Chapter 304: Clocking Out Early
Blood. Fresh blood.
By rights, Ōishi should have been long past being unsettled by the sight of blood. He was a shinobi, after all — a Special Jōnin of Iwagakure.
With the front-line coalition currently marching against the Konoha Hokage, he should have been deployed there himself, as a Special Jōnin. Instead, he'd been held back.
Kept in Iwagakure, as part of the village's home garrison.
Ōishi didn't know exactly why, but he was grateful for it regardless.
The front was a battlefield. Who, given a choice, would actually want to go live a life with no guarantee of seeing tomorrow?
He had a wife. A daughter.
For his family's sake, he needed to stay alive.
Sure, the front lines offered easy paths to military honors and rewards. But set against his own life, none of that mattered much at all.
Today, Ōishi carried out his usual patrol duties as always, listening to his squadmates chatter about the front, his honest, unremarkable face carrying a faint trace of worry.
His team had, months ago, survived the coalition's campaign against Yomi. One of them had personally witnessed the Konoha Hokage's power with his own eyes.
Hard to imagine. Was that really power a human being could possess?
Word was that Hokage was only sixteen — two years younger than his own daughter.
Genuinely remarkable.
Then again, thinking about it — Konoha. Somehow it all made a kind of sense. That village had always produced one terrifying prodigy after another.
None of it had anything to do with Ōishi, though.
All he needed was to stay alive.
Alive. Looking after his wife, protecting his daughter — that was Ōishi's whole goal in life.
It sounded like such a small thing. About as small a goal as a person could have.
But Ōishi kept working steadily toward it, all the same.
"All right, that's enough talk. Once we finish the street ahead, we're done for the day."
Ōishi cut off the chatter among his team.
He was a Special Jōnin — the captain of this patrol unit.
"Hey, Captain, we're wrapping up early today?"
One of his squadmates teased him.
"West district's under construction, and the Third Patrol's got it covered. We can afford to take it easy."
"Once we're off shift, let's pool some money and grab something for the Third Patrol as thanks — they're covering our shift, after all."
That was just the kind of person Ōishi was. And it was exactly that steady, decent nature of his that kept the whole team running so smoothly.
Once they finished their rounds, the sky was still fairly bright, and the group headed off to buy some food to bring the Third Patrol — when they spotted a man in noble's brocade robes stepping out of a nearby tavern.
The noble didn't so much as glance at them, walking past as if they simply weren't there.
Nothing left behind but the faint smell of alcohol still hanging in the air.
Only—
Ōishi stared after him, watching him leave, momentarily frozen.
"Captain, what's wrong?"
One of his squadmates asked.
"No. It's nothing."
Ōishi shook his head.
Must have imagined it.
A shinobi's senses were sharp — sharp enough that, mixed in with the smell of alcohol, he'd caught something else. A particular fragrance.
The newest rouge from a certain cosmetics shop. His daughter Kanae had just turned eighteen two days ago, and he'd splurged, gritting his teeth over the price, buying her the latest version as a birthday gift.
Ōishi shook his head, letting it go. Kanae wasn't the only one who'd have that particular scent, after all.
"Heard there's a young couple visiting from the Land of Fire selling three-color dango down that way."
"Supposed to be really good. Let's grab some for the Third Patrol."
One of his squadmates suggested, smiling, and Ōishi snapped out of it.
He smiled back and agreed.
Two days passed, and the strange encounter — the noble, the familiar scent — had already faded entirely from Ōishi's mind.
Today marked another early shift, and on his way home, Ōishi picked up a box of three-color dango.
His teammates had all said the dango was genuinely good. He wanted to bring some home for his wife and daughter to try.
"I'm home."
Ōishi pushed open the door to his house.
No one home today?
That struck him as odd.
Normally, at this hour, his gentle wife would already be busy in the kitchen off the living room, preparing dinner for the family.
As he moved to take off his shoes at the entryway, he paused.
A pair of boots caught his eye.
Not shinobi footwear. Formal boots.
And by the look of them, finely made — soft leather, embroidered with an intricate pattern in gold thread. Unmistakably the kind of footwear that belonged to someone from a wealthy household.
Do we have a visitor?
Puzzled, Ōishi slipped off his shoes and stepped further into the house.
No lights were on. The house sat dim, shadowed.
Despite the summer heat outside, the house felt strangely, unnaturally cold — and an inexplicable sense of foreboding crept over Ōishi.
He tensed, instinctively wary.
Then, a faint, warm sound of breathing reached his ears from inside one of the rooms.
He knew that sound. His wife's.
Something lurched in his chest, and his body went rigid, without conscious thought.
He stood there, silent, unsure what he was even thinking.
Then another sound reached him — and his eyes went wide.
...
The sounds grew clearer, unmistakable — indecent, obscene, sounds that left the ears burning. Wet sounds. Cries. Pleasure.
Ōishi's body, rigid, moved forward, one step at a time.
Having taken off his shoes, and being a Special Jōnin besides, his footsteps made no sound the people inside could hear.
Or perhaps it hardly mattered — the people inside were ordinary, with no way to sense his presence at all regardless.
He reached the door.
Warm, yellow light spilled through the gap beneath it, cutting across the dim hallway.
Ōishi stared at the door before him, then slowly reached out and closed his hand around the handle.
And then—
He turned it.
What met his eyes shattered something in him entirely.
A smell struck his nose, one Ōishi couldn't bring himself to accept.
...
The man — he recognized him. The drunk noble from two days ago.
"What... are you doing..."
Ōishi wasn't sure how he'd even managed to speak. His mind had gone completely blank.
Only now did the three people in the room, lost entirely in the moment, notice his presence.
His wife's movements froze instantly. She stared at him, startled, panic flashing across her face — but only for an instant. She composed herself almost immediately.
"What... are you doing?!"
Fury swept through Ōishi's mind, blotting out everything else, and without thinking, he pulled a kunai from his pouch — meaning to kill the wretch who'd defiled his wife.
But his gaze caught, briefly, on the crest hanging from the man's necklace.
The crest of the Land of Earth's Daimyō's own house.
"Well. Caught, I suppose."
"What a bother."
The man shuddered, gave Kanae's — his wife's — cheek a light pat, and, as if Ōishi weren't even in the room, let her help him dress, preparing to leave.
There was no way Ōishi would let him walk away.
"What do you think you're doing."
His wife stepped in front of him, blocking his path, and Ōishi stared at her, unable to believe what he was seeing.
"Heh. You think it's some coincidence you got to avoid the front lines? You have Fangzi to thank for that."
The man threw Ōishi a contemptuous glance, and Ōishi froze completely, the kunai in his hand beginning to shake.
"My lord — would you like me to see you home?"
!!!
His wife's words hit Ōishi like a bolt from a clear sky, already trembling.
Something surfaced, suddenly, in his memory — his wife had once, long ago, served as a lady's maid to a noble household.
And that household had been—
...
...
Ōishi felt himself sway, the world tilting, on the verge of collapsing.
"A shinobi should act like a shinobi."
The man's mocking look sent Ōishi's fury surging straight to the top of his skull.
He couldn't say, afterward, exactly what he did next. All he knew was—
He wanted to kill.
"Just doing what our lord asked of us."
"Ever since he took Kanae into his service."
"Kanae, go on, see him off—"
"..."
"..."
"..."
...
Blood. Fresh blood.
By rights, Ōishi should have been long past being unsettled by the sight of blood. He was a shinobi, after all. A Special Jōnin.
But right now, his body wouldn't stop shaking.
His eyes stared, hollow, at the bodies before him.
The noble's. His wife's.
Only his daughter remained, off to the side, trembling, terrified.
Ōishi wanted to scream. But no sound would come, no matter how hard he tried.
For some reason, his throat had gone completely dry.
"Ōishi!"
"What are you doing?!"
A furious shout snapped him back to himself.
Only then did he realize he was somehow standing out on the street in front of his own house.
Just now — it felt like he'd woken from a nightmare.
A nightmare that had nearly broken him entirely.
But the smell of blood in his nose, and the searing red staining his clothes, told him otherwise.
This wasn't a dream.
"Ha... hahaha..."
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
Ōishi laughed. Laughed at the injustice of this world. Laughed at its filth, its rot.
"Die!"
"Good riddance!"
Ōishi glared, wide-eyed, at the bodies on the ground, the fury still burning unabated inside him — wanting nothing more than to grind them to dust.
But he was stopped.
By his own squadmates.
"Ōishi. You're finished."
The one leading them — the Third Patrol's new captain — stared at Ōishi, now looking half out of his mind, expression blank.
By now, a crowd had already gathered around them.
And off in one corner, a pair of crimson eyes watched everything unfold.
Night
On the road from the Land of Earth toward the Land of Rain
"Was that too much, do you think?"
The red-haired girl couldn't quite shake a nagging sense of guilt.
"I never went after Ōishi at all."
"I just found a random noble, dug through his memories, and brought everything out into the open. That's all."
Sasuke answered, calm.
"If I hadn't done it, that man would've spent his entire life being deceived."
"All I did was tell him the truth."
"Whether he chose to cut the noble down with a single stroke, or swallow it and stay silent—"
"That was entirely his own choice."
"This time — I didn't even use Kotoamatsukami. Didn't use Amatsukami either."
"I just let that man... clock out a little early."
Sasuke said it, expressionless, and Karin fell silent.
She didn't know what to say to that.
Sometimes — was living your whole life never knowing actually the better choice?
Something in Karin's chest ached, though she couldn't quite say why.
Maybe it was seeing this world's true rot laid bare, for the first time.
Sasuke glanced at her but said nothing further.
They still had a war ahead of them.
Reaching the Land of Rain front. Helping Sakura defeat the Wind-Earth-Rain coalition.
Sakura. Wait for me.
(End of chapter.)
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