"Proof."
Nono's voice steadied on training. Even with Sharingan heat on her skin, ROOT protocol held. "If you're ROOT, show Danzo's cipher."
A small scroll dropped into her palms. She cracked the wax; the sigil flared in her memory like a bruise touched. Her body moved before thought—knee to floor, chin tucked.
"Asset Wandering Miko reporting to Owl."
Sogetsu closed the scroll and palmed it away. "Files say you ran Konoha's orphanage," he said, voice pitched to the back of the shop. "You love those children."
"Yes, sir." The sir tasted like iron. "What support do you require?"
"First—why do you love them?"
A blink. "…Is that mission-relevant?"
"No." A small, sincere smile. "I want to know who I'm asking to risk herself."
She stared at her hands. The story came out low, flat, practiced so it would not cut. "My parents died in a war someone else started. The village taught me to survive. The children shouldn't have to learn that lesson."
He watched the places the voice thinned, the places it thickened. The weight of a promise held too long alone.
"Do you want to be free of Danzo?" he asked.
Something jumped in her, bright as a match. Fear pressed it out. She folded forward until her forehead touched wood hard enough to sting. "N-no. I would never betray Lord Danzo. Please don't—don't involve the children."
ROOT said softness is death. Tests come with smiles. Fail a test, and other people pay.
"Head up, Nono."
The words were warm—not a shove but a hand under water. A Rank VI Hypnotist's cadence threaded breath and pulse, loosening panic without taking the wheel. The trembling in her fingers smoothed; the tight drag under her ribs let go.
She looked up. In his gaze there was no mockery, only attention like lamplight in a snow night. The room seemed to take a deeper breath with her.
"Now," he said softly, "say it. Not what you're allowed to want. What you want."
Her hands balled her apron. The truth clawed free and came out hoarse, too loud in the little shop.
"I want to break free of Danzo. I don't want to die here. I want to go home. The children need me."
Sogetsu nodded as if a ledger had balanced. "Then let's trade. Equivalent exchange." He steepled his fingers. "I remove the leash. You do one thing for me."
She barked a little breath that might have been a laugh if it weren't so scared. "Impossible. He's ROOT's head, the Hokage's right hand. You're ANBU. How can you—"
From the root, he thought. Always cut at the root.
"There are many kinds of leashes," he said. "Some are paper. Some are fear. Some are the belief that a leash can't be cut." He tapped the counter once. "I cut leashes."
Sound bled through the wall: a cartwheel, gulls, the sea speaking in its sleep. Beneath it, three notes of chakra—raw, bright, hunting—knifed across the town from the northwest.
Nono turned her head. She'd felt it too. "They're close."
Sogetsu's glasses caught the window's gray. "They are." He stood, tugged a plain thread from his sleeve, and tied it around the handle of the back-room door with a neat, nothing knot.
"What is that?"
"Insurance." A little of the Hypnotist's field settled into the knot, a soft bell to bend a hunter's attention off this door and onto the alley beyond. "If someone looks right at it, they'll forget it's a door; they'll take the alley instead."
He set a paper amulet on the counter: an unremarkable talisman with ink so pale it looked like old tea. "If noise reaches the front, breathe on this twice and put it under your tongue. It turns panic into stillness. No fog, no trance."
Nono hesitated. "…And the price?"
"A map," he said. "Not of streets. Of people. A list of who listens to whom inside Kirigakure's lower wards; which foremen hate which quartermasters; which fish-salt guildmaster wants the Mizukage's cousin gone. The places where a whisper does more than a blade." He inclined his head. "That, and an errand when I call it. Not a suicide."
The three signatures hooked toward the lane outside, fast now, cutting rooftops.
"You're going to fight here?" Nono asked, dry-mouthed.
"I'm going to choose where they think the fight is." He rewound the umbrella's cord and didn't open it. "Lock the back. Count to two hundred. If I don't return, go to the orphan-supply broker on Lantern Row and tell him Owl says the invoice was paid."
Her mouth moved around words she didn't say. In the end she only bowed, hard. "If you cut the leash, I'll bring you your map."
He touched two fingers to the knot on the back-room door; chakra settled like dew. Then he slid the front bar aside and stepped into the thin day.
Fog swallowed him like a breath.
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