The stadium didn't settle after Shikamaru's match.
It pretended to.
Workers raked the arena dirt smooth again, like you could erase intent with a broom. Vendors started yelling. The crowd found its breath and spent it loudly, hungry for the next spill.
Shino stepped onto the sand and felt the ground answer him with the wrong kind of silence.
Not quiet.
Held.
His kikaichū shifted under his coat, a low restless ripple against his skin. They didn't like this place today. They never liked crowds—too many sweat-scent signatures, too many chakra wakes crossing and tangling—but this was different. The insects didn't buzz like they were overwhelmed.
They buzzed like they were listening.
Genma Shiranui stood in the center, toothpick angled between his lips like he'd nailed "unbothered" to his face. His eyes were sharp anyway.
"Next match," Genma called, voice carrying without strain. "Aburame Shino… versus… Sabaku no Kankurō."
A ripple went through the stands at the Sand name. It wasn't love or hate—more like anticipation with teeth.
Kankurō arrived from the opposite gate with the same energy as a knife being slid back into a sleeve.
Paint on his face. Hood up. Something large strapped to his back under cloth—his puppet—moving with him like a second spine.
He didn't look at Shino first.
He looked up.
Toward the Sand seats.
Toward his siblings.
Temari sat with her arms folded, posture rigid in a way that read as "I'm here, I'm normal, I'm not thinking too hard." Gaara was… Gaara. Still, unreadable, the kind of still that made you check if someone was breathing.
Kankurō's jaw tightened. Then he looked at Shino like Shino had personally inconvenienced him by existing.
"Tch. Leaf bug-boy."
Shino inclined his head a fraction. Courtesy was a weapon. So was withholding reaction.
Genma lifted a hand. "Begin when—"
"I forfeit."
The words dropped like a stone. Not dramatic. Not shouted. Just said, flat and immediate.
For half a heartbeat, the stadium didn't understand. Then it did, and the sound rose in an offended wave.
"—What?!"
"Coward!"
"Boooo!"
Genma's eyes narrowed. He didn't move his feet. "State your reason."
Kankurō shrugged like he was bored at a lecture. "Don't feel like it."
The boos got sharper. Someone threw something that didn't make it past the barrier. Somewhere, a kid laughed because the adults were mad.
Shino watched Kankurō's shoulders.
There was tension there, too carefully arranged. He wasn't relaxed. He was performing relaxed.
A person who didn't feel like fighting wouldn't keep their chakra leashed so tight to their skin. Wouldn't keep checking exits with their eyes. Wouldn't be measuring time.
Shino's kikaichū agreed. They pressed forward inside his sleeves, eager.
Not to attack.
To track.
Genma exhaled slowly through his nose. "Forfeit acknowledged. Winner: Aburame Shino."
More noise. More disappointment. The crowd wanted blood; it got paperwork.
Kankurō smirked as if the crowd's anger fed him. It didn't. It was cover. Shino could see it in the way Kankurō's gaze flicked to Genma's hands, to the jōnin in the corners, to the VIP box where power sat pretending to be entertainment.
He turned to leave immediately.
Shino moved—just one step, casual, matching the pace of the world.
A single kikaichū slid out from beneath Shino's collar, tiny and nearly invisible against the shadow of his coat. It rode the air like a speck of dust. It landed on the edge of Kankurō's cloak near his shoulder, clinging to fabric.
It didn't bite.
It tasted.
Chakra had flavor, in the way blood had iron. The puppet user's chakra was a peculiar thread—pulled, tensioned, practiced into lines. Not like a Hyūga's internal lattice. Not like a Nara's heavy, smoky shape. This was string and lacquer, slick in a way that made the insect's legs want to stick.
Shino memorized it through the bug. Let the swarm beneath his coat take the imprint.
Kankurō reached the gate and paused. He glanced back as if he expected Shino to be angry. To say something. To demand a "real match."
Shino gave him nothing.
Kankurō's mouth twisted anyway, annoyed by the lack of satisfaction. He disappeared into the tunnel.
The sand under Shino's sandals vibrated, faint enough that most humans would never register it. His kikaichū did. They went still for a moment—then buzzed again, harsher.
Shino looked down at the arena floor like he could see through it.
He couldn't.
But the insects could feel what their bodies were built for: pressure changes, minute shifts, a whisper of airflow that didn't match open sky.
Something was moving under the stadium.
Something long.
Genma waved Shino toward the exit with a slight jerk of his chin—efficient, already trying to keep the schedule from slipping.
Shino started toward the gate at the same measured pace. His eyes tracked the edge of the arena wall where stone met packed earth. Tiny cracks. Tiny seams.
He released three more kikaichū in the shadow of his own coat.
They didn't swarm outward in a dramatic cloud. They slipped into seams like water finding a path.
Map. Listen. Remember.
As Shino walked, a white feather drifted down through a patch of shade near the upper stands.
There was no bird.
The feather fell too cleanly, like it had been placed in the air and told to obey gravity.
It spun once.
Shino's kikaichū buzzed—wrong-note, the same way they buzzed when someone used smoke tags too close, when the air got "dirty" with chakra residue.
Chakra dust.
Fine. Artificial.
Like someone had brushed the air with a seal and left powder behind.
Shino's gaze lifted, following the feather's slow descent.
A figure moved along an aisle in the stands, too smooth for a civilian, too casual for someone who belonged there.
Silver hair.
Glasses.
A polite posture that could fold into nothing.
Kabuto Yakushi.
Shino had seen him in the hospital corridors before. Helpful hands. Gentle voice. Eyes that didn't match the smile.
Kabuto's hand was already half-raised, fingers poised like he was about to adjust his glasses.
Not that.
A different habitual motion.
The same posture someone used before a hand seal, before committing to a plan.
Then Kabuto stepped behind a column—and was gone.
Shino did not turn his head sharply. He did not create a scene. He simply stored the image as data.
He exited the arena.
The crowd kept roaring and complaining and laughing, thinking the worst thing that could happen today was disappointment.
Shino's coat shifted as his kikaichū inside it settled into a new kind of readiness.
Not battle-readiness.
Disaster-readiness.
< Sylvie >
I hated how boring a "win" could look.
Shino stood there and got declared victor like he'd just been handed a receipt. No confetti. No cheering. Just a stadium full of people whining because the wrong person got to feel satisfied.
Ino leaned toward me, face scrunched. "Are you kidding me? I did my hair for this?"
I snorted, half on reflex. "You did your hair for war crimes, too, so—"
"Exactly." She flipped a strand dramatically. "Consistency."
But my attention wasn't on Ino's hair. Or the crowd. Or even Kankurō stomping away like a tantrum with legs.
My senses kept catching on something soft in the chakra field.
Not soft like comfort.
Soft like… a lullaby someone was playing too quietly to notice, except the notes kept scraping on the wrong part of my brain.
It came in pulses. Gentle. Artificial. Like a test tone.
My glasses pressed a little too hard against my nose suddenly. I rubbed at the bridge like that would fix the inside of my skull.
A feather drifted down in the shade of the upper stands.
One.
Then another, somewhere else.
Not enough to make anyone panic. Just enough to make my stomach tighten the same way it did when I heard a door click shut behind me and I hadn't been expecting it.
Ino kept talking—something about Temari's makeup being "criminally understated"—but her voice slid sideways in my head because I saw movement in the aisle.
A man with silver hair and glasses.
Kabuto.
He was walking like he belonged anywhere he decided to stand, and that alone made my skin want to crawl.
Then he was gone. Just… gone. Like my eyes had slipped.
I swallowed hard and forced my senses down, like lowering a volume knob that didn't want to turn.
"Hey," I murmured, more to myself than anyone. "This place feels… tuned."
Ino blinked at me. "Tuned?"
"Yeah." I tried to laugh. It came out wrong. "Like someone's playing a song in the air and hoping nobody recognizes it."
Ino stared a beat longer, then shoved my shoulder lightly. "You're so dramatic. Drink water."
I did. Because she wasn't wrong, and because sometimes "drink water" is the closest thing you get to a lifeline.
But even as I swallowed, the lullaby texture didn't stop.
It just waited.