CH_11.5 (408)

Investigations could become quite challenging if the individuals involved weren't cooperative. Especially when torture wasn't in the picture.

The evening light dimly lit in the small room with a tiny square table and two rickety chairs through barred open windows. Takuma was purposefully assigned a room with no light bulb, with only an hour of daylight remaining, so he would be forced to discontinue his investigations after sundown.

Tokubetsu Jōnin Fujita didn't want him questioning his men. He either trusted them implicitly or was trying to hide something.

"You don't mind if I smoke, do you?" asked Chunin Jeju Hyouma.

"Why? Are you nervous?"

The man was Fujita's second-in-command. Takuma had spotted the man when he was sneaking around. He was semi-adequately dressed on duty, but had changed into an unbuttoned tropical shirt and khaki shorts. There was not a hint of worry or interest on his face.

"I go through three packs a day," said Hyouma, looking utterly checked out.

"Yes, I could smell that," said Takuma, gesturing for the man to continue. "How does the procedure work here at the checkpoint?"

"We unseal the cargo, check it against the mandate, prepare the documentation, re-seal it, and send the couriers on their way."

"You guys check everything?"

"To a degree, we have to. Nothing goes by without getting at least partially examined."

"Opening and resealing so many scrolls seems like a lot of work."

"We have a lot of people here to help us."

The few dozen shinobi at the border outpost worked with nearly three times as many civilians, who helped them maintain a smooth and quick flow at the only trade checkpoint on the Fire-Prairie border.

"How many people would be able to identify Earth-aligned couriers?" asked Takuma.

"A lot of people," Hyouma answered.

"I suspect that someone who has access to courier registrations is leaking it to bandits. Who do you suspect?" Takuma asked.

"I suspect no one."

"You don't think anyone here can possibly work with the bandits?" Takuma frowned behind his mask. Either Fujita or Hyouma were naive or had rock-hard trust for their coworkers.

"I didn't say that," Hyouma said, keeping the cigarette against his lips. "There could be someone. I just don't want to point fingers without a reason, just for the sake of giving a name. Personal bias and feelings—that's how you screw someone's life."

The response was reasonable, but it made the job difficult because Takuma had no leads to follow. As Hyouma said, there were many people who could be responsible for the information leak; Takuma needed a way to narrow his radius if he didn't want to be stuck questioning people for who knew how many days.

"One last question, are you among the people who could identify an Earth-aligned courier?" he asked.

For the first time, Hyouma lowered his cigarette without taking a drag and stared at him for a couple of seconds.

"Yes," he said flatly.

———

 .

Takuma continued his investigation the next day by starting with people who checked courier registrations, and it seemed that all of them had been given the same script, as they were repeating the same points. All of them claimed innocence and refused to point to anyone else. He could understand the first part, but no one suspected that someone else was absurd.

He knew how workplaces operated and refused to believe that there was not one person who would refuse to say a name from personal dislike or pure spite.

The real problem was the number of people he had to question, which gave him limited time with each one. He could use shadow clones to increase his time, but because there was a border outpost to run, he could only take out one person at a time without throwing off their regular operations. The people already didn't like him, and he didn't want to make things worse by making their jobs hard.

But it gave him the opportunity to keep his shadow clones hidden for the moment.

The interrogations weren't a waste of time, despite everyone towing the company line. The twenty to twenty-five minutes he had spent with each person had allowed him to gauge the weaker personalities that he could break.

If people were strong together, then he just needed to divide them.

———

 .

As the lunch break rolled around, the flow of trade was paused as everyone in the outpost, except the guards, went on their mandated breaks.

Genin Morita Daigo, who packed his own lunch every day, had a special spot where he liked to eat his food alone in peace, away from people. He liked his coworkers as much as the other person, but after spending hours at the end of the day talking and arguing with couriers and merchants, who for some reason never seemed to get their documentation, he wished nothing but silence during his hour of lunch break.

He arrived at the back of the lot, near the warehouse for seized goods. There was a set of wide and broad concrete steps in front of the emergency exit of one of the warehouses, perfect for sitting or even lying down for a nap on a good day.

No one ever came around there, and the emergency exit was always closed, making it the perfect place to be alone—

"Morita Daigo."

He froze up in surprise when he saw the ANBU-nin he had talked to earlier in the day standing at his spot.

"Let's talk."

Morita Daigo clenched his chopsticks and his open lunch as he sat on the steps that always felt comfortable, now felt like he was sitting on pins.

"Don't be shy, you can eat while we talk," said the ANBU-nin.

Even if he told that, he couldn't just ignore the terrifying man with a distorted voice sitting beside him. He felt like crying. The interrogation/interview had been extremely tough, but he managed to parrot what everyone was repeating. The ANBU-nin was here to solve the courier murders, but because it had been so long without any progress, they thought that the ANBU-nin was here to find a scapegoat instead. By sticking together and keeping their stories straight, everyone was trying not to get sucked into whatever trap the ANBU-nin was planning.

"Everyone has been telling me the same things since the morning, and while I appreciate everyone's camaraderie with each other, I sense that you know something that might help me with this case and bring justice to the dead. Won't you help me?"

Daigo was conflicted. He was scared that revealing things would get him in trouble. He had managed to survive the previous interrogation, but he wasn't sure if another refusal would be safe for him. What if the ANBU-nin were offended by his silence and took a more forceful route? Like every Leaf shinobi, he had heard stories about ANBU, and not one of them was ever remotely pleasant.

If he had that in his future, then why not cooperate and save himself from a lot of pain?

"I-I think it's Jeju Hyouma," he said.

"Tokubetsu Jōnin Fujita's second-in-command?"

He nodded.

"What makes you say that?"

"All of us live in a small township nearby. Most of us rent housing built and owned by the Daimyo; the employees at the outpost get their rent subsidised, so it's really, really cheap."

"That must be nice. I also get my rent covered," said the ANBU-nin.

"It is nice," Daigo said while thinking that the ANBU-nin was a normal man behind that mask with normal people's problems. "However, people want to own their homes, so many of us who have been here for a while have purchased land here and built on it. Until a few months ago, Chunin Hyouma was vocally against buying a house in the township and even argued with those who bought homes."

"What's his problem?"

"Well, the township is near the border, and well, there's nothing much to do here in the countryside. Chunin Hyouma's hometown is Hidden Leaf Village. He was adamant that he would never buy worthless land in the boonies and would rather pay the cheap rent while saving money so he could one day buy land back home."

Hyouma often got into frequent arguments and fights because he openly called people stupid for wasting their money.

"I'm assuming something changed?"

Daigo nodded. "Around the same time the murders started, he bought a lot of land in the township. They're building a big house—a mansion—on it. I'm sure it cost a lot of money. I heard from someone that he was thinking about buying more land and hiring farmhands to grow crops on it."

"So, you're saying that he's leaking information in exchange for money?"

"I mean, I can't be sure, but that does seem to be the case," Daigo said, unsure. He didn't have any proof of it, but Daigo had turned his tune very abruptly and thrown a lot of money at land and construction.

He flinched when the ANBU-nin put a hand on his shoulder.

"Thank you, Genin Daigo. You have done the right thing."

———

 .

Genin Itsura Naoko glared, with a cigarette in her folded arms, at the ANBU-nin standing before her. The creep had cornered her after she exited the washroom, which meant he had followed her there and was waiting for her to exit.

"What?" she asked snippily. "I have nothing more to say to you."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. I'm leaving!"

He had led her to an isolated spot to have a talk. She wanted nothing of that. She had said the things that everyone was told to say and had done her job. Whatever was happening wasn't her concern. She was a genin in the documentation section of the outpost, and the dying couriers weren't her responsibility.

"Very well."

Naoko had turned around to walk away when she heard the ANBU-nin's nonchalant voice and gritted her teeth in frustration. She turned her face to face him and asked what he wanted from her.

"Information. I heard you're in tune with the rumours and gossip around here. Some say you take full advantage of it," said the ANBU-nin. "I feel you have more of it than you're letting on. Won't you help me?"

"Well, you're wrong. I have nothing."

It bothered her that she couldn't get anything from the man. His mask hid his face, and the cloak covered his body.

People liked to talk when they didn't think it would have consequences, and she was great at making people feel comfortable sharing things with her. She had, at times, used that information to her advantage. She didn't regret it for a moment.

"You're lying, so I'm going to give you some motivation—let's say, incentive—to be more truthful," he said calmly. She felt he was looking down at her. "The report I'm going to turn in will be considered to make decisions regarding this outpost. We can agree that things have gone bad here, and even if this investigation is successful, someone is going to be held responsible for all those deaths. If I'm unable to find anything, I can assure you that there will be sweeping changes around. And I might just slip in your name in there for hiding information, and who knows, what might happen after that. You bought a home a year back in the township, right? I'm sure you don't want to be forced to leave it."

"But the murders aren't my department's responsibility," Naoko yelled.

The ANBU-nin didn't respond and just stood there until she couldn't buckle and asked what he wanted to know. She had built a life that she liked and didn't want to suffer through an unwanted drastic change.

"I don't know anything about these murders, I promise. It's not my department. Yes, there's a lot of buzz, but everyone has been stressed because we have nothing that might help. When Fujita announced that you were coming, it only made things worse," she said before pulling out another cigarette. She needed more to calm her nerves.

"Tell me about Chunin Jeju Hyouma," he asked.

"What about him?"

"I heard he spent a significant amount of money to buy land in the township after shitting on the idea for the longest time."

"Ah, you know about that."

"Did that money perchance come from leaking information about the courier?"

Naoko took a puff and looked around to confirm if they were alone. "That money didn't come from leaking information," she said.

"No?"

"It came from smuggling and helping merchant houses save on taxes."

"Oh? He's taking bribes," said the ANBU-nin.

Naoka thought she heard a hint of disappointment in his voice.

"Yeah, that guy is definitely pocketing bribes. I mean, I can't prove it because I'm not in charge of his finances. Even if he ignores his land purchase, that guy used to brag about saving money and being financially smart, but he visits the big town almost every weekend, and I was told by someone who has seen him multiple times at a cabaret bar with the top girls by his side. He hides it well, but that guy loves to spend money."

"Very good, Genin Naokoa. See, you do know things," ANBU-nin said. "Let's talk more."

She had taken advantage of things people had told her.

If that would save her from the schemes of the ANBU-nin, she would give him everything he wanted.

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