In the office, the air seemed frozen instantly.
Weaver-Moon Uchiha froze on the spot, clutching a stack of files with crumpled edges tightly to her chest.
When she clearly saw Night sitting behind the desk with water stains still at the corner of his mouth, she felt as if she had been struck by lightning.
Those usually cool black eyes were now filled with panic and embarrassment.
She had hidden here precisely because Night rarely came to the office recently, and this room had long become her personal space for handling affairs.
Who knew this guy would actually be here...
Night quickly masked his unusual expression.
He casually picked up a half-wet file on the side as if the farce just now had never happened.
"Oh, it's Weaver-Moon."
His tone was as flat as casual post-meal chatter. "Here to deliver files?"
Weaver-Moon's lips moved, but her gaze involuntarily drifted to the obvious puddle of tea on the desk and the water stain slowly spreading on the file.
Her cheeks flushed red again at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"Y-Yes!"
She answered almost too quickly, her voice rising unconsciously. "These are the summaries of patrol records from all districts last week. They just happen to need the Division Captain's signature!"
Night nodded slightly and reached out to take the files from her.
However, Weaver-Moon Uchiha acted as if scalded by boiling water. She yanked her hand back abruptly, hugging the files tightly to her chest as if only this could give her some sense of security.
"No! Not last week's! It's... it's this week's!"
She corrected herself somewhat incoherently, her eyes darting around, daring not to look directly at Night. But her mouth blurted out an explanation regardless. "Yakumi... he didn't mean that! We've known each other since childhood; he always talks nonsense..."
Her voice grew quieter as she spoke, until it was almost a mosquito-like buzz at the end.
Night raised an eyebrow. He had clearly only asked about the files.
Looking at this Uchiha elite who had completely lost her usual composure, he suddenly found it somewhat amusing.
"It's fine."
He went along with her words, his extended hand dropping quietly and naturally beginning to wipe the desk without leaving a trace.
"Captain Yakumi is probably just very concerned about his fellow clansman."
"Right! He's a good person, especially concerned about clansmen."
Weaver-Moon nodded vigorously, as if grasping a life-saving straw. "So, those words just now were purely out of concern for a clansman, absolutely no other meaning!"
After saying this, even she realized the logic didn't hold up. Her entire face was almost buried in the files.
Night suppressed his laughter and continued to play along with her nonsense. "The dispute rate in the South District dropped by fifteen percent last month. You've done well."
"Thanks! I've indeed loved sweets since I was a child!"
Weaver-Moon blurted out, then realized she had answered irrelevantly. She panicked and added, "No! I mean... the dispute rate did drop! Because... because everyone started being reasonable!"
As if her brain was overloaded, Weaver-Moon felt the world spinning. Those usually sharp black eyes were now somewhat blank.
Night finally couldn't help but chuckle.
This laugh seemed to break some spell. Weaver-Moon looked up abruptly, glaring at him with mixed shame and anger. "What are you laughing at!"
"Nothing, nothing."
Night wiped the smile off his face and pointed at the files in her arms. "Aren't those for me to sign?"
Only then did Weaver-Moon snap out of it. She hurriedly placed the files on the desk but accidentally knocked over the pen holder.
With a crash, stationery scattered all over the floor.
"Sorry!"
She squatted down in a panic to pick them up, her movements so hurried she almost threw the stationery like ninja tools.
While Weaver-Moon had her head down cleaning up, Night quickly signed the files. Then, after sensing briefly, his figure vanished instantly into space.
When Weaver-Moon stood up holding a handful of stationery, the office was empty.
The signed files were neatly placed on the corner of the desk, ink still wet. On a blank sheet of paper next to them was a crudely drawn smiley face.
She froze, looking around the empty office.
No sound of hand seals, not even a ripple of chakra detected. The man had disappeared silently just like that.
This almost eerie way of leaving cast another layer of mystery over Night in her mind.
Various emotions churned in her chest today: from the shame and anger of being confessed to publicly, to the embarrassment of losing composure in front of Night, and now the dazed feeling facing the empty room.
Intense emotions intertwined and collided. Unbeknownst to her, the two-tomoe Sharingan in her eyes were quietly spinning. The phantom of a third tomoe flickered in and out of existence, as if ready to solidify at any moment.
---
Even though the person involved had fled, the storm in the Police Force building didn't subside; instead, it intensified.
That afternoon, rumors about the "Love Triangle" spread through the entire Police Force at astonishing speed.
As soon as Yakumi Uchiha and Weaver-Moon Uchiha returned to the clan grounds, they could immediately feel the ambiguous gazes from all directions.
Even the sternest clan elders looked at them with indescribably complex eyes, as if disappointed they hadn't met expectations.
Night acted as if nothing had happened, diving headfirst into his lab and only showing his face occasionally.
But despite such deliberate avoidance, there were still thick-headed young Uchiha.
During a break in a "customized patrol," a young Uchiha member mustered the courage to lean in and ask, "Um, Captain... what do you think of Senior Weaver-Moon?"
Night glanced at him flatly. "She's excellent."
"What about Senior Yakumi?"
"Also a responsible ninja."
The young member wanted to ask more but retreated under Night's cold gaze.
This endless prying annoyed Night to no end.
He began seriously considering finding an excuse to go on a long-term mission to stay away from this troublesome place for a while.
As for the other protagonist of the incident, Weaver-Moon Uchiha, she seemed like a different person after her loss of composure that day.
Every time she encountered Night, she would greet him with averted eyes and leave quickly, never lingering.
This deliberate distancing only confirmed the rumors.
A new version even started circulating in the Police Force: "Weaver-Moon turned from love to hate."
Some swore they saw her beating up a wooden dummy in the training ground, treating it as a division captain—though which division captain was unknown.
When Night heard this rumor, he was flipping through a missing persons file from the Police Force.
"Really... never a dull moment..." He put down the report and rubbed his brow.
Although it was a headache, as an outsider who had spent a long time with the Uchiha, he reached his own conclusion:
People said the Uchiha were crazy, mentally unstable.
But in Night's view, these Uchiha were more like a group of ordinary people who were paranoid to a somewhat hilarious degree.