Ryusei pushed his body to its limit, cutting through the riverbank and darting into the treeline.
The forest swallowed him whole, but his senses locked onto familiar signatures ahead.
Within moments, he burst into a small clearing where the Konoha squad was already withdrawing in tight formation.
The Fire Daimyō's envoy was slung over one jōnin's back, his robes torn and muddied, the rest of his attendants nowhere to be seen, abandoned in the chaos.
Renjiro's head snapped back at the sound of movement. When he saw Ryusei sprinting up from behind, his jaw dropped.
"You've got to be kidding me… You actually made it out?" His tone was halfway between disbelief and exhilaration, like he couldn't decide whether to laugh or demand a rematch right there.
Kanae's Byakugan was still active. Her eyes caught him first, widening slightly.
For the briefest instant, her face broke from its usual cold mask, surprise flashing clear, then she turned away too quickly, as she said nothing.
Yet Ryusei noticed her fist tightening at her side, the subtle twitch betraying what she wouldn't say aloud.
Okabe didn't slow his stride. His face was calm, perfectly composed, but Ryusei could sense the pulse of killing intent buried under the mask.
The man had been waiting for Ryusei's corpse, and instead, here he was, running beside them again.
Ryusei slid back into formation wordlessly, his breathing steady despite the blood staining his clothes.
Ryusei spoke quickly but calmly, as if rehearsed. "I sensed them at the last moment. Jumped into the river to circle back and warn you, but they chased me the opposite way. They caught up a little downstream, three of them, one low-jōnin, two low-chunin. I had to play weak from the beginning by masking my true level with sensory perception, baiting them into underestimating me. Then I used deception, a hidden shadow clone, and managed to take the chunins out. The jōnin pressed harder, so I traded injury for injury until he went down. Perhaps they also didn't give in their all to try and kill me from the beginning, but instead wanted to capture me for questioning, at first, to try and extract some information about us."
It was not the truth, but it was close enough. The enemy that came for him had been far more dangerous, a mid to high jōnin with real killing intent and two competent chunin.
But in the chaos of the palace, none of his teammates would have been able to track the precise chakra levels.
None were true sensors among them, and Kanae's Byakugan had been stretched thin guarding her own section.
By Ryusei's estimation, she might have barely reached his position at the edge of her range, but in that chaos, she couldn't have maintained the focus needed to pick out the details.
So he trimmed the story. Downplayed the threat.
Exactly in line with the "low-jōnin" level strength he had demonstrated a month ago, and in line with how he had performed on C-rank missions since then.
Ryusei had already learned how sharp a blade deception could be.
Even if Konoha's leadership weren't his direct enemies, flashing too much power would only make him a problem for them, too.
Hiding, deflecting, downplaying, that was his way to survive.
The last time he had shown more than he should, it was intentional, laying groundwork so that future close calls would be believable.
Besides, improvements in body and taijutsu were easy for others to notice. But the real gains he had made in the past month again, his spirit, his brain, his chakra control, those were subtler.
Invisible. Especially when masked by his sensory mastery and his deeper understanding of souls. Those no one would ever see until he explicitly wanted.
Kanae's pale eyes lingered on him longer than the others.
Her face gave nothing away, but when she finally turned back toward the path, her shoulders dropped just slightly, as if something inside her had eased.
Her clenched hand loosened at her side, and for a heartbeat, Ryusei caught the faintest exhale, quickly buried.
By the time Renjiro glanced her way, she was already stone-faced.
Ryusei also could swear he hadn't imagined it — her chakra had looked just a shade darker than usual when he first approached.
Yet as he drew nearer, and her 360-degree Byakugan likely caught him in its sight, that shadow thinned.
The aura slowly lightened, settling back into its usual cold tone. Still darker than in most people, but not quite the same as before.
Okabe, meanwhile, offered only the barest nod after Ryusei's explanation.
"You did well holding your ground," he said evenly, his tone as formal as ever. To anyone else, it sounded like a calm acknowledgment.
But Ryusei's senses caught the flicker beneath; his chakra had shifted, restless, almost twitching with frustration.
Inside, Okabe was seething. The boy was still alive.
Every time Ryusei slipped death, Okabe's own promised reward, the scroll, the rank, the Sarutobi favor, slid a little further from his grasp.
Okabe then explained what happened back there to Ryusei in simple terms, and they kept moving through the forest without slowing down.
Eventually, Ryusei reported through his sensing that the pursuers had pulled back.
Most likely, they had already achieved what they came for and decided not to risk staying too long, unaware that in the chaos, Konoha had already secured the letter and the Daimyo's seal, or perhaps not wanting to gamble on reinforcements arriving.
As they rushed deeper into the forest, Ryusei thought that he should feel relieved.
He had survived another trap, one that should have ended him.
Yet there was no joy in his chest.
What he wanted more than anything was to stop running and finally strike back at the Hokage's faction.
But it was not the time yet.
He reminded himself of that again and again.
It was not that Ryusei lacked an ego.
He had one, sharp and primal, but he forced it down through meditation, the way a starving beast is chained to survive a little longer.
There was no way someone like him could ever feel comfortable being prey, chased, and cornered like this.
Deep down, he wanted to be the one who hunted, to crush enemies under his feet.
Yet his sharpened intelligence told him the truth with cruel clarity.
Pride now meant death. Ego now meant game over.
So he restrained himself again and again.
For someone with his greedy and hungry nature, it was suffocating, but he endured.
Meditation was the blade he used to slice his ego down each day, almost killing it in the short term.
Almost. There was always some of it left, waiting.
Still, rationality won out. He knew it was better not to rush, better to let the board shift with time, until striking back would not just be possible, but inevitable.
However, his enemies would also probably not be happy about failing twice now.
Their problem had never been power.
They had enough strength to kill him a hundred times over.
What they lacked were the opportunities, the openings where they could act without consequences.
For example, if they struck at him openly inside Konoha, who would the death be blamed on?
No enemy spy would risk their cover just to eliminate someone like Ryusei.
No 'rival shinobi' in the village would ever exist to target such a polite and harmless face in the village, 'in the fit of rage', someone with no grudges or feuds attached to his name.
That was why the body's previous owner had clung to such a reputation his whole life, and why Ryusei kept it alive now.
He even went so far as to occasionally offer free lessons to younger shinobi in the Konoha library, dropping bits of advice here and there.
A small investment, but enough to put his face out in the open and reinforce that gentle, reliable image everyone expected from him.
His death would raise questions, at least among some.
Poisoning him was unlikely. He was a medical-nin, harder to fool with such tricks.
Surprise attacks would also be difficult, since his sensory ability kept growing sharper.
Even framing it as a suicide or an accident would be a stretch.
For that, they would need to stain their hands with something blatant and ugly, and that could ripple in ways they could not predict.
There were still Senju scattered in the village, quietly integrated.
His uncle remained alive, and the six Senju bodyguards of the Fire Daimyo still held their posts.
If Ryusei's death looked suspicious, it was not impossible that one of them might start sniffing around.
It was not that such scrutiny would topple Hiruzen or Danzo outright, but it was not worth the risk for a boy they still thought insignificant.
Even this mission showed the difficulty.
Not every chunin or guard involved belonged to Hiruzen's faction.
Even if they were, there were still Hot Water retainers and the Fire Daimyo's envoy.
If Ryusei had been cut down directly, what would those people think?
What whispers might slip back to the wrong ears?
The Hokage could not afford such dirt to stick, not now, not with war looming.
For them, it was safer to keep trying borrowed knives.
Meanwhile, they had no idea how many layers of plots Ryusei was already weaving against them in return for one day.
After a while, the constant rhythm of running through the forest began to dull Ryusei's mind.
He grew restless, and when his eyes shifted sideways, he noticed Kanae had rotated into position beside him.
Sparse as their formation was, this stretch left a little pocket of space where only the two of them ran side by side.
So he decided to amuse himself.
Without a word, Ryusei let his narrow-eyed expression curve just slightly, a look that on him always landed somewhere between "scheming villain" and "mocking gentleman."
Then, as if by accident, his pace shifted closer, just enough that his shoulder nearly brushed hers.
It was subtle enough to pass as a coincidence to anyone watching, yet deliberate enough that Kanae would catch it with her Byakugan precision.
Her reaction was immediate. Though her face stayed cold, her chakra spiked faintly, betraying irritation.
She angled her body half a step away, eyes fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at him.
Yet Ryusei caught how her fist clenched for the briefest moment before she forced it to relax.
To anyone else, she seemed composed, aloof as always.
But to Ryusei, who had already teased her like this more than once, her little tells were obvious.
She was flustered, though she buried it under that practiced Hyūga indifference. And the fact that she refused to glance his way at all told him she was more unsettled than usual.
Ryusei smirked lightly to himself and let the space widen again, as if nothing had happened.
Kanae let out the faintest sigh inside at that typical behaviour of his, unheard by anyone else.
For the briefest moment, she wondered how it would have felt if Ryusei really had died back there, as she was sure he did.
The thought surprised her, because with it came that same dull knot in her stomach again.
It was the exact same sensation that had struck her during the palace attack.
That strange heaviness in her chest and weakness in her limbs, when for the first time she almost slipped and allowed enemy kunai to graze her guard.
It had been unthinkable before.
And it was that same feeling that kept her from holding her Byakugan's range steady on the direction where Ryusei had been posted.
She had clearly seen dozens of enemies surge through that side, many jonin even among them.
Any rational eye told her it was impossible for him to survive that kind of onslaught.
That was when the confusion began.
A storm of negative feelings had spread through her, dragging her down from the inside out.
Her instincts screamed to check, to see with her own eyes what had become of him, as if that would ease the weight.
But another part of her resisted, refusing to look, unwilling to face the image of him being hunted, humiliated, or already lifeless.
Only now, with the crisis over, did her rational mind catch up with what her subconscious had already known for a while.
Her current mood was a mess of contradictions: relief that he lived, happiness hidden under her cold exterior, but also tension, reluctance, and a quiet anger that she didn't fully understand.
She had never truly expected him to survive that impossible situation.
Yet from three months ago until now, he kept bringing one surprise after another.
Though she had hidden it from herself before, Kanae realized she had also always felt a strange fascination with his growth.
Not only in strength and body, but in the methods he used, and even in his behavior.
She knew he was hiding something more.
Her coldness often served as a mask, but underneath it was a persistent, almost subconscious need to figure him out.
'Perhaps this was where those strange emotions started in the first place from that day onward…' She thought.
Ryusei's gaze, meanwhile, soon found Okabe in the distance, and all he felt was disdain.
The man had just clawed his way to the very top of Ryusei's kill list, stamped as a personal enemy who would be erased one day.
Before now, it had only been reports and quiet surveillance.
Irritating, but tolerable.
This time, however, Okabe had crossed the line, sending him to his death directly, dressed up as a captain's order, the intent hidden neatly in subtext.
That alone made the grudge personal.
Even if, in the future, Okabe turned into nothing but an insignificant pawn, Ryusei already knew he'd still kill him, for no other reason but this.
The decision was final.
In truth, leaving him alive might be the smarter play; a weak pawn watching him was preferable to a stronger replacement from above.
If everyone needed to watch him, then it had better be him.
But Ryusei wasn't the type to forgive, and he certainly wasn't the type to forget.
If his plans succeeded, then erasing him along the way would just be an insignificant venting that would not cause any major problems for him, only a minor setback on top of other positively yielding actions.
If his plans failed someday, however, he would still make sure Okabe went down with him.
Either way, Okabe's fate was sealed. Ryusei wouldn't even allow the thought of killing him to slip out of his mind. Once written, the name stayed on his list until the debt was paid.