The next day, when she was done with her training and duties and returned to the library, the book was missing. She searched high and low, but it wasn't there. There was also no log with the book's name, so someone couldn't have just taken it.
She tried to remain calm. It was just a book, after all. She was always good at keeping her curiosity at bay. So she decided to go back to her room and train.
After some training and taking a shower, it was time for dinner. She had recently noticed something. The medicinal taste of her food was always the same. The other day, she noticed the familiar smell when she was tending to the garden.
While it would be hard to distinguish what a mixture of herbs would smell like, some were distinct enough to stand out. She was suspicious of what the mixture was for since she knew some plants.
Also, the book she read about tea making had a giant section about medicinal tea and how to brew it, and a lot of the plants they had here were mentioned. It was a matter of what that unique combination could cause.
She also had her suspicions about it. She wouldn't reveal her hand about her knowledge by acting out, so she shared the meal with Akira every other night as they conversed about different subjects.
After dinner, she headed to her room. She went through some of her personal journals and books and documented everything she could. She wasn't worried about anyone discovering and reading her notes.
When she was in Uzushio, she came across a guidebook about how, in Uzushio, they taught children how to make their own written language. It was good practice for them to use different symbols for different things.
Later, when they were to learn actual sealing, it served them as a basis. After all, seals could also be considered a language. Most importantly, they didn't want to risk children accidentally creating and activating a deadly seal, so it was a better practice to do so.
It also served them for secrecy. All information taken out of the village was written in secret languages. Shinobi were to make a manual, which would be kept in a secure vault that only a few had access to.
If any scrolls were stolen from Uzushio, they would be useless if they didn't have the manual to accompany them. Of course, public information was written in a common language everyone could understand, but depending on their role in the village, shinobi could know multiple languages.
When Shiori first got there, it took her a while to get through the information she needed. She knew she didn't even come close to learning all the secrets of Uzushio and had to visit there again sometime.
She was lucky that despite many artifacts being stolen, enough were kept safe with strong seals for her to explore. She snapped out of her thoughts and focused back on her writing.
Her personal secret language was nothing fancy, but it obeyed enough rules of secrecy to be usable. While she used different symbols for characters, it was known to be a weak measure for longer texts since it could be broken with frequency analysis.
So, she also used another language. She wasn't sure how she knew another language, but since her earliest memories, there was this language she could speak that no one else did.
It was similar to and very different from the language everyone else used, but it felt natural to her. She often found herself thinking in a mixture of both languages and sometimes shifting from one language to the other when the topic changed. She also knew how to write in this strange language.
While there were a few languages across elemental nations, those languages were usually local to small and isolated places, and most people spoke a common language with different accents.
She couldn't find any mention of her language anywhere, which could mean her origins are from one of these isolated places, which would make it hard for her to find information about her past.
She used a combination of normal symbols and symbols of her language to make new symbols. She also mixed some rules of seal making, and all of these combined to make her secret language.
She also made sure to use cyphering and deciphering keys unique to each topic she knew about. While she knew no technique was perfect, she believed her language was hard enough for people to make it nearly impossible without additional knowledge.
So, she used her language confidently when making notes. Today, she was looking at her notes about medicinal plants. A rule she learned from living with shinobi was to be paranoid.
She has been sleeping deeply every night since she came here. This could not be natural. She was always a light sleeper, and traveling alone had taught her to be even more so.
She recognized some of the plants given to her. They had a calming effect on the body, slowing down heart rate and blood pressure and increasing melatonin. There were a few more, but they could surely make a strong sleeping drug.
It could also explain why she was finally getting more restless at night; her natural accelerated healing was making her develop resistance to the drug. Akira must have sensed it, too, and increased the dosage a few times since she could clearly feel the medicinal taste of food was getting stronger at night.
But it was all so strange. The combinations they gave her during the day were clearly for what they told her: to help her train in different aspects, such as boosting her energy levels, calming, and other effects depending on her training.
She could recognize some plants since they tasted so strong. While the dosage for those ones also increased, it was more subtle. They were drugging her at night to make sure she stayed asleep.
She knew something was happening at night because, despite the deep sleep, she was restless in the mornings, as if something had happened that she didn't remember. She had to think of a solution.
Confronting Akira directly was out of the question. She needed this training regardless of what was happening. She could clearly see the effects of the training, and there was not much left to complete.
Tsunade sensei must trust him enough to send Shiori here, so their reasoning for drugging couldn't be purely malicious. Plus, no one entered her room when she was asleep. She was sure of this since she put hidden security seals everywhere.
The reason could be that something was happening in the temple at night, and they didn't want her to know. Maybe it was the nighttime ritual? It wasn't out of the question since she was explicitly told not to leave her room at night because of them.
Maybe they were loud and somehow distracting? Somehow, this caused strangers to actually want to go out, so they did not want to risk it happening.
Shiori was a curious child, but she had enough self-control not to snoop where she shouldn't. Her life depended on this training, and she had no intention of dying, so she decided to go with it.
She would try to boost her healing to develop more resistance so she could actually wake up at night, in case something happened, but she wouldn't hint at knowing the truth.
With a deep sigh, she headed to where she folded her futon to finally sleep. The drugs seemed to be taking effect. As she pulled the mattress open, she saw something that shouldn't have been there: a green book.
The green book she saw in the library the other day was now in the middle of her mattress. She quickly got the bed ready, and after sending her chakra slightly to check the area around her room and ensure she was alone, she decided to open the book.
It was strange how someone managed to get into her room without triggering any of her seals. She had to increase the security. Too sleepy to read in-depth, she decided to take a quick glance.
The book was about the history of some clans local to the land a very long time ago. It introduced the clans alphabetically and dedicated a page to each clan. She had never heard of any of the clans.
From what she could see, they lived there around a hundred years after the sage of the six paths. At that time, people were still discovering chakra, and since chakra pathways were not set in all people, the kekkei genkai were plentiful.
More than 80 percent of people who discovered chakra would find themselves with a kekkei genkai and go on to make their own clan. The book seemed to be a record from the daimyo's court since it was mandatory for anyone who wanted to found a clan to register it officially.
Many of these clans only lasted for a few generations before the dark era, when they all wanted to prove their superiority and fought over land and assets. It was a sad truth, but to this day, the number of clans with kekkei genkai is only diminishing.
While more people were becoming capable of using chakra, the chakra system itself was becoming more rigid, diminishing the chances of inheriting kekkei genkai. This increased the importance of clans with secret techniques.
It was a dark secret of the shinobi world. People with kekkei genkai would get kidnapped for breeding, and people with hidden techniques would get manipulated to sell their secrets or tortured to death for them.
There could always be more children learning the secrets from their families, but kekkei genkai may not be inherited. So they were more valuable alive and in good condition.
Shiori hid the book under her mattress and fell asleep.
When she woke up, the book was still where she had hidden it the night before, so she put it on her folded mattress and got ready for the day. Akira was waiting for her in the dining room.
They had breakfast together and went for the training. She was finally able to detect objects with good relative accuracy. The problem was even at the low speed that Akira was throwing things, it was still hard to react in time while she was so focused.
She was getting better at it, but it was a work in progress. At least her chakra zone was finally stable enough during training that she didn't have to constantly think about it. She could keep it in a relative area while she was doing her sensory training.
She also felt less strain while doing so, which was a huge improvement. After a long training session, she had lunch with Akira, and they separated for the day. Shiori was cleaning some common rooms today.
She had a slight headache from the long training session, so she was glad to have the opportunity to stay inside. She had her cleaning supplies and assigned rooms. It was always calming to clean.
She developed this habit when traveling with Tsunade-sensei. As medics, they had to maintain a high standard of cleanliness at all times, not only for their medical tools but also in their lives.
People were more likely to trust a well-groomed and clean-looking medic than one that looked like it had crawled out of a dumpster, so she learned how to clean—always from top to bottom.
She was currently dusting the shelves in one of the empty rooms. She started working on her chakra exercise as she cleaned.