Chapter one

Eighth head of the Uchiwa clan, Fugaku, also known as wicked eye Fugaku, had spent the entirety of his day speeding back to his home. As per usual, the mission had ended successfully. Nonetheless, he feared the distance he had yet to brave through could cause important damage to his already fatigued state. He could brag all he wanted about fulfilling a high-ranked shinobi task independently, it had been three hours since he told himself he had to pause and replenish his human, breakable body. Don't kill yourself here, boy, he kept murmuring, lonely in unknown territory. Concluding a deal with himself, the Uchiha promised to find a place to rest the moment he entered the borders of the Land of Fire. He was not feeling the need to return home after being away for a week either.

He had left for this particular mission in rough conditions. The totality of the members of his clan's council had been dragging him through mud and dirt, stabbing him with words of anger and misplaced discontentment… Over his decision to end his relations with a young previously virgin maiden named Hazuki, granddaughter of the feudal lord of east Konoha. 'The perfect candidate', as she had been introduced to him, almost half a year prior to this day. The child had been raised in a noble family, was sure to be sanguinely compatible with the transmission of the bloodline-limited shinobi ability of the Sharingan to its full potential and was significantly younger than him. As if he would do otherwise, it had been explicited to him not to touch her until she hit the legal age of adult maturity. When he did so two months before cutting their ties, he hadn't felt anything exceptional or out of the ordinary, though she could be considered attractive. All he could remember from the times he had laid his hands on her were her orchestrated screams of theatrical pleasure and false compliments. Her rehearsed acrobatics made him doubt she'd been a virgin when she visited his bed in the first place. Never had he felt flattered in those artificial bonding moments that were supposed to bring them closer. There was no way he could have managed to stay faithful and satisfied while in a relationship with the girl, let alone wedlock. He had yet to find a single valuable something he could offer her. Joy, happiness, love and care were out of her reach, at least coming from him. As long as the Uchiwa would keep the secrecy of the union of their flesh, she would be fine and could marry a man anytime she wished to. Of course, that was not the way the council thought of the issue. He could clearly remember the despair, the disappointment and how his life suddenly turned into a living hell the day he broke the news to her after their fifth "trial". "You disgraced her!". "So, this is the behavior you intend on passing on to the clan's youth". "How can you sleep at night?"; I can sleep at night knowing that her hurt is temporary and because I have the certainty that I did not make her waste a lifetime. He inwardly cussed and realized he should rent a room at an inn in order to calmly think of this issue.

"Finally."

Hitting the fresh, well-kept grounds of the land of fire, he came across the entry of a small community of inn owners, who were all looking as if they were ready to break down and were rampaged by mold caused by excessive humidity and lack of proper isolation. He needed a soak. A hot, clean soak. From afar, he could not only see an imposing room- and bath house actively steaming, but he also heard the water being drained and filtered for the evening service. That one, the shinobi thought. Paying no mind to the children begging him to spend a night at their establishment, he walked straight to the old, white-painted, wooden building. Behind him, he could hear one of the kids curse at him. He could care less. Fugaku had already realized that if he did not get a room within the next fifteen minutes, he might collapse right then and there. Standing a mere few feet away from the entry, he saw and elderly woman open the door to him, smiling as commercially as ever.

"A room, sir?"

…

As he jerked up from his sleep, Fugaku had to quickly remind himself of his current geographic location. "White and Green Resort", if he remembered right. If you could call this half broken-down pile of wood a resort. All he was sure he recalled well, was that he reached his suite and crashed from exhaustion. Looking for the silent clock at the center of the room, he gladly realized he still had approximately three hours left to bathe. Their bathing services were on hold from eleven at night until five in the morning, and from twelve to three in the afternoon. As much as he felt uncomfortable staying in such a place, it was the first best thing he had been physically able to come across. The three minutes of walking that separated the principal entryway to the inn and the private space he was renting, he had been accosted by not less than three fallen women. Here you are, Fugaku. Sleeping in a whore house. If any of the old men ever find out, you're done for. Another thing that was bothering him was one of the women working here. He guessed the average sex worker of the inn to be aged between twenty-five and forty-five. That one seemed barely twenty. As if that wasn't enough of a concern, her face vaguely reminded him of someone. Someone he had never talked to, but definitely had seen before. She certainly wasn't from the Hidden Leaf village, that was one reassuring thought, but not knowing her exact roots didn't make matters easier. Pushing himself up from the thick futon underneath him, he looked at the moon shyly shining right through the tin straw windows of the room and sighed deeply.

"Guess I'll have to pay her to lure her."

"How do they call you, lady?"

Wicked eye Fugaku, was not just your usual twenty-eight-year-old. There was something about him that perspired power, expertise and knowledge. "Could it be that she had sensed this from the beginning?", he asked himself while training his eyes on her cold-blooded neutral face in the fog of their private bathing room. In silence she had prudently washed every inch of his body and rinsed him before caressing him to an absentmindedly experienced climax. Her traits were suspiciously familiar, though he couldn't place his finger on exactly which occasion he had seen her before. Could it be that she was from the Hidden Leaf after all? Or did she match the appearance of a spy he had been ordered to search after, many years ago? If that was the case, he only vaguely remembered her because she had been… A child? The girl was beautiful, tall, slim, dark-haired and adorned with obscure orbs that were now intently staring back at him as she approached him and extended her arms to capture him in a wet embrace while her lips uninterestedly placed themselves on the skin covering the left side of his neck and quickly moved up to capture his lips in a minacious, smooth kiss, only to close the gap between her mouth and his right ear.

"Yumika, my love."

Her name was not Yumika. There was no lying to him. And he knew she knew he knew she was lying. Because from the beginning, she had known to not look past the white background of his eyes. Her light laugh filled the room as she allowed her body to slip out of the bath as to wrap her legs around the Uchiwa's frame and slightly hold on to him from behind, caressing his thorax with her polished feet and laying her forehead on his right shoulder for an instant.

"I'm just another whore. If you're interested in love, it's a no."

When she let go of his body and left the steamed room, he didn't stop her, knowing all too well he wouldn't find her the next time he'd come back looking for her. He judged it pointless to go after her today. Though he was certain she was not convinced of her own words. And though he was certain 'just another whore' would be unable to successfully dispel visual illusions with such ease, neither would she have been able to sense his dimmed Sharingan. She was not just another whore. She was a high-level trained kunoïchi.

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Fugaku's return to Konoha was as rough as he expected. Between convocations, complaints about past acquaintance Hazuki, pleas and demands and paperwork, he was glad he'd gotten some rest at "White and Green". If only he hadn't encountered that so-called Yumika, he would've stayed a night longer. As he walked up to the Hokage's office to report the events that had occurred during his mission, he made a mental note to remember to ask for the keys, hoping that the slowly graying man would simply entrust him those rusty pieces of metal once again. As much of a careless being he was towards most people's emotions, the man behind the door he'd just knocked on had the power to destroy his career as a shinobi.

"Good evening, Hokage-sama".

The chief leader of the Konoha forces was smoking from a wooden pipe Fugaku remembered all too well. The person who now seemed to have fooled every one with his soft, maturing features hadn't always been as passive as he was trying to make it seem. Especially not when he used to teach at the academy and blow smoke in the children's faces when he deemed them disrespectful or disruptive, from that same old pipe. An artifact it seemed. Not wanting to relive the moment he was slapped behind the head to the verge of passing out, with that darned object after challenging the owner's views seven years ago, he crouched on one knee. Head down. Fist firmly into the carpet, Fugaku started his recall of the events:

"Last Wednesday at sunrise, as per your order Hokage-sama, I left for the village of Hasanaki. Forty-three kilometers south, eighty-nine kilometers east, seventy-eight kilometers north, ninety-nine kilometers west, sir. My arrival was Friday at sunset, sir. Saturday three s-ranked shinobi named Kuzama Ruya, Kuzama Mako and Kuzama Lili were tracked, captured and executed, as per your order, sir. A verification that the mother of the three shinobi, Takana Miyu, had in fact passed away proved that this was not the case, as per your order, sir. The mother was captured on Monday at sunrise and sent to the penitentiary of the village of Nagiso, signed off by my person, as per your order, sir. I myself sustained no great damage and have been treated accordingly at my return this day before noon. A detailed written report has been filed at the central cabinet this afternoon, as per order, sir."

"If the mother was captured Monday at sunrise as you say, why are you back on Thursday if it takes two days to get from Konoha to Hasanaki?", the old man asked.

Go to hell, Fugaku thought silently, his head still down. In this one instance he had a detail he would've rather have kept to himself; the Lord had decided to actually listen. It was ten at night. Knowing the man barely slept, how on God's green earth could he still pay that much attention at such an hour?

"I stopped at an inn the day before yesterday in order to rest. Though I came back in a relatively good shape, my chakra use for the four individuals was substantial, Hokage-sama. This detail is however mentioned in the written report. My apologies, sir."

The room was silent for a long two minutes of Fugaku's knee aching for him to finally stand until the chief asked him to get up. His being kept down to make it known he still had a word to say, he waited until the noises of seals being stamped into a stack of papers stopped and he was finally met with the Hokage's eyes, as he spoke:

"Sir, may I receive your authorization to access the archives to the ANBU files, please, sir?"

It was silent again. It almost felt as if their breathing was loud as ever. This was the third time in the timespan of a year Fugaku had to beg for those keys. Somehow, the young man could just feel the answer would be 'no' this time. Every single time he'd given a reason and actually reported his findings to the Hokage. This time, he couldn't bring himself to hide the truth. It'd be the end of him.

"Hokage-sama. I wish to read through the interventions I was appointed to during my years as ANBU, please. I sensed… something off. With one of the women at the inn."

"I beg your pardon, mister Uchiwa? Did you mention this in your report, Fugaku? Also what was the reason you were in that inn in particular? Were you there to spend time with prostitutes while three shinobi departments of the Hidden Leaf were waiting for your return?!"

He hated this. Atop of his 28 years of age, he still felt like a child in front of Sarutobi Hiruzen. The man he had never been able to put under a single illusion. He almost lost control of his own tongue and said he only hired her for preliminary play, but it still would make him look like some asshole who kept his comrades and chiefs dry while getting particular treatments from… 'just another whore', as she called herself. Sensing his patience coming to an abrupt end, he took a step closer to the Hokage, eye-to-eye and closer than he thought he would've dared to come.

"I didn't have intercourse or any form of penetrative sex with that woman. I paid for the bare minimum to lure her so I could at least get some form of intel, but she wouldn't budge. I masked my Sharingan and she looked behind them for a complete hour. But Hokage-sama, I know I've seen this young woman before. She's a kunoichi, that I know for certain, but I need to revive my memory on who she is. The next day she'd disappeared. Please believe me. I need to get back to those files and at least check for a resemblance. The reason why I didn't mention this in either report, was because I have no grounds of proof to illustrate my claims. She could've been lucky. She could've been S-ranked. I don't know. All I know is that I need to reassure myself that I'm not crazy."

Once more lighting his pipe and breathing in the dark mashed leaves twice with annoyance and irritability in every gesture, for the few times this happened, Sarutobi Hiruzen stood up and came to face the young adult directly in front of him. Before he spoke, he did it again, almost two decades later. He blew out a cloud of stinging smoke into his subordinate's face. At that very moment, each cell and bit of tissue in Fugaku's body was fighting not to start a match with the Hokage for treating him like one of his traumatized pupils again. Because yes, he had definitely been one of those insubordinate children, if not the worst of them all.

"One lie. One lie is all it will take for me to blind you. Ibiki Morino and his team will personally accompany you to the archives tomorrow morning and escort you back to the Uchiwa grounds. You will hand him a precise report of every single detail of what took place with that hooker of a woman, since you want to play hide and seek at your big age. It will be analyzed by him and myself. Get out of my office immediately."

Biting away a multitude of insults and swallowing the bit of pride he had left after the incident, Fugaku bowed and capitulated. Though he'd just been defeated, he could at least be satisfied with the core of the Hokage's response.

"Thank you, sir."

To be continued on July 1st, 2021.