, but Rinko naturally didn't care. He sniffled, then propped himself up with his arms and faced the corpses of his parents.
His young eyes were bloodshot, murky as if all hope for the future was gone, and the redness around his eyes contrasted sharply with his blood-loss-pale face.
He clenched his fist, his voice hoarse.
"But no matter how much I cry, they won't come back."
Chiyo fell silent.
Seeing Rinko in this state, the kunoichi—who was also a mother—naturally felt a pang of pity. But as a Jōnin of Sunagakure, she also felt extremely relieved.
With such complex emotions interwoven, she had nothing more to say.