Due to his advanced age and the crushing, endless bureaucratic burdens of running a military dictatorship, Hiruzen Sarutobi's sleep cycles were notoriously fragile. After a grueling day of administrative warfare, he had finally managed to slip into a restless slumber, only to be abruptly awakened by an ANBU guard in the dead of night.
Sitting heavily on the plush sofa in his private quarters, Hiruzen rubbed his weathered face, attempting to scrub the exhaustion from his eyes. He forced a warm, grandfatherly smile as he looked up at the blind youth standing respectfully before him.
"Kei," Hiruzen greeted, his voice thick with sleep. "To seek an audience at this hour... has a critical emergency occurred?"
"Lord Third, I offer my deepest, most profound apologies for disturbing your rest," Kei bowed low, his face perfectly arranged into a mask of deep, agonizing guilt. "There are indeed urgent operational matters I must report."
"I initially intended to wait until standard office hours tomorrow, but the crushing realization that I am actively failing to live up to your expectations simply would not allow me to sleep. I had to seek your counsel immediately."
Hiruzen struck a match and took a long, slow drag from his pipe, utilizing the nicotine to clear the fog from his mind. "It is quite alright, Kei-kun. You must not carry such heavy burdens alone. Speak freely. What troubles you?"
"It concerns the reopening of the clinic," Kei began, his voice trembling slightly with manufactured heartbreak. "Due to the success of my previous interventions, the volume of patients seeking trauma counseling has surged exponentially."
"Over the past forty-eight hours, I have evaluated several highly complex, severe psychiatric cases. And I failed them, Lord Hokage. I lacked the proper medical infrastructure to cure them. Watching those loyal villagers walk out of my doors, drowning in disappointment and untreated agony... it tore my heart to pieces. I feel I have betrayed the Will of Fire."
"I possess the knowledge to save them, but I lack the tools. Can you possibly understand this suffocating helplessness, Lord Third?"
Hiruzen looked at the blind youth. Seeing the sheer, unadulterated devastation radiating from Kei's sightless eyes, the Hokage's smile softened into genuine pity. The boy's fanatical compassion was truly a double-edged sword.
"Your boundless desire to heal the village is highly commendable, Kei," Hiruzen soothed. "You cannot be held responsible for logistical limitations beyond your control."
"Tell me exactly what is preventing you from treating these cases. Perhaps the Hokage's office can provide assistance."
This was the exact, microscopic opening Kei had been waiting for.
"The patients I am losing suffer from severe, deeply entrenched neurological and psychological decay," Kei explained with clinical precision. "They cannot be rehabilitated through dialogue alone. They require specialized, medical-grade psychiatric equipment and highly valued pharmaceutical compounds to assist with the neural-rewiring."
Hiruzen nodded slowly. He had read the ANBU reports regarding Kei's unconventional clinic. The boy had utilized localized electro-convulsive therapy devices and sensory deprivation techniques to stabilize volatile operatives. While the methods were highly aggressive and controversial, the results were undeniable. If it kept Konoha's blades sharp, Hiruzen would permit it.
"To diagnose the pathology perfectly, yet be forced to watch the patient deteriorate simply because my facility lacks the proper machinery..." Kei let out a shuddering sigh. "It is an agony I can no longer tolerate."
Hiruzen did not answer immediately. He took another drag from his pipe, his tactical mind assessing the implied request. "What exactly are you proposing, Kei?"
"Lord Third, I am sworn to do everything within my power to protect the mental stability of this village," Kei declared, his posture snapping into absolute, rigid resolve. "Therefore, I must massively expand the clinic's footprint and acquire top-tier, classified medical technology. I must completely eliminate these logistical failures."
Before Hiruzen could formulate a response, Kei took a bold step forward. "Lord Third, as the guiding light of Konoha... as the absolute embodiment of the Will of Fire... you surely understand the necessity of this expansion, do you not?"
Hiruzen's hand paused in mid-air. The inhaled smoke caught violently in his throat. He devolved into a sudden, hacking fit of coughs, his lungs burning from the pungent sting of the tobacco.
After finally clearing his airway, Hiruzen raised a hand. He was cornered. To deny the request now would be to openly hypocritically reject the very propaganda he had fed the boy. "Of course, I deeply respect your initiative, Kei. However, allocating the necessary village funds for such a massive civilian infrastructure project—"
"Lord Hokage, I knew I was right to place my absolute faith in you!" Kei interrupted flawlessly, refusing to let the old man finish his excuse regarding the budget. "And because I am intimately aware that the village's financial reserves are currently stretched thin by military expenditures, I have already taken the initiative to approach the Hyuga Main House to shoulder the financial burden!"
Hiruzen was completely caught off guard. He had fully intended to use the village budget as a polite roadblock to scale down the project, but Kei had brilliantly bypassed it. The doctor was orchestrating the expansion, taking all the initiative, and footing the bill with external capital. Hiruzen couldn't possibly reject an offer that cost him nothing and explicitly benefited the village.
However, hearing that Kei was actively leveraging the Hyuga Clan's treasury caused the Hokage's eyes to narrow slightly. "I wonder... what does Clan Head Hiashi think of this monumental expenditure?"
"The Hyuga Clan is but a single branch on the great tree of Konoha!" Kei proclaimed with fanatical, unyielding certainty. "Without the soil of the village, the Hyuga would wither and die. Therefore, the Main House will be absolutely delighted to bleed their vaults to serve your vision, Lord Hokage!"
Across the village, within the opulent, heavily fortified walls of the Hyuga compound.
"Hiashi. What is the meaning of this? Why did you summon me at this hour?" Great Elder Taihiro demanded, hurrying into the dimly lit council chambers. He paused as he registered the deeply troubled expression on the Clan Head's face.
Hiashi did not speak. He simply extended a piece of parchment across the table.
Taihiro took the letter. The moment he recognized the immaculate, flowing calligraphy and the highly structured, deferential formatting, a distinct sense of fiscal dread washed over him. He had seen this exact style of extortion before.
As the Great Elder read the contents of the missive—outlining a demand for fifty million ryo and heavily invoking the Hokage's expectations—he fell into a heavy, suffocating silence.
After a long while, Taihiro lowered the parchment. "If the logic Kei outlines here is accurate... we have no choice but to fully finance this operation."
Before Hiashi could respond, Taihiro turned his singular, piercing eye toward the shadows near the door.
"Haru," Taihiro commanded. "Step forward."
Haru emerged from the periphery, dropping to one knee.
"Has Kei engaged in direct communication with the Hokage regarding this specific proposal over the past forty-eight hours?" Taihiro interrogated.
Haru's expression remained an impenetrable mask of shinobi discipline. Prior to leaving the clinic, she had explicitly asked Kei how she should manage the Main House's inevitable interrogation.
'Deception is a fragile construct; it is easily detected by paranoid minds,' Kei had instructed her with a chilling smile. 'But a flawless lie is built entirely of facts. As long as you speak the absolute truth, they will connect the dots incorrectly themselves.'
"Lord Taihiro," Haru reported, her voice perfectly even. "Kei-sama is currently inside the Hokage's private residence at this very moment."
Taihiro and Hiashi exchanged a sharp, loaded glance.
"I see," Hiashi murmured, fully misinterpreting the intelligence exactly as Kei had predicted. "If the Hokage is personally hosting the boy in the dead of night to discuss this, it means the village leadership is deeply invested in the clinic's expansion. The clan must provide the capital immediately. It will serve as a definitive, undeniable proof of our political alignment."
"If we are going to purchase political immunity, we must not do it by halves," Taihiro stated, his strategic mind engaging. "Kei only requested a baseline of fifty million ryo. He will likely receive supplemental subsidies directly from the Hokage's office. If we only meet his minimum request, we will appear stingy and uncommitted."
"What is your directive, Great Elder?" Hiashi asked.
"Eighty million ryo," Taihiro declared without hesitation. "We will overfund the project by thirty million. Furthermore, we will allocate additional capital to the village's civilian propaganda networks. I want it plastered across every street corner that the Hyuga Clan is the sole, benevolent benefactor of Konoha's premier psychiatric facility."
Hiashi suddenly grasped the sheer brilliance of the Great Elder's angle. The clinic existed to heal the common villagers and traumatized shinobi. By aggressively marketing that the Hyuga were fully underwriting the operation, they would purchase an insurmountable wave of public goodwill. One only had to look at the despised, heavily policed Uchiha Clan to understand the survival value of a sterling public reputation.
"That strategy is sound, but the immediate capital expenditure will be catastrophic," Hiashi noted, frowning slightly as he calculated the logistics. "Eighty million for the clinic, plus the PR campaign... a hundred million ryo might not even cover the total spread. While our ledgers reflect that wealth, our liquid assets are heavily tied up in external merchant investments and trade routes. Liquidating that much capital overnight will cause severe operational friction for the clan's internal economy."
"Do not liquidate the trade routes," Taihiro ordered smoothly. "I possess a significant reserve of personal, untraceable capital stashed in the secondary vaults. I will underwrite the deficit myself. We will not compromise the clan's daily cash flow."
"This financial sponsorship is guaranteed to exponentially elevate the Hokage's impression of us," Taihiro rationalized, entirely convinced of his own political genius. "Therefore, no matter the exorbitant cost, it is a necessary tax for our survival."
Hiashi nodded solemnly. When he had inherited the mantle of Clan Head, his father had imparted a single, absolute law of survival: 'Maintain absolute proximity to the seat of power, and never, ever broadcast inappropriate ambitions.'
If they adhered to that maxim, the Hyuga would always remain untouched. Other clans might rise and fall, but the Hyuga would endure.
Having finalized the massive financial concession, Taihiro tapped a finger against the bottom paragraph of the letter.
"Furthermore, regarding this rogue medical specialist—'Shinnoh'—mentioned in the letter... we must immediately deploy our tracker divisions to locate him."
"Kei's logic is flawless," Taihiro mused. "If this Shinnoh truly possesses a Dark Medical Ninjutsu capable of absolute cellular regeneration and ocular repair, it is an invaluable insurance policy. If any Main House member suffers a catastrophic injury to their Byakugan in the future, we will possess the proprietary means to reverse it."
Hiashi, fully comprehending the irreplaceable value of the Byakugan, agreed instantly. "I will deploy three specialized tracking squads by dawn."
Satisfied that the crisis had been masterfully handled, Taihiro turned his attention back to the kneeling kunoichi.
"Haru," Taihiro ordered, his voice echoing with absolute authority. "You are to continue to fully cooperate with Kei's operations. Ensure you assist him with everything he requires."
"Yes, Great Elder," Haru replied, bowing her head lower to hide the lethal, mocking glint in her eyes. "I assure you... I will cooperate with him fully."