Kori. The same morning.
"Root."
Kaito said the word slowly, as if testing its weight.
"I've heard of them."
Kanai looked at him.
"From where?"
"The books I read never mentioned them by name." Kaito placed the third page on the table with calm precision. "But they did mention an organization inside Konoha that answered to no official law. Underground. No records. No names. No witnesses."
He paused.
"Is that them?"
"Yes."
A brief silence followed.
Then Kaito asked,
"What exactly do they want from the seal?"
Kanai sat down. He looked at the three pages as though deciding how much to reveal.
"The seal your mother built was not invented from nothing," he began in a steady voice. "It was a reconstruction of something much older—a seal from before the hidden villages were founded. From the era of the great shinobi wars."
"The missing pages from the book."
"The same source, yes." He looked at Kaito. "The original seal was designed for a single purpose: to store life energy—chakra—outside the body. In a vessel. In a place. In… something."
"But my mother changed it."
"Your mother discovered that the old design was incomplete. That energy stored outside the body decayed over time." He paused. "So she built an inverted version. The energy would no longer be stored outside—it would be preserved inside. Within a living vessel."
Kaito said nothing.
Kanai did.
"In you."
Kaito looked down at the inside of his left wrist—the place where the dark lines had appeared, if only for a second.
"And Root wants that energy."
"They want to understand how it works. Then…" Kanai did not finish the sentence aloud.
He did not have to.
Kaito understood.
They want to extract it.
He said in a tone that did not ask, only concluded,
"And if they extract it—"
"The vessel does not remain." Kanai said it quietly. "That is what the original design suggests."
Sato had been standing beside the door the entire time.
Now she spoke.
"How much time do we have?"
"I don't know." Kanai looked toward the covered window. "The one who took the pages knows I found the place. But they do not know yet whether I passed the information on to Kaito."
"They'll assume you did."
"Yes. And once they assume that—"
A sound.
Outside the house.
A single step. Then silence.
No one moved.
Kaito looked at Kanai. Kanai was listening with his eyes closed.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Then he opened them and whispered,
"One. At least."
"At least?" Sato asked under her breath.
"Root doesn't send one."
Kaito looked at the pages on the table.
Three pages. Too little to explain everything, but too much to be left by accident.
If Root took them now, everything ended.
He reached out and took them calmly. Folded them. Slipped them inside his shirt.
Then looked at Kanai.
"The back door."
"They'll be watching it."
"The roof?"
"Possible."
"Then—"
"Then we don't run." Kanai's tone changed. It became calmer. More dangerous. "Not yet."
Kaito stared at him.
For the first time since all of this had begun, he saw something in Kanai's eyes he had not seen before.
Not fear.
Something closer to an old decision. One made long ago, with this moment being only its execution.
"You don't want to escape," Kaito said slowly.
"I want to know how many there are."
"Why?"
Kanai looked directly at him.
"Because there's a difference between a surveillance team and an extraction team." He paused. "The first means they're still gathering information. The second means they've already decided."
"And if they're extraction?"
"If they're extraction…" Kanai glanced toward the window. "Then this night will be long."
The house fell silent.
Then—from outside the window—a different sound.
Not a step.
The voice of a child playing in the next street.
Completely ordinary. Completely natural.
And that was exactly what made Kanai rise at once.
"There are no children in that street at this hour."
Kaito understood before anything else was said.
A signal. The natural sound was the signal.
That meant more than one.
That meant movement.
And for the first time in all these days—not analysis, not artificial calm—Kaito felt something sharp and cold climb from his stomach into his chest.
It was not the seal.
It was fear.
Real fear. Simple fear. The fear of a five-year-old child who suddenly understood that the door was about to open from the outside.
He looked at Sato.
The old woman was watching him.
And in her eyes—for the first time—there was something that looked like apology.
She said in a low voice,
"I promised your mother I would stay until you were ready."
Then she added,
"I never said I would stay after that."
Before Kaito could fully understand what she meant—
The door opened.