After they woke up that morning, Team 5 still had several more hours of travel ahead of them before reaching their destination. Yohei took the time to truly enjoy the view along the way. He hadn't really thought about it before, but in this life he had never once left the Village – meaning he had no real memories of any landscape beyond forest.
His memories from his other life carried more variety than that, and he remembered the views of his former home on Earth with a certain fondness. Still, it was a very different experience to actually run through open hills and wide plains, feeling the wind against his skin and watching the land stretch out instead of closing in around him.
The border between the Land of Fire and the Land of Tea lay far from the capitals of both nations. While each country maintained a fairly large city in the general area – trading hubs that facilitated commerce between them – the space in between was mostly dotted with small villages and scattered hamlets.
Nagori Village, the target of their mission, was definitely one such place.
The route they took pulled them away from the main road connecting Kōen-jō and Mizucha, the respective trading hubs of the Land of Fire and the Land of Tea. More than that, the path leading toward the village proper was difficult to spot at all; it would have passed completely unnoticed by Yohei if they hadn't been given specific instructions on how to find it.
The village lay closer to the western coast, where the terrain grew increasingly forested as rolling hills gave way to small mountains. The road leading toward Nagori was still faintly visible, but the beaten path had been deliberately disrupted – overgrown with vegetation and scattered debris, clearly meant to discourage attention.
Rather than following it, Team 5 moved into the trees, leaving the road behind. Using their map as guidance, they continued their trek for a few more minutes until they reached a high vantage point overlooking the area.
Yohei pulled a pair of binoculars from his backpack and raised them to his eye, finally bringing their target into clear view.
At a glance, Nagori Village looked more or less like what he had expected. A little over forty houses stood within its walls, all of them distinctly rural in design. There were no signs of electricity or the more modern conveniences that Konoha enjoyed – everything about the place felt simple and dated.
The wall around it, however, was surprisingly well-built. Made of wood, it had been constructed not only as a barrier, but in a way that allowed defenders to walk along its length and repel attackers from above. In front of the village ran a river, forming a kind of natural moat, with a single wooden bridge providing the only obvious access from one side to the other.
Once he was done observing the architecture, Yohei shifted his focus to the people living inside the village – and what he saw made his teeth clench.
It was easy to distinguish members of the Kōsei Band from the slaves just by the way they dressed. The criminals wore leather or finer clothing, dyed in reds and yellows. The slaves, by contrast, were clad in plain gray rags, their wrists and ankles bound by chainless manacles and shackles that served no purpose beyond marking their station.
Watching them go about their daily lives, another detail soon jumped out at Yohei and made him frown.
The slaves outnumbered the slavers by nearly four to one, yet they went about their work with almost no supervision at all. There were no guards looming over them, no constant threats or shouted orders – just an unspoken certainty on the criminals' part that the captives posed no danger whatsoever.
And, to be fair, they really didn't look like they did.
Most of the slaves were emaciated, their bodies marked with a mix of old and fresh injuries. They moved slowly, shoulders hunched, eyes downcast, carrying themselves with an air of fear and resignation – as if hope itself had been beaten out of them long ago.
Yohei took note of that oddity, but something else soon set him even more on edge.
Every single person in the village seemed nervous.
Both captives and slavers.
It didn't take long to spot the cause.
Every few minutes, a man would emerge from the largest house at the far end of the village and walk through the streets. At first glance, he didn't look particularly impressive – gangly, fair-skinned, with short brown hair and dressed no differently from the other members of the Band.
Yet as he passed, the Kōsei members snapped to attention and saluted him, their movements stiff and hurried, while the slaves lowered their heads even further, doing everything in their power to pretend he didn't exist.
The man himself didn't speak. He simply walked, glaring silently as he inspected the village, before abruptly turning around and heading back toward the large house.
"I have the slightest suspicion that this has something to do with our client's recent escape act," Ren remarked dryly.
"That should be Ketsubaku," Yohei said flatly. "The chief asshole. He matches the description."
"Do you think he's worried someone else might try to escape?" Souma asked.
Hayama hummed thoughtfully. "Perhaps. Or perhaps he correctly suspects that Shizuka-san succeeded in escaping and has – if not sought help – then at least informed others of what's happening here."
"Does that change our approach?" Yohei asked, a note of hope creeping into his voice.
Hayama let out a low chuckle. "No," he replied, much to Yohei's disappointment. "But the fact that they don't seem to be preparing to flee is worth noting."
"You think he has a plan?" Ren asked.
"Maybe," Hayama said, returning his attention to the village. "Or maybe he's trying to convince himself that nothing is going to go wrong, while growing increasingly nervous at the possibility that it will. Either way, it works in our favor."
"Because if he's already acting erratically, it won't seem strange if we don't act exactly like he normally does," Ren guessed.
"Exactly," Hayama confirmed.
They continued observing in silence.
Yohei frowned as another realization settled in.
When he imagined bandits and criminals, he pictured savage, brutish men – mismatched leather armor, crude weapons, loud laughter echoing as they burned homes and slaughtered peasants in their wake.
But these men…
They just looked normal.
Yes, they wore combat clothing, but beyond that, there was nothing about them that would stand out in Konoha's streets. Worse still, they weren't the only ones dressed in red.
Shizuka had told them as much, but only now did Yohei truly grasp what he meant.
Many – though not all – of the criminals were accompanied by women dressed in the same colors. Their wives. And sometimes, children walked alongside them, small figures trailing in their shadows.
'It only makes sense,' Yohei thought. 'It's been a decade. They settled down. It was inevitable that some of them would form families.'
The absurdity of it only made him angrier.
How could someone marry, have children, and still be content enslaving someone else's son or daughter?
What had to be wrong in a person's head for them to see a child – skin and bones, shivering in the cold while tending a field – and not think, This could be my child?
Were they really so delusional that they believed themselves to be a different breed of human than the people they enslaved? Or did they simply not care?
And then there was another problem – one he hated that he even had to consider.
What the hell were they supposed to do with the slavers' children?
Yohei had no hesitation about killing or imprisoning the adults, but the kids? What would happen to them? Would they all be sent to orphanages?
Somehow, he doubted the villagers would be willing to take them in once they regained their freedom.
As those thoughts churned in his mind, something below made him shift uneasily.
A small group of children had gathered around a girl dressed in rags. She struggled to carry a bucket of water from the river toward one of the houses, arms shaking from the weight, the cold evening breeze, and fear.
They weren't touching her. Just grinning. Whispering things to each other that Yohei couldn't hear.
The girl lowered her head even further, teeth clenched, doing her best not to react – until one of them casually stuck out a foot.
She tripped.
The bucket tipped, water spilling across the dirt and soaking her clothes as she fell. The children snickered, laughter sharp and cruel, while the girl froze, visibly forcing herself not to cry or lash out.
Nearby slaves glanced at the scene – then hurriedly looked away, returning to their work as if they hadn't seen anything at all.
"Sensei," Yohei said urgently.
"I know," Hayama replied calmly, though his voice was firm. "This ends tonight. But we can't rush in and risk unnecessary deaths. We wait until they're asleep, then we strike."
Yohei grunted. He already knew that – but knowing didn't make it easier to watch.
As the girl slowly picked herself up and headed back toward the river to refill the bucket, Yohei felt a hand rest on his shoulder. He glanced to the side and met Souma's gaze – steady, determined, reassuring.
Yohei gave him a grateful smile. They shared a nod before returning their attention to the village.
When one of the women dressed in red hurried over to drag the slavers' children back inside – casting nervous glances toward the large house at the end of the village – Yohei made a silent promise to himself.
'Tonight,' he thought, firming his will, 'Tonight we end this shit show.'
-~=~-
As night finally fell and people retreated indoors – leaving only a handful of Kōsei members outside as patrols and lookouts – Hayama decided it was time to begin the operation.
For Yohei, that unfortunately meant it was time to put the Mirage Strategy into action.
Despite the fancy name, it was actually fairly simple – a method they'd developed to use Ren's Hiden in a way that drastically improved their stealth.
It consisted of covering themselves in an oil developed by the Kōen family – one that burned at extremely low temperatures and produced very little light when ignited. Once lit, the flames were then used as a medium for Ren to activate Kōen Mōrō: Kyokō no Tobari – Hazy Radiant Flames: Veil of False Light.
The result was simple and terrifyingly effective.
They became invisible to anyone outside the technique, while those enveloped by the genjutsu could still see one another clearly. It was incredibly useful, but also… really fucking gross.
The oil thankfully didn't smell like much, but it left his clothes slick and… well, oily afterward. Cleaning it was always a pain. Worse than that, though, was the sensation the moment Ren's Yin Chakra washed over them.
To Yohei, it felt like –
Like being trapped inside a sauna with no exit, with a whole-ass bonfire instead of hot coals, and instead of water, some asshole was dumping grape-flavored Fanta onto the flames.
Hayama had once explained that the sensation felt so wrong to him because the technique was practically the antithesis of his own chakra affinities – Water and Yang. There was a fifty-fifty chance he'd either enjoy it immensely or find it unbearably uncomfortable.
By now, it was painfully clear which side of the coin he'd landed on.
Ren, naturally, was extremely pleased that even his chakra annoyed Yohei.
Still, Yohei went through the process with only minimal grumbling. Soon enough, he and his teammates were following their sensei as he moved.
They circled the village, leaping effortlessly over the river when they reached it, then approached from the forest behind the settlement.
There were guards stationed there too, but invisible shinobi without chakra-enhanced senses were a nightmare to detect. Slipping past them was trivial.
Before long, they were close to the large house at the far end of the village.
Instead of entering at ground level, they walked straight up the wall to a side-facing window. Hayama extended one hand, Wind Chakra wrapping around it like a gentle breeze, then slipped it through a crack to flick the latch open from the outside.
The window opened without a sound.
They slid inside just as quietly, closing it behind them and continuing along the ceiling using wall-walking rather than risk making noise on the floor.
Finding their target wasn't difficult.
One room stood out immediately – its wooden door reinforced with multiple locks. Two men dressed in red sat outside it as guards.
Both were armed with blades.
And both were holding what Yohei immediately recognized as flintlock pistols.
'Right…' he thought. 'Those are a thing here.'
...
'…I kind of want one.'
Resolving to try and keep at least one – assuming his sensei approved – once the mission was over, Yohei focused back on the task at hand as Hayama signed for Ren to deal with the guards.
Ren nodded his assent and quickly formed a short sequence of hand signs before blowing a thin stream of scarlet fire at the tips of his index fingers.
Then he dropped from the ceiling.
He flipped midair, landing in a crouch as his chakra-coated fingers reached for the guards' heads.
And that was when everything went wrong.
Yohei could barely process what happened, so fast it was.
Ren touched the men, and then –
SPLRRK.
In the next instant, their heads exploded, bathing the corridor in red.
'What the-!'
Before the genin could even react to the suddenness of it all, Hayama was already moving. He launched himself from the ceiling straight at the door, sword flashing out of its scabbard as he cut through it and burst into the room beyond.
That was enough to snap them out of their daze, even if Yohei still felt like he was moving through shock.
What lay inside the room wasn't any better.
A man was tied to a bed, his body covered head to toe in glowing fuinjutsu script. Tears streamed down his face as he writhed helplessly.
"Back out!" Hayama ordered.
The genin didn't hesitate.
Yohei grabbed Ren and threw himself bodily through the wall, the two of them still midair and falling toward the ground outside when the room behind them erupted in an explosion.
The genjutsu shattered instantly.
Yohei was already flying through hand signs – Iron Body Transformation, Extreme Muscle Assault – when a scream tore through the night.
"NIIIIIIINJAAAAAAAAAAAAAA–!!!"
SPLRRK.
"DID YOU HEAR THAT!?" the man roared. "I JUST KILLED ANOTHER ONE OF THESE VERMIN! AND I'LL KEEP KILLING MORE FOR EVERY SECOND YOU TAKE TO COME OUT – AND NO TRICKS!"
SPLRRK.
"ONE!"
Yohei shared a panicked look with his team.
Then he looked at Hayama.
For the first time since he'd met the man, he saw what Hayama looked like when he was truly angry.
His face was spattered with blood. His eyes were empty – utterly devoid of emotion. His expression was flat, controlled, and terrifying.
'Calm. Follow.' The man signed for them with handsigns.
SPLRRK.
"TWO!"
"We're coming!" Hayama shouted back.
They rushed after him, emerging in front of the smoking house and onto the village's main road.
The sight that greeted them made Yohei's blood run cold and his heart drop straight into his stomach.
Every single person in the village was outside.
Slavers and slaves alike – no exceptions.
Faces pale and slick with sweat, some frozen in terror, others openly sobbing. Breaths came in ragged gasps. On arms, necks, torsos – everywhere – Yohei could see fuinjutsu seals.
Inactive.
For now.
Despite having less than an amateur's knowledge on the subject, he could at least recognize the general style of it. The same kind that had been carved into the man who had just exploded inside the house.
At the center of the crowd stood their target.
Ketsubaku.
He was surrounded by crying women and children, his eyes bloodshot, face red and swollen with rage, veins pulsing violently beneath his skin. Spit frothed at the corners of his mouth as he glared at them with such naked hatred that, for a split second, Yohei found himself irrationally wondering what he had done wrong.
Then Ketsubaku's yellow eyes flicked to their forehead protectors.
His expression shifted – first to disbelief, then to something far worse.
"Konoha?" he muttered.
Then his rage doubled.
"KONOHA!? THAT BASTARD WENT TO KONOHA!?" he screamed. "BECAUSE OF THIS WHORE!?"
His hand shot out, grabbing a blond-haired girl – about their age – by the hair. She screamed as he yanked her up by the scalp.
"You are a missing-nin," Hayama's voice cut through the hysteria, calm and unshakable.
Ketsubaku froze, letting go of the girl, who fell to the ground crying.
"From Iwagakure," Hayama continued evenly, "judging by your Explosion Release."
"A sensor," the man sneered, the expression twisting into a mocking smirk. "But a piss-poor one, if you couldn't feel it before."
"Maybe," Hayama conceded calmly, before his tone hardened, "but I can feel your chakra now. And I know for a fact that even if you detonated all of it, it wouldn't kill me – or my genin." His eyes sharpened. "And then you would be dead."
"And so would every single one of those sorry excuses for human beings," Ketsubaku replied with an unhinged grin. He reached out and patted the belly of a pregnant-looking woman dressed in red at his side, slow and patronizing. "And you don't want that, do you?"
Hayama remained silent.
Ketsubaku's grin widened.
"So here are the rules," he said cheerfully. "If you touch any of them, they die – instantly. Those seals in their bodies are filled with Explosive Chakra, and they're set to trigger if they detect any amount of foreign chakra above a civilian's level." His eyes burned as he leaned forward. "If you try to attack me, they die. If I'm getting captured anyway, I may as well give you one last fuck you."
He shoved down the collar of his shirt, revealing a fuinjutsu seal carved directly over his heart.
"And if I die?" He laughed softly. "Guess what. They die. Every last one of them. Their seals are keyed to my heartbeat."
'Fuck.' Yohei swallowed. 'Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck-'
"Quite the conundrum," Hayama said evenly, his gaze scanning the seal with clinical focus.
"Yes, quite," Ketsubaku echoed mockingly. "But you know what? We don't need to do this. No one needs to die tonight." He glanced toward the headless corpse lying crumpled near one of the houses and let out a short laugh. "Well. No one else."
"You see," he continued, spreading his hands, "my seals have a range limit. All you have to do is let me walk away. Once I'm past that limit, I'm no longer a threat. You get to play the big heroes – save the village, apprehend the criminals, all that shite."
He tilted his head. "And if you didn't even know I was a missing-nin, then that little bastard probably didn't say anything about me either. I doubt I'm even part of your mission."
He smiled thinly. "So? What do you say?"
Hayama tilted his head slightly, eyes never leaving the man – not even flicking toward the hopeful, terrified faces of the hostages.
"And what's to stop you from detonating them anyway, once you're far enough away?"
Ketsubaku leaned closer and whispered, his face suddenly empty of emotion.
"Now why would I do that?"
"Because you are a coward," Hayama said flatly.
The word landed like a slap.
"A coward who has spent the last decade doing everything he could to avoid being discovered while indulging in a power trip over innocent peasants. Every single one of them – even your followers – represents a potential lead to your whereabouts. And I don't believe for a second that a thing as paranoid as you would take that risk."
Ketsubaku glared at him, hate twisting his features – before it smoothed into a mocking smile.
"Well," he said lightly, "I suppose you'll just have to trust me."
"I don't see why we should, Sensei."
Yohei's voice cut through the tension – steady, confident, and very deliberately loud.
Hayama's attention snapped to him, though his eyes never fully left Ketsubaku.
Yohei turned his head towards Hayama, brow furrowed in apparent confusion. "I mean… saving these people isn't really our mission, is it?" he said casually. "We were paid to capture the leader of the Kōsei Band. It's not our fault if some collateral happens because the client forgot to mention he was a ninja."
The silence that followed was absolute.
'Come on, come on, come on – hurry!' Yohei urged himself, his thoughts tumbling over one another as he worked frantically. 'Pull the Yang chakra away from the muscles, send it to the chest-'
He was forcing the chakra he had prepared for Extreme Muscle Assault into a completely different shape, using it as the foundation for another jutsu – one he had barely practiced since acquiring it. And he was doing it without a single hand sign.
He tried not to notice the fear spreading through the villagers at his words, the way shoulders tensed and breath hitched as hope and terror warred on their faces.
"I agree," Ren's lazy drawl came from beside him. The boy dragged a hand down his face, smearing away the blood that coated it. "Besides, he's got a bloodline limit, doesn't he? And a really good one, too. If anything, I bet Hokage-sama would give us a reward for bringing him home – so we can make our own demolition corps."
'Yes!' Yohei nearly sagged in relief. 'Thank you, Ren, you magnificent bastard. I knew I could count on you. Now – move it upward, into the head, and flood the tenketsu near the left eye…'
He clenched his jaw hard, suppressing any sound as an itching sensation bloomed behind his eye, quickly sharpening into a faint burn. He had no idea what it looked like – and didn't want to risk it – so he squeezed his eyelids shut, careful not to let even a hint of light escape.
Ketsubaku let out a raw, hate-filled laugh. "You – you fucking tree-huggers. You're all monsters."
"You are the slaver here," Souma replied flatly, his voice utterly devoid of inflection.
The man didn't seem to have an answer for that. Instead, he sucked in several sharp, uneven breaths, winding himself tighter and tighter. "You think I'm going to fall for that? If you didn't care about their lives, you wouldn't be standing there! I'd already be dead!" His eyes burned with manic certainty. "No – you're all eating out of the palm of my hand. And you know what, jōnin? Those fucking brats of yours just made me really angry, so I'm changing the deal. I'll take that one as a hostage, to make sure the rest of you stay nice and quiet-"
"Who, me?" Yohei asked, turning his head toward the man.
As he did, he opened his left eye.
A beam of turquoise chakra burst forth – faster than anyone present could track – and slammed straight into Ketsubaku's chest.
"Wha-!" The man yelped sharply, stumbling back as his hands flew over his torso in frantic pats. "What was that!?"
–~=~–
"Death."
He froze, then slowly looked up.
The genin – who moments ago had seemed almost nonchalant – was now staring down at him as if he were nothing. Worthless. He ran a hand through his hair, wiping blood away, then glanced at his stained fingers. He brought them to his mouth, licking them clean, and smiled wide.
"Artificial Dōjutsu: Yōmei Kaigan – the Life-Destroying Yang Eye," he said calmly, tilting his head so Ketsubaku could see it clearly. Veins stood out sharply around the eye, exaggerated like a Byakugan's, while the pupil itself burned with an azure flame. "One of Lady Tsunade's last inventions before she left the village. A kinjutsu, sealed away until recently."
His tone never wavered.
"It releases a beam of concentrated medical chakra into the target. The intention was to create a healing tool – something that could be used widely, even by those without training or talent." His smile didn't fade. "But testing revealed a problem. The healing chakra, without the guidance of a med-nin, doesn't stop. It goes wild inside the body."
"Oh, it heals," Yohei continued softly. "And then it keeps healing. And healing. And healing. Even when there's nothing wrong."
His burning eye never left the man's face.
"Even when there are no injuries. No sickness. No poison." A slight tilt of his head. "It forces the cells to keep reproducing. Nonstop."
He smiled.
"Until… well. You can imagine."
Ketsubaku's breaths came in short, ragged bursts. His blood pressure spiked, cold sweat breaking out across his skin as a sharp, tingling sensation bloomed in his chest. His eyes flew wide, pupils shrinking as panic took hold.
The boy in blue armor watched with open interest, a sadistic smile curling his lips. "Oh, you can feel it, can't you?" he said lightly. "The pricking. The ache. The mounting pressure. That's your body creating excess flesh."
He tilted his head, almost thoughtful. "Don't worry. I'm sure you could try solving it by just cutting it off. But that won't be enough, you know? Without a mind to properly guide cell formation, it won't be long before mutations begin."
His tone remained conversational – clinical, even.
"RNA modifications. Chromatin remodeling. Duplication of genetic data. All the fun things." His smile widened. "And then, of course, comes the cancer. Growing nonstop. Incessantly. Disfiguring your body. Twisting your flesh. Turning you into a mass of tumors – until it all collapses under the weight of your deformities."
"I-if I'm going to die anyway, then I'll just take them all with me!" Ketsubaku screamed, spit flying from his mouth.
"No, you won't," the boy replied calmly, disappointment flickering across his face. "You might have before – if we'd started fighting you. Because in your head, there would always be a chance. A chance to fight back. A chance to distract us. A chance to escape."
His glowing eye bored into him.
"But there isn't one anymore, is there?" A pause. "So here are the rules. If you kill anyone else – you die. If you try to run – you die. If you take too long to crawl on your fucking knees like the vermin you are and beg for mercy – you die."
Ketsubaku panted heavily, a hateful grimace twisting his features. He looked down at his chest and recoiled. His flesh was swollen and red, stretched tight and angry-looking. A hiss slipped from his lips at the sight.
He lifted his gaze to the shinobi before him. Konoha-nin. Monsters, all of them – watching him like he was an animal. Like they were barely restraining themselves from carving up his corpse and sending it back to their labs for dissection.
He had known it would end like this. He had always known.
He had never wanted to be a shinobi, but with his family, he had never been given a choice. And after what the Yellow Demon had done, he knew he had to disappear. So he faked his death. He laid low. He did everything right.
'AND THEN THAT TRAITOROUS LITTLE BASTARD HAD TO GO AND TELL KONOHA!'
Hate and dread churned together in his gut, thick and suffocating. For a brief, reckless moment, he considered ending it all – detonating every shred of chakra he had, wiping that smug look off those demons' faces.
He looked back at the boy in blue – still smirking, left eye still glowing – and saw him silently mouth words.
'Tick, toc. Tick, toc.'
And just like every time before, fear won.
Ketsubaku collapsed to his knees, snot and tears streaming freely down his face.
"Please," he begged hoarsely. "I don't want to die."
The boy curled his fingers, his expression cold, gesturing for him to come closer.
The shame and humiliation of doing this – of kneeling before the people he had ruled over for ten years – was easily drowned out by his survival instinct. Ketsubaku shuffled forward, head bowed –
– and then felt a hand settle over his scalp.
The sensation of Lightning Chakra – unfortunately familiar – flared for an instant, followed by pain and shock, before everything went dark.
-~=~-
Yohei tried – really tried – to feel satisfied as he watched Souma fry the bastard's brain and put him to sleep, especially when he felt the Chaos Scroll activate against his chest.
But when he looked at the villagers – staring at him with the same fear and dread they had shown the pathetic thing crumpled on the ground – he could only feel a bitter taste rising in his mouth.
…which might actually have been blood.
'Oh, Sage, there's blood in my mouth,' he thought, bile crawling up his throat.
He forced it back down. There was still something left to do before this whole shitshow could finally end.
"You heard what he said, right?" Yohei asked, his voice steady as he kept the mask of a deranged kid firmly in place. "Those cute little drawings in your bodies are primed to make you go kaboom if we so much as touch you. So – to the members of the Kōsei Band – I'm giving you a single chance. Step forward and kneel on the ground so one of your captives can tie you up. Or we do it ourselves, and I don't guarantee there won't be accidents."
They couldn't comply fast enough.
The men practically threw themselves to the ground, scrambling over each other to kneel, while the women hurriedly tried to hide the children behind them before stepping forward as well.
Ren clapped a hand against Yohei's shoulder as he moved past him to organize the apprehension, and Yohei finally began to calm down as the reality of it all settled in.
It was over.
Unfortunately, that calm also came with the sudden reminder that he had just watched several people's heads explode – and that he was still covered in the gore of two of them.
"Yohei."
Hayama's warm voice cut through the spiral. Yohei turned to him stiffly, almost mechanically. His sensei was looking at him with unmistakable pride and relief, his posture far less tense than it had been moments ago.
"You did wonderful work."
Yohei swallowed, his revulsion spiking when his saliva slid down his throat with a metallic tang. Still, he managed to force a smile through the wince. "Thanks."
Hayama gestured toward one of the nearby houses with a tilt of his head as he bent to pick up the unconscious missing-nin. "There should be water inside. Go wash yourself. Your teammates can handle the cleanup."
Yohei let out a long breath, glancing down at his blood-soaked clothes and armor. "…I'll do that."
His sensei nodded and turned to leave – but paused.
He hesitated, then looked back, one eyebrow lifting in curiosity. "Life-Destroying Yang Eye?"
Yohei scoffed, managing a weak grin as he shook his head. "It's a jutsu that induces lactation. I made it for practice – seeing if I could make some kind of ranged attack with Yang Release."
Hayama blinked, clearly surprised, before snorting. "A jutsu to induce lactation?" he repeated, amused.
Yohei nodded, still smiling faintly.
Hayama chuckled. "Only you, Yohei." He gave him one last nod before leaping away, the unconscious man slung over his shoulder.
Yohei watched him go for a moment, then finally let out a shaky breath.
He turned toward one of the houses – only to be stopped by a hand closing around his wrist.
Yohei looked down in surprise to see Souma gripping him, and shot him a questioning look. The white-haired boy answered with a slow shake of his head, lips pressed together, before starting to drag him away.
"Uh… Souma?" Yohei asked.
"Shinobi Rule 20," Souma said, guiding him through the village gates.
A shinobi must never show any weakness.
Yohei didn't resist, letting himself be pulled along.
Once they were clear of the village, they picked up speed, leaving it behind in silence until they reached a stretch of the river where the bank sloped gently toward the water.
Yohei approached it and dropped to his knees on the damp earth, the chill seeping through his clothes. Moonlight rippled across the surface of the river, and his reflection stared back at him – pale, blood-smeared, barely recognizable.
He plunged his hands into the water, watching the current coil around his fingers and carry the red away.
Souma knelt beside him and placed a steady hand between his shoulders.
"Let it out," he said softly.
Yohei drew in a deep breath –
And then he threw up.