Morning in Root doesn't arrive with sunlight.
It arrives with a door opening and a hand on my shoulder that knows exactly where the stitches begin.
"Up."
My body obeys before my mind finishes waking. My stump throbs under fresh bandages, a dull ache that never fully leaves. My tongue seal coils when I swallow, as if it tastes the word *Hokage* in the air before anyone says it.
They don't tell me where we're going.
They never do. If you don't know a route, you can't describe it. If you can't describe it, you can't leak it. Root builds loyalty out of silence and lack.
A blindfold goes on.
Stone steps. A turn. Warm air. The smell of Konoha seeping into the cloth like an insult: rice steam, damp wood, cooking fires, morning sweat.
Then light.
The blindfold is removed on a rooftop with sun glare so bright it feels like punishment.
The village spreads beneath me, alive and careless. People moving like the ground under their feet isn't built on secrets.
A Root handler stands beside me in civilian clothes—plain face, plain hair, plain posture that somehow still looks *trained*. He doesn't look at me when he speaks.
"You will stand outside," he says. "You will listen. You will observe tether response."
Outside what?
But my wrist answers before my brain can: a faint pulse under the sealed circle, warm and heavy like a distant heartbeat.
Hokage Tower.
Just thinking the words makes my ribs tighten.
We move along roofs without the dramatic speed of ANBU—just quick enough to look like routine shinobi travel. The handler keeps close, never touching me unless he has to. Not kindness. Control. If I fall, he can claim it was my weakness, not his mistake.
We drop to a balcony and pass through a door into the tower's interior.
The smell hits me immediately—old paper, fresh ink, polished wood, and smoke threaded through it all. Not the harsh antiseptic stink of Root. This is administrative power: clean surfaces over dangerous decisions.
A shinobi clerk glances up, sees my pinned sleeve, and looks away too fast. A flinch. A reflex.
Good. People who avoid eye contact don't ask questions.
We move to a hallway outside a larger office. ANBU are posted nearby, masks still, presence heavy. The air feels different here—tighter, more alert, like the tower itself is a held breath.
"Stay," the handler murmurs.
He steps into the background and becomes part of the wall.
I stand alone in the hallway, right shoulder against wood, empty sleeve pinned neat like I'm trying to look less broken than I am.
My wrist pulses once.
Warm.
Then—beneath it—cold depth. The ocean behind the wall.
The memory of red eyes opens behind my eyelids, and my stomach turns.
I force my gaze down to the floorboards.
Count the knots in the wood, I tell myself. Count scratches. Count anything.
Because in a moment, Naruto Uzumaki is going to walk into the Hokage's office.
And my body will react like I've stepped into a storm.
Footsteps approach.
A familiar cadence—lazy, deliberate. Kakashi.
His chakra feels controlled from a distance, like a blade sheathed on purpose. He rounds the corner with his orange book in hand, eye curved in mild amusement that never reaches the part of him built for killing.
Behind him, three sets of footsteps—lighter, faster, louder.
Naruto's voice arrives before Naruto does.
"Gramps better give us a real mission! I'm sick of stupid—"
Sakura hisses at him to shut up.
Sasuke says nothing, which is its own noise.
They appear in the hallway, and the moment Naruto's body crosses into my range, the tether in my wrist pulses so hard it feels like it kicks from inside my skin.
Warm density spreads around my ribs.
My lungs hesitate mid-breath.
The world thickens.
Not air. Meaning.
Naruto turns his head while walking, eyes sweeping the hall—and lands on me.
For a heartbeat, the pressure tightens like a hand closing around my chest.
My nose tingles.
I taste metal.
Naruto's expression flickers. Not recognition—he's seen too many faces—but something like a brief, startled discomfort, as if some part of him remembers blood in the forest and doesn't know what to do with the memory.
He opens his mouth.
The tongue seal coils.
I drop my gaze instantly and press my right hand—hard—against the wood beside me, as if bracing.
Do not speak. Do not invite him. Do not become a node in his story.
Kakashi notices.
Of course he does.
His visible eye slides to my pinned sleeve, to the stiff set of my posture, to the faint red at my nostril. His gaze lingers a fraction too long—measuring.
Then he looks away, as if he's chosen to file it for later.
Team 7 enters the Hokage's office.
The door shuts.
Silence returns.
But the tether doesn't stop.
It pulses faintly through the door like a heartbeat in another room. Warm—then cold beneath it, patient.
I can hear voices through the wood, muffled but distinct enough.
Naruto complaining.
Hiruzen's calm replies.
Kakashi's smooth tone.
Canon words almost—but not quite—matching my memory, because memory from a screen is never the same as sound in a real hallway.
My mind tries to line the scene up like a script.
Mission selection. D-ranks. Naruto throws a fit. Demands a harder mission.
Land of Waves.
Zabuza.
Haku.
The moment I think *Zabuza*, pain flashes behind my eyes so sharp I nearly gasp out loud. My vision stutters. I grip the wall until my fingers ache.
Incomplete knowledge.
Or knowledge that reality taxes every time I try to spend it.
I swallow and the tongue seal pricks warningly, as if even swallowing too hard is suspicious.
Inside the office, Naruto's voice rises.
"I'm sick of stupid missions! Give us something real!"
Hiruzen's voice, calm and tired: "The missions you receive are appropriate for your experience…"
Kakashi says something mild, almost teasing.
Naruto explodes again.
And the tether surges with Naruto's emotion like it's synced to his blood.
Warm density clamps around my ribs.
My breathing turns shallow.
A thin line of blood slips out of my nose and down toward my lip. I wipe it quickly with the back of my hand, smearing red on my skin. It doesn't matter. The handler will report it either way.
I brace my shoulder against the wall, focusing on not collapsing.
On not making noise.
On not letting ANBU notice me bleeding in their hallway like a cursed omen.
The voices inside shift. Hiruzen mentions risk. Kakashi argues, measured, responsible. Naruto insists.
My mind screams at me to do something.
To warn them.
To stop them.
But I already know what happens when I try to steal a beat from Naruto's path.
The story doesn't let me.
It redirects.
It edits.
It makes me pay.
And Root is waiting behind my silence with a knife and a ledger.
The door opens.
Team 7 spills out—Naruto grinning triumphant, Sakura exasperated, Sasuke indifferent. Kakashi follows last, eye relaxed, book already open as if nothing in the Hokage's office was worth full attention.
Naruto passes me again, closer this time.
The tether pulses hard.
Warm—then cold.
I feel a brush of something on the other side of the muffling seal, a lazy awareness that makes my skin go slick with sweat.
Naruto glances at my sleeve.
For an instant, his grin falters.
Then Sakura yanks him forward and the moment is gone.
Kakashi pauses a fraction behind them. He turns his head slightly—not fully toward me, but enough that his visible eye catches mine.
It's a look with no words.
Not accusation.
Not kindness.
A professional acknowledgment that something is wrong and he has noticed it.
My ribs tighten.
I look away first.
Because if Kakashi decides to tug on this thread, Root will tighten their leash until it cuts.
Team 7 disappears down the hall.
Only when Naruto's presence moves farther does the pressure around my ribs ease. My lungs finally take a deeper breath without resistance.
My wrist seal still pulses faintly.
Not proximity now.
Connection.
The handler steps out of the background like he was never there.
"Report," he murmurs.
I keep my voice low. "Bleeding increased when Uzumaki raised his voice. Pulse synchronized. No contact."
The tongue seal stays quiet. Good. No forbidden words.
The handler nods once, barely.
"Come," he says.
We walk the opposite direction from Team 7, deeper into the tower.
For a stupid half-second, hope flickers: maybe I'll be returned to Root. Maybe this was enough.
Then we stop outside another office.
Hiruzen's outer office—administrative desk, mission scroll racks, clerks moving with practiced speed.
My stomach sinks.
The handler slips away into the flow of people like he belongs here.
A clerk with a stack of papers glances at me, eyes lingering on my sleeve. His face is polite neutrality.
"You," he says quietly. "Wait here."
He sets a scroll on the desk, stamps it, and slides it into a stack.
Then, with a motion so quick it could be innocent, he writes a name on a separate slip and tucks it into the scroll's string.
My name.
**Souta.**
My stomach drops so hard it feels like the floor tilts.
I step forward without thinking. "That—"
The tongue seal bites down hard, pain flaring under my tongue like a hot needle. My word dies in my throat. I choke on silence.
The clerk doesn't look up. "There is an addendum."
Addendum.
Like I'm a footnote on Naruto's mission.
I can't speak. I can only stare.
My wrist pulses—a warm, heavy beat.
Then cold beneath it, patient as deep water.
The clerk finally meets my eyes for a fraction of a second.
There's nothing human there. Not cruelty. Not enjoyment.
Only obedience to an order.
"Escort," he says, voice flat. "Support."
Support.
With one arm.
With a tether that chokes me if I get too close to Naruto.
With a seal in my mouth that punishes questions.
I feel my breathing turn shallow again.
The clerk slides the scroll across the desk toward me with two fingers, like he's pushing trash.
"Deliver this," he says.
My right hand reaches for it automatically, because refusing is a concept Root removed from my vocabulary with ink and pain.
The moment my fingers touch the scroll, the tether flares in response—warm pressure blooming around my ribs, as if the story recognizes that this paper leads directly to its main thread.
My nose starts bleeding again.
Just a slow warm leak at first.
The clerk watches the blood drip onto the desk and doesn't react.
"Do not stain the documents," he says calmly.
Humiliation burns hotter than pain. I wipe my nose with my sleeve and smear red across cloth. Better cloth than mission paper, I guess.
I clutch the scroll to my chest with my only hand.
The handler appears beside me again, not looking like he arrived.
His voice is a whisper meant only for me.
"Dawn departure," he says. "You will follow Team Seven. If you collapse, you will be carried. If you die, the mission continues."
My throat tightens.
I want to scream.
I want to tell them this is insane. That being near Naruto too long will kill me. That the tether already drew the attention of something inside him that is not human.
The tongue seal coils.
The world listens.
And somewhere beneath my wrist seal's muffling ring, that cold presence shifts—slow, amused, interested.
A brush against my mind that isn't words, but feels like teeth behind a smile.
**Little… closer.**
My knees wobble.
The handler grips my wrist, fingers firm over the buried seal, stabilizing me like you stabilize a tool that's about to snap.
"Walk," he murmurs.
I walk.
Out of the Hokage Tower with a mission scroll pressed to my chest like a sentence.
The village outside is bright and alive. Children run past. A vendor laughs. The sky is clear.
None of it touches me.
All I can feel is the tether's pulse in my ribs, constant now, and the weight of paper that has pulled me into a canon arc I'm not supposed to survive.
Land of Waves.
Zabuza.
Haku.
My mind tries to grasp details again—and pain flashes behind my eyes, sharp and corrective, like reality slapping my hand away from a hot stove.
I don't even have the comfort of complete knowledge.
Just enough to know I'm walking toward a bridge built out of death.
And I have no plot armor.
Only Root's leash.
Only fate's gravity.
Only the cold, amused attention behind Naruto's seal—
watching the extra who got tied to the main character and wondering how long he'll last.