Takehito crossed the room and stopped beside the bed.
"Headache?"
"Not anymore."
"Dizziness?"
"No."
"Nausea?"
Fugaku shook his head slightly.
"Vision?"
"Normal."
Takehito's gaze sharpened. "Both eyes?"
"Both."
That answer seemed to matter more.
His father pulled the nearby chair closer and sat down.
"Chakra?"
Fugaku considered the question for a moment.
"Stable."
That was technically true.
More than stable, actually.
Takehito watched him closely.
"Any weakness?"
"No."
"Disorientation?"
"Not now."
A brief silence followed.
Then Takehito asked, more carefully, "Do you know where you are?"
Fugaku almost smiled.
"The clan hospital."
"And who I am?"
That one made the smile appear.
"Father."
Some of the tension finally left Takehito's face.
Only a little.
"Good."
Fugaku looked at him.
"You thought I might wake up stupid?"
"I thought you might wake up damaged."
"That's less insulting."
"It wasn't meant to be insulting."
"It usually isn't."
Takehito ignored that.
"Do you remember the warehouse?"
Fugaku's expression settled.
"Yes."
"Everything?"
"Up until I lost consciousness."
His father leaned back slightly.
That was clearly the answer he had been waiting for.
He did not interrupt, as if prompting him to speak more.
Fugaku took a moment before continuing.
"I remember the masked operative moving first after I stepped forward."
"Before you activated your Sharingan?"
"Yes."
His father's expression tightened slightly.
"But that wasn't the only thing that happened."
Takehito's eyes sharpened.
Fugaku looked toward the ceiling for a second, sorting through the memory.
"Something else reached me at almost the same time."
"What?"
"I don't know exactly."
That answer clearly displeased Takehito, but he waited.
"It wasn't normal genjutsu," Fugaku said. "At least not anything I've ever experienced."
"Why?"
"Because it didn't feel like my chakra was being manipulated from the outside."
He paused.
"It felt more direct than that."
Takehito leaned forward slightly.
"Direct how?"
"Like something entered."
Silence.
Fugaku tapped one finger lightly against the blanket.
"Not physically. Spiritually."
His father's expression changed.
Only a little.
Enough for Fugaku to know that matched something the clan medics had already suspected.
"You're sure?"
"No."
Fugaku answered that deliberately.
"I was hit almost immediately afterward. Everything became confused too quickly for me to examine it properly."
"But that is what you think happened."
"Yes."
Takehito remained silent.
Fugaku continued.
"There was pressure for an instant. Foreign pressure. Then my thoughts stopped behaving normally."
"Pain?"
"Not exactly."
"What, then?"
Fugaku frowned.
"Disorientation. Like I suddenly couldn't keep hold of where I was."
That was the safest truthful description.
"And then the fist landed."
Takehito's jaw tightened.
Fugaku noticed.
"The physical blow wasn't what put me into that state by itself."
"I know."
That made Fugaku look at him.
Takehito continued.
"The medics reached the same conclusion."
Fugaku's eyes narrowed slightly.
"They found something?"
"Nothing they could identify."
That sounded much more believable.
Takehito rested one hand against his knee.
"Your body recovered quickly. Your passively circulated chakra did not behave normally for nearly three days."
Fugaku stayed quiet.
"So," Takehito said, "whatever happened in that corridor, I don't believe the punch was the important part."
Fugaku gave a small nod.
"Neither do I."
Takehito kept looking at him then.
Long enough for Fugaku to notice.
"What?"
His father did not answer immediately.
"You seem like you're still holding something back."
Fugaku's expression barely changed.
Takehito noticed that too.
Perhaps it was only the aftermath of the last three days.
Perhaps not.
Either way, something about his son felt slightly different.
Sharper, maybe.
Too composed for someone who had just awakened from an unexplained three-day coma.
Takehito leaned back.
"There was no foreign chakra left in you after you returned to the compound. Nothing the medics could identify, at least."
Fugaku nodded.
"And yet you remained unconscious for three days."
His father's eyes narrowed.
"If something truly entered you spiritually, perhaps it injured your soul somehow."
Takehito continued.
"You would understand your own condition better than anyone else. Did it feel damaged or different in any way?"
Fugaku was quiet for a moment.
Takehito's further suspicions were reasonable.
Even accepting the hidden spiritual attack did not explain everything.
Why three days?
Why had Fugaku's chakra behaved strangely afterward?
Why had it gradually become stronger instead of merely returning to normal?
His father was not going to stop at "Root did something strange to me."
Fugaku sighed.
Time to add something more believable then.
"Actually..."
Takehito waited.
"There's another part I didn't mention."
"I assumed so."
Fugaku gave him a mildly offended look.
His father ignored it.
Fugaku looked away for a moment, as though embarrassed.
That part was acting.
Rather good acting, apparently.
"A few days before the investigation, I was training my Sharingan."
Takehito's expression changed.
"Training how?"
"Too hard."
A pause.
Takehito stared at him.
Fugaku continued before he could ask.
"I've had a lot more time recently, you know. Captaincy means less routine field work, and before that case arrived, nothing serious had required me personally, as we are a new unit, and not many new cases were added in general."
That part was true enough.
"So I started experimenting with keeping the Sharingan active longer while switching between different perception exercises, genjutsu resistance, chakra control, and such."
Takehito's face darkened.
"For how long?"
"Long enough that I noticed some strain afterward. I admit my mistake."
The chair scraped against the floor.
Takehito stood abruptly.
Fugaku blinked.
Not anger.
Relief.
His father had clearly just found an explanation he desperately wanted to believe.
"You overstrained your eyes before the incident."
"Possibly more than just the eyes."
Takehito stared at him for another second.
Then exhaled through his nose.
That fit.
Annoyingly well.
Fugaku had always pushed himself too hard when he became interested in improving something.
And if the boy had already destabilized his own spiritual state through excessive Sharingan training, then an unknown Root technique striking the same area days later suddenly sounded far less impossible.
Takehito sat down again.
"Why didn't you say this immediately?"
Fugaku gave him a flat look.
"Because being knocked unconscious in front of my own unit was embarrassing enough."
Takehito almost looked amused.
Almost.
Then his expression hardened again.
"If you already knew you had overtrained, why did you personally take the assignment?"
Fugaku had expected that.
"The strain was mild by then."
"Mild enough to leave you unconscious for three days?"
"Apparently not."
"Fugaku."
"I didn't know that at the time."
Takehito's eyes narrowed.
Fugaku continued, more seriously.
"I felt fine physically. My chakra was stable enough. And it was the first case since my promotion that looked important enough for me to handle personally."
"Then you should have just reassigned it to someone else."
"To one of my officers?"
"Yes."
"And explain that their new captain was staying behind, on his first serious case, because he tired himself out training his Sharingan?"
Takehito's expression said that sounded preferable to a coma.
Fugaku understood the point.
He just did not intend to concede it completely.
Besides, another thought suddenly amused him.
He looked at his father full of interesting subtext.
"Although, if we're assigning responsibility..."
Takehito immediately looked suspicious as Fugaku paused his speech.
"Don't pretend you didn't play a part in pushing me into that case."
"Moreover, at first you practically gave me nothing interesting for weeks, so I ended up overtraining in my office."
"Then the moment I finally do, you hand me a troublesome case like that..."
Fugaku suppressed an amused smile as he thought about Takehito's strange "sharpening" process for his son.
'I can put at least some of the blame on you, old man. Maybe make you feel guilty for a while.'
Of course, the original Fugaku had not actually been "bored".
If there was no fieldwork, he simply buried himself in everything else.
Paperwork he could easily have delegated.
Old case files.
Reports from other Investigation units.
Past examples handled by senior captains.
Anything that might help him prove he deserved the position.
This unique method of "training" he had just invented as an excuse was simply another extension of the same problem.
Meanwhile, a vein finally appeared on the older man's forehead comically.
"Do not put this on me."
Fugaku's mouth twitched.
Takehito pointed at him.
"You overtrained an unstable dōjutsu, concealed the strain, accepted a serious assignment anyway, then walked directly into an unknown confrontation."
"When you say it like that..."
"That is exactly how it happened."
"Mostly."
Takehito stared at him.
Fugaku decided not to push his luck.
His father sat back again with a tired sigh.
"Consider this a lesson."
Fugaku raised an eyebrow.
"About Root?"
"About understanding your own limits."
That was fair.
Takehito's expression softened slightly.
"Strength you cannot control properly is another weakness."
Fugaku nodded.
That lesson, at least, he had no intention of forgetting.
Fugaku let the silence sit for a moment.
Then he asked, "What happened while I was out?"
Takehito understood immediately.
His expression changed.
Less father.
More patriarch.
"I went to the Hokage."
Fugaku was not surprised.
"And?"
"Hiruzen gave me his personal assurance that Root had not been ordered to kill or cripple you."
"Did you believe him?"
Takehito's mouth tightened.
"I believed that if they intended to kill you, they chose a very strange way to do it."
Fair.
"He claimed it was an escalation between two village organizations that should never have reached that point."
"And because I wasn't dying, you left it there."
"For now."
Takehito emphasized the last two words.
"Your condition was, by all estimates, stable and improving. I had no reason to create an open confrontation with the Hokage before you woke up and told me what you remembered."
Fugaku gave a slow nod.
"Good."
Takehito looked at him.
Fugaku continued, "Getting angry first and learning what actually happened second would've been stupid."
His father's expression became strange.
Then mildly offended.
"Since when did you become cheeky enough to praise my judgment?"
Fugaku's mouth curved faintly.
"Three days unconscious gives a man time to grow."
"You were unconscious."
"Details."
Takehito shook his head.
"Brat."
Fugaku almost laughed.
Then he looked toward the window.
"Still..."
His voice became quieter.
"An ordeal like that can change someone."
Takehito watched him carefully.
Fugaku turned his eyes back toward him.
"Sometimes more than mentally."
A pause.
Takehito's brows drew together.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
Fugaku only smiled slightly for now.
He let the question hang for a moment, then seemingly changed the subject.
"What happened to the missing chūnin?"
Takehito's expression flattened.
"The case was officially removed from Police jurisdiction."
Fugaku's eyes narrowed.
"By whose order?"
"The Hokage's."
Of course.
"Reason?"
"Sensitive village security matter. Root had already detained him under separate authority."
Fugaku was silent for a second.
"So we were investigating a disappearance caused by another Konoha organization."
"Essentially."
"And nobody thought to tell the Police."
"No. Not this time."
Fugaku gave a quiet breath through his nose.
That irritated him more than he expected.
Not because the Police needed to know every covert operation in the village.
They obviously did not.
But allowing a family to report a man missing, letting the Investigation branch spend time and manpower following the trail, then physically obstructing the officers once they reached the correct answer was another matter.
"What happened to him?"
Takehito shook his head.
"I wasn't told."
"Still detained?"
"Possibly."
"Alive?"
"I wasn't told that either."
Fugaku's expression cooled further.
"Convenient."
"It is."
Takehito studied him.
It was good that he asked about that.
At least it showed that he didn't forget his public duty despite everything, in his opinion.
Fugaku looked back at him.
"Has this happened before?"
Takehito frowned. "What exactly?"
"Root obstructing Military Police officers without identifying themselves or showing any authorization from the Hokage's Building."
That made Takehito's expression turn more serious.
"No."
He paused.
"Not like this."
Fugaku waited.
"Root has been growing more powerful in recent years. Way more assertive as well. They've taken many cases that would normally fall under us, in the past, especially anything involving counterintelligence, foreign agents, sensitive records, that sort of thing."
There was clearly enough overlap with their Investigation work for friction to be inevitable.
"But when that happens," Takehito continued, "they usually identify themselves, state that the matter has been transferred under Hokage authority, and provide enough proof that our officers can withdraw without looking like fools."
Fugaku's eyes narrowed slightly.
"So this time was different."
"Very."
Takehito studied him for a moment.
Then he said what Fugaku had already concluded.
"They were testing you."
Fugaku gave a slow nod.
"That's what I thought."
Takehito was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, "You know, you might have avoided all of this."
Fugaku almost smirked.
"Avoided this and gone straight back onto the original highway to hell?"
No, thanks.
Outwardly, he only raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean?"
"You were reckless too."
Fugaku's expression settled.
Takehito continued.
"Root was deliberately provocative. I don't dispute that. But if you wanted to avoid their test, stepping forward like that was the wrong choice."
"It was one step."
"In a standoff, one step matters."
Takehito's tone remained calm.
"A shift in posture. A hand moving too close to a weapon. Closing distance after being ordered to stop. Any of those can be interpreted as intent."
"Or used as an excuse."
"Exactly."
Fugaku considered that.
Takehito watched him closely.
"Were you trying too hard to prove yourself?"
There it was.
Fugaku could have denied it.
Instead, he sighed.
"Probably."
Takehito looked mildly surprised.
Fugaku continued before his father could enjoy that admission too much.
"But I still don't think withdrawing immediately would've been correct."
Takehito's eyes narrowed slightly.
"They gave us no identification. No authorization. No proof that they had any right to interfere with an active Police investigation."
Fugaku gestured faintly with one hand.
"If I had simply turned around and left because two masked men told me to, what exactly would that tell my officers?"
Takehito said nothing.
"That anyone sufficiently mysterious can override the Military Police?"
"No."
"That the patriarch's son backs down whenever someone invokes the Hokage without proving anything?"
Takehito's mouth tightened.
Fugaku nodded.
"That's the problem."
He paused.
"I should have handled the confrontation better. I should have recognized that they were trying to provoke a reaction. I should have been more careful with that step."
Then his expression hardened slightly.
"But I don't think the answer was to surrender our authority either."