Chapter 2: Realizations
I left Dom and Nozomi to their business and exited the building. There was no denying that the compound was bigger than your average, and the fact that it did not belong to any member of the council was no secret -it was simply too big, had been too luxurious-, but what I had really always wanted to know was: where were the original owners? It had clearly belonged to some big shot clan, probably associated with the long gone government, but the fact that none of the members of that family were around anymore raised a few flags in my mind's eye. My aunt had once told me that it had been long abandoned before they'd settled in to wait out the war; but every time she said so, she'd look anywhere but my face. I didn't need much more confirmation that she'd been lying all along.
None of the people there had the manner, the class or the money one would assume the owner of such a regal looking place to have. even when withered, weathered and unkempt, the gardens still held the beauty the had been designed for; the buildings, with their sliding paper doors, polished verandas with glass doors, and tatami flooring still gave one the impression of having been transported back to the Edo Era. It was beautiful, and I knew the place to keep years worth of secrets within its walls. And it was now being used and abused by people who didn't even own it. It made me angry, it made me resentful.
I made my way over to the main house once again. Most families had been moved into separate buildings within the compound for privacy,and coincidentally, my aunt and cousin happened to be paired up with another family. It was crammed, so when it came to deciding who would take the storage room by the kitchens, the answer seemed quite obvious to everyone. Even if, to most people, this might have been offensive, I was not only used to the segregation, but also quite glad for the privacy their judgement provided. It was quiet for a change, and when you'd been arguing with the administration for the better part of an hour, it was quite welcome.
I unlocked the door and slid in, leaving my shoes and bag by the door. I hung my jacket before walking over to the small table in the middle of the room, where there sat a neat pile of folders. I took the top one and grabbed a blank sheet to start the draft for the day's report. It took no more than ten minutes, and when I was done with that, I grabbed a blank report sheet and rewrote it before putting the finished report into its corresponding folder.
A clay mask flashed before my mind's eye and I instantly set aside what I was doing. I looked down to the floor. Right underneath where I was sitting, under the tatami mats and the wooden floorboards, I kept all of my diaries. Inside those diaries was any piece of information I had deemed important enough to be remembered and might not have been well received in a report. Another reason I kept them was the fact that other than Nozomi and Amaya, I didn't really trust anyone inside these walls. So I removed the tatami mat that hid the loose floorboard I'd discovered so long ago. In the most recent diary, I wrote everything I could remember from my encounter with Wolf, His appearance, his tone, his air of authority, his posture, his unexplained kindness. His open toed sandals. That last detail had struck me as quite odd. Why not boots? Where the hell had he got them? What for?
Everything about the man seemed off. He'd looked too relaxed, too in control, too cold and calculating, and yet nothing about him seemed to be threatening me, even the skill and ease with which he had pulled a knife to my throat. He had been slouching while he threatened my life, for Kami's sake! He was dangerous, that I was dead certain of, yet the thought of seeing him again was not making me as afraid as it probably should have.
Someone knocked on the doorframe outside my door and I hurried to put everything back where it had been. When I was done, I took my finished report and went to open the door. Amaya was waiting patiently in the hallway, holding a crinkled sheet of paper. It looked like a list.
"Asshole number one though it would be really funny to play basketball with your list for tomorrow." She said as she stepped into my room and took the report I gave her- it was the only way my work wouldn't get 'misplaced'.
"He didn't like your jab at him this morning, but he liked the one I gave him even less."
She smiled.
Amaya wasn't one to let many people into her life, but when she did, she would make sure people regretted hurting the ones she cared for.
"Nozomi said she told you about the team that came in today. Said you were unusually quiet about the whole thing." I looked away guiltily, I'd never been able to lie to neither of them. "Spill it."
And Kami did I spill. I told her everything without sparing detail. She had always had a more analytical mind than I did, and withholding information from her would only hinder any chances we had of figuring out just what the hell was going on.
"We really need to be careful with all of this. They are clearly well organized, well trained and crazy powerful; not to mention dangerous. Be careful out there, Hiro. Now more than ever. I have a feeling we'll be hearing from them soon enough."
If only she'd known how true her words proved to be. Not a week had gone by since my first encounter with Wolf, and now there I was, facing the terrifying clay mask once again, unable to see the eyes behind it. I'd been scavenging for weapons, and an old military base had been my target, but it seemed like he had been assigned a similar mission.
"We really need to stop meeting like this, Hiromi-san. You will get hurt if this keeps happening." He made a show of sighing in annoyance, hands inside his pockets and shaking his head.
But I did catch the very clear threat. He knew my name.
Play stupid, do NOT acknowledge his threat.
"I have to meet my quota, Wolf-san. I don't plan on giving up food and housing for you. I've been doing this long enough not to care for my safety."
My words seemed to have interested him for some reason. His eyes went from being shadowed by the mask to being not only visible, but also readable. A flash of curiosity crossed them. It was much later that I realized their color.
"I really don't think they'd kick you out just like that, Junsei-san. You are a civilian like them, and one of the few runners with a spotless mission record. They cannot risk you."
A civilian? The cogs inside my mind turned furiously as I tried to decipher the man. Maybe if I gave him seemingly inane intel, he'd slip somewhere.
"They've been waiting for me to give them a reason to kick me out. I don't really know why, but I would rather not give them what they want just yet."
His eyes narrowed, he seemed to have realized something and it didn't look like he had liked it. Not that I could tell when his face was completely covered and his posture gave nothing away. He turned to the window and sighed deeply.
"How old were you when the war started, Junsei-san?"
I found the question too specific, too purposeful. Something wasn't right. He needed confirmation.
" Six. I started coming out of the compound when I was twelve. The first years outside were the roughest."
His head turned towards me. I'd never seen someone move as fast in my life.
"You were sent onto the battlefield to scavenge with no battle experience or knowledge of self defense whatsoever? The last years of the war were the bloodiest. You're one tough cookie, aren't you?"
I knew I shouldn't have been flattered by his comment. I knew there was a very high possibility he was just trying to coax more information out of me. But it had been so long since someone other than Nozomi and Amaya had treated me with something other than contempt.
…
The next time I met my friends to tell them about my new encounter, I asked them to meet me in the compound library, where every single book anyone brought in would eventually end up. Books were searched thoroughly before being either stored or burned, there was no place for dangerous information within these walls. But even with our limited resources, we needed to find something, anything that could help explain what had been going on the last two decades. Who was Wolf? Who did he work for? Why had he been so concerned when I'd told him about my life in the compound? I'd never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, but with a little help, I thought I might just be able to figure it out.
"We need to consider the possibility he might be scouting the compound to break in" said Amaya once I briefed them in, "He's sharp and he's got far more experience than any of us, we need to watch our step here".
Nozomi and I nodded in agreement.
"He seemed to be quite interested in your situation with the Council, maybe he saw it as an opportunity and is trying to use it as an entry point..." Continued Nozomi in Amaya's train of thought.
It made sense, but it seemed a little off considering how bothered he'd been when I told him I'd been sent to the battlefield untrained.
"But then, what made hima ask about the war? He also called me a civilian, called all of us civilians. Weren't armed troops forcibly dissolved for money laundering ages ago?"
Amaya seemed to stop moving altogether. After a few seconds, I started wondering wether she was still breathing.
"Holy shit" she looked at both of us with both panic and excitement in her eyes. "Holy fucking shit. Guys, remember all the confiscated history books that were sent to the kitchen to be burnt? I managed to save a few of them…"
"I knew it! I couldn't be the only one! Who's a goody-two-shoes now, eh Amaya?"
Nozomi had always been one to break the rules where knowledge was concerned, she had broken into filing rooms to read reports, 'borrowed' books from the council's libraries, and even saved one or two from the kitchen fires. For Amaya to do something like that…
"Shut up. As I was saying, in one of those books, the author explained the self sufficient system Hidden villages used to stay afloat without monetarily depending on the Daimyo and still remaining loyal to them. The money that came in would go to tax paying, maintainance of the village, shinobi training and healthcare. Any extra money was always reinvested into the village."
Nozomi and I stayed quiet for a second, taking it all in.
"We would need some sort of diary or ledger where numbers were kept to verify it wasn't money laundering. That and a reason for the Daimyo to want to dissolve Fire Country's only defence." I continued.
"Well, there was an economical crisis right before the civil war broke out. My guess is, the Hidden Village was earning money, the Royal Seat wasn't, boom, war." Said Nozomi with a satisfied grin, as if she had solved the mystery regarding the war. She might as well have.
"You two morons do realize this is extremely dangerous talk, don't you?" said Amaya carefully, "If this was being kept quiet for so long there must have been a reason for it. We can't get caught with something like this on our hands."
The three of us were silent as we let the reality of Amaya's words sink in. We could be kicked out or even executed if something like this was revealed. Were we willing to risk it all for the truth? Were we capable of setting aside everything we ever knew and pursue what was right and true?
"I still want to get to the bottom of this," I said. "except for the two of you, every single person in this place wants me out or dead already. If I were to give them a reason to act on it, this is it."
Nozomi had a glint of curiosity in her eye, and her excitement could be seen a mile away. She never was one to stop half way. I knew her answer already.
"Well it's not like we can stop here, right? We know too much already…"
Amaya sighed deeply, as if she had been expecting those exact answers all along.
"I guess I have no choice. Someone needs to make sure you two morons don't end up killing yourselves."
I don't think we understood just how big the entire situation actually was when we decided to keep looking into it. Something had been brewing below the surface of our compound even before Wolf and the rest of the masked people started to appear. We were naive enough to think the past was behind us and that all ideas of war had been forgotten.
We would dig deep, and we would dig hard. And we would not like what we would find,but not one of us would regret it.
The following month would be spent sneaking books into the compound, meeting each other during the darkest hours of the night, theorising, investigating, planning our next move. It was slow going, we had a lot of misses, it was very rarely that we found what we were looking for, but every time we made progress -even if it was the tiniest bit- we would feel like all the frustration was worth it.
Until we stumbled upon the diary of a late council member who had served under the Daimyo when the war had broken out. It turns out that the feudal lord had been quite deep in debt due to a gambling addiction, and when he had asked the Fifth Hokage, Senju Tsunade, to surrender fifty per cent of the village's funds, she had refused and war had been declared against Konohagakure No Sato for insubordination.
But why had the council kept this hidden? Why keep everyone from finding out what really happened? How did they know all of this in the first place?
And then, it all clicked into place.
"The Council are the former members of the Daimyo's Royal Court."