Sitting while sinking into his couch Haruto couldn't believe what he had just done.
'....how was my thinking speed so fast before?' Haruto wondered.
He still remembered how he'd analysed the shadows of the mini couple making single people eat dog food being their boss and then 'calculated' the exact angle to push him after pulling his pants down so that he'd fall on the girl's knee and get his balls crushed.
'Hmm…'
Haruto lazily opened his eyes and stared at his hand that was held stretched out above his face.
'Am I some sort of genius?' Haruto wondered with a small smile showing up on his face.
'I have a body that heals wounds, and a mind that runs so fast that it'd put a supercomputer to shame..'
'No wonder I was able to understand everything so easily in that book before!'
'It turns out I'm once in a milleni- (Hashirama, Madara), sixty yea- (Minato) twenty ye- (Kakashi), twelve yea- (Itachi), fi- five yea- (Neji)...'
'Am I a genius?'
Haruto closed his eyes silently and put his thoughts aside before succumbing to the respite of sleep.
Waking up the next day Haruto quickly scrambled up some breakfast in the form of a heavy plate of omelet rice garnished with vegetables boiled in salted water and later mixed in with the omelet.
'Hmm…can glowing food be accomplished in this world?'
Images of people eating food and blowing everything out flashed in Haruto's mind as he enjoyed stuffing his mouth before gulping everything and quickly packing a bag that he decided to take along with him to his new job.
'Notebook. Check!'
'Random Pens. Check!'
'Tissues! Check!'
'A book to pass time while I can slack off!! Check!'
Haruto found himself whistling with joy as he walked through the busy bustling streets of the new world he had arrived in.
'Megumin…any advice for new adventurers!?'
'Hmm…advice? If anyone gives you trouble, blow them up!!'
'I see…' Haruto nodded sagely, 'Solid advice! That way I can complete the mission sooner! And since I'm already a genius, once I have your talent in fire release, I'll become stronger even faster!'
Looking down at the address on his recruitment form, Haruto finally managed to locate the building after asking a few ninja casually strolling by.
'Why're they giving me a weird pitying stare?'
'Are they pitying me because I have to work so soon because of my lack of talent!??'
'Hmpf! These mere mortals know not how high this one's talent reaches!! I'll pass them by in but a few days and then the entire shinobi world will tremble at my name!'
'Zehahahahahah~!-'
"-Ahem!" A cold cough interrupted Haruto's overactive imagination, his face quickly calming but failing to suppress the weird smile trying to show itself on his face.
As soon as Haruto's eyes met the person who'd interrupted him though, his entire being calmed.
'Hmm…?'
Haruto couldn't figure out what was wrong, but something about the person in front of him felt 'not right'.
It was as if he was staring at someone or something that had given up smiling a long time ago.
As if it were but a distant dream.
A frown settled on Haruto's face but he quietly pulled out his stamped application form from his bag and handed it over to the person in front of him.
'That's the Konoha headband?' Haruto thought, his eyes lingering on the headband the ninja had around his forehead for a moment, before it slipped down to the person itself.
The man's eyes scanned through the paper so fast Haruto felt like he'd just skimmed through it.
But-
"I see. Hayashi-san. Please go to room three-b, it's on the third floor, on the right as soon as you enter. That's where the I.T. department handles its newly recruited administrative staff."
"I understand." Haruto nodded and just as he was about to leave the man held his hand, his grip was tighter than Haruto would've liked but Haruto turned back slowly with a questioning look to see what it was about.
"I'd advise you not to go ahead with accepting this application."
"Huh?" Haruto was confused for a second, "What? Why?"
The man looked into Haruto's eyes for a second before sighing openly with clear disappointment.
He quickly let go of Haruto's hands and made no effort to stop him anymore.
Feeling that something was not quite right, Haruto wanted to leave immediately.
But knowing that they were quite literally at the heart of the village, he knew that no weird shenanigans could take place without everyone else knowing about it.
'Maybe he's just warning me about programmers who haven't showered for a long time due to overwork? And that it stinks up there?'
Haruto walked calmly towards the stairs closest to him, his guard up, but the guard of an ungraduated academy student wasn't much to guard against anything to begin with, and so he made sure to hold onto one of the pens in his bag to feel some safety, for he knew the legend of a man who once killed three people with a pencil, and a pen was obviously an upgrade.
Stepping on the stairs Haruto walked calmly, he half expected something to happen, someone to jump out at him to scare him but nothing happened other than his steps echoing through the long empty staircase.
He passed by each floor, where a closed door stood between the stairwell and the floor.
'They have air conditioned floors?' Haruto assumed with some surprise.
'I guess I lucked out? Working here in the summer will truly be a highlight.'
"Third floor?" Haruto asked himself, looking at the door that was shut tight before working up the courage to suppress the slight newbie nervousness before knocking on the door with a sharp rap.
The door slid open as Haruto fell into a soft daze.
"Who are you? Why did you come here? What is your purpose in coming here?"
"I am Haruto Hayashi. I was asked to come here by the guy waiting at the entrance. I am here to take my position as the Konoha I.T. Databook Keeper. I am happy that the floors are air conditioned and would love to work longer hours here during summ-"
"That's enough." Another voice interrupted before Haruto felt a soft touch on his shoulder as something within him audibly cracked before shattering like glass.
"Huh!?" Haruto exclaimed in surprise.
Two shinobi stood around Haruto.
He never realised they'd come there. All he remembered seeing was the door opening before he blacked out.
'What the F*ck!!!!!' Haruto screamed mentally before Megumin quickly interrupted and filled him in.
'...'
'I see…so I was put under a genjutsu…was it a test?'
"Tsk." the ninja standing in front of Haruto clicked his tongue with visible disgust. "Can't believe he didn't even break that silly little trick."
"Don't go too harsh on him Daichi. He didn't even realise he was in a genjutsu, forget about breaking it." The ninja standing behind Haruto said while squeezing Haruto's shoulder softly and sighing again.
Surprisingly, even though the ninja behind him had a soft squeaky voice, indicating his young age, he seemed to hold more authority among the two.
"Erm…did I fail?" Haruto asked softly amidst their conversation wondering if he'd have to go back home now.
The shinobi guarding the door, Daichi gave Haruto a fierce look, causing him to shiver a little before he spoke in a tone laced with annoyance.
"Who even sent you here… you're too weak to do any job near the holding area. You'd get knocked out and turned into fertilizer in three seconds flat. And that's only because among those who are currently in, three seconds is the fastest they can escape their binds if something goes wrong."
Haruto failed to comprehend.
'Fertilized? Me? Three seconds?'
'Are they talking about some precious cargo they're holding in their inventory which could be targeted by other shinobi who might dump them somewhere and turn them into fertilizer?'
'So these guys are maintaining a small farm out back? I get it. This must be the true test!'
"Oh! You're into taking care of flowers, vegetables and stuff! I understand. Don't worry. While I might not have a body that looks like it can handle-"
Before Haruto could even finish, Daichi turned around and started walking away while the shinobi behind him pushed him ahead.
"Follow him. We'll take you to your work area. Not many …civilians? like you join us at this department. But since you're here anyway, it means that you have the courage to face the darkness in your heart." the shinobi behind Haruto said, pushing him slightly to walk quickly.
Even though he didn't quite catch much of the meaning, Haruto nodded anyway and continued walking into the long hallway that was connected to the stairwell.
The lights strung up on the ceiling were bright, causing Haruto to squint for a second to adjust but what he saw after left him slightly confused.
'Huh?'
'Strange…was the building curved on the outside?'
The walls on both sides were made of cement bricks and curved rather cleanly indicating that the building was likely shaped like a cylinder.
Haruto frowned but didn't question it much and simply followed his boss and his other boss who was guiding him from behind with a hand on his shoulder.
The walk was long and Haruto kept moving along as he wondered what his first assignment would be.
'What do you think, Megumin?' Haruto asked calmly but Megumin stayed silent for some strange reason.
Thinking she was just giving him time to adjust to his new job, Haruto continued walking while listening to his superiors.
Haruto didn't know how long it was before he found himself in front of a new door.
"-you listening!?" A finger snapped in front of Haruto's eyes causing him to blink quickly.
His eyes already focused on Daichi's face lit up with a spark as Haruto emptied his mind of distractions and spoke calmly.
"Of course I'm listening!" Haruto nodded eagerly before he recounted everything he'd heard during their short walk.
"My job is to log the entry and exit of any and all shinobi that come to visit and check on the designated holding rooms."
Daichi's eyes squinted as if he was trying to figure something out before he nodded.
"Alright. This will be your office. Your colleagues are inside and you can decide your shift and job routines with them. Once you figure that out you can start immediately. He will be here to take you to the holding area and introduce you to the general emergency protocols."
Daichi said pointing at the shinobi behind Haruto and quickly walked away after that.
Haruto just stared at him for a second before the shinobi behind him squeezed his shoulder to get his attention.
"I will be here in a few hours, so be sure you're prepared for it."
Haruto turned around and for the first time looked at the teenager behind him who had accompanied him all this way.
It was 'definitely' just an ordinary person.
He had white hair, his mask covered everything below his eyes, and his shinobi headband covered his left eye.
But he was smiling strangely. It was as if all this was just casual talk for him but there was still a sense of lingering concern that remained in his only visible eye.
Haruto kept his calm.
"Yes. Thank you." Haruto said, keeping his words short, feeling confused.
He couldn't bring himself to be more proactive since he wasn't supposed to know who Kakashi was since he was a newborn when the war ended and in the academy after that with no parents to tell him about tales of well known shinobi.
'At this point he should've been in root? Or maybe Hiruzen was already targeted by Danzo and Kakashi defected back to ANBU? But why isn't he in the ANBU then? Why here?' Haruto wondered, but with no way to get answers to his questions he left it at that.
"Alright." The teenager said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. He was about to turn around but he paused for a second as he explained, "My name's Kakashi. Hatake Kakashi. You'll need to inform your manager that I'm going to be taking you on your introductory tour of the holding area to let you get acquainted with your job."
Haruto nodded and watched as Kakashi disappeared down the same corridor he'd just arrived.
Several thoughts about the place he was in, the person he'd just met, the I.T department, the timeline, clouded Haruto's mind.
'Why is he in a random I.T. building in the village? Are they keeping some expensive state secrets on some server here? Is he part of the ANBU force guarding it? Maybe it's a pretense to keep him in the village since we're lacking strong combatants right now and need someone to guard the village in case something unexpected happens?'
But he left the questions and turned towards the towering door in front of him, his hand on the rather cool handle that gave him a sense of 'sweet summer' relief.
A smile blossomed on Haruto's face.
The door handle turned with a soft click and Haruto entered a chilly room.
"Oh! This place is air conditioned! What a nice surprise, it must be a dream to work here during the summers!" Haruto exclaimed excitedly.
The heads of every person in the room lifted up from their desks to look at Haruto.
They froze for a moment before they all smiled back.
"Of course it is!" one guy shouted from a corner.
"This place is the best! You get a bonus every new year as long as you don't go anywhere else during working hours!"
"So how did you get a bonus then Tanaka? The only time you're here is when you're eating lunch."
"Haha~ I Tanaka don't need to work like you plebeians!! I only take care of the printers!!!"
Hearing a soft sigh from beside him, Haruto spotted a stiff office lady standing beside him shaking her head while looking at everyone else in the room.
"You must be the new hire." The woman stated.
Haruto nodded.
"Good. My name is Shinakawa Rumi." Shinakawa said while handing over a bundle of files to Haruto.
"Your job for today is to get used to how that magical box called a computer works. And for the rest of the week, you're supposed to finish scanning these documents under the scanner with Tanaka's help before entering them in Logger in the proper format and later print out the result and file it in the paper room behind that door. Although, the filing can wait for now until you get used to everything else." Shinakawa spoke quickly, making Haruto have to try and focus to follow her.
"Anything else?" Shinakawa asked.
"Erm…" Haruto looked down at his files, unsure for a moment before looking back up and asking, "Where do I work?"
"Oh! Totally forgot about that." Shinakawa nodded apologetically, "That desk near that door there."
Haruto looked at where Shinakawa was pointing and nodded before asking another question since the door looked rather suspicious.
"Where are the washrooms?"
But Shinakawa's hand never moved away from the place she was pointing earlier.
'...seriously.' Haruto gave her a deadpan stare which caused her to adjust her glasses for a second as she explained.
"Due to reasons, the workload recently has increased, because of which you and a few new hires were picked up to help us. We might get reassigned to new rooms if we perform well. For now, this is what you get."
Haruto nodded. Not saying anything else. His deadpan reaction was already unprofessional, he didn't want to come off as a fussy intern.
With a short nod of acceptance, Haruto quickly walked up to his desk. The strong smell of disinfectants quickly invaded his nose causing it to clog up which made Haruto's feel rather nostalgic, like he'd just inhaled some glue.
But he held on.
'No amount of nostalgia will distract me from presenting a perfect work today!!!' Haruto boldly proclaimed in his mind.
He held strong as he calmly placed the files onto his desk and distracted himself with a computer.
'An I.T job!! Here I come!!!' Haruto exclaimed, turning on the bulky crt plasma monitor whose display flickered with its distinct high pitched ping sound as it turned on.
Not even a moment later, Tanaka slid across to Haruto's chair since his desk was nearby as he whispered in a low voice since everyone had gone back to focus on working.
"I'll be going around to do my daily rounds on the printers soon, but if you need anything-" Tanaka said, pausing as he reached over Haruto to pull a desk drawer and pull out a thick book. "-it's all here. How to use the scanner. The Logger. And the printer. Make sure you read it up before you use anything. As long as you don't manage to break anything I can fix it even if something goes wrong, so don't worry about doing anything wrong."
Haruto nodded and before he could even say his thanks Tanaka nodded before quickly sliding back to his work station with a quick bye.
Haruto stared blankly at the windows xp wallpaper on his screen for a while. His eyes dazed as he was suddenly hit with a wave of memories of his old world.
He eventually broke out of his thoughts when no screensaver like pipes played on its own after even a full minute of inactivity.
'Hmm…'
'Windows XP huh…that brings back an era…'
Leaving the 'guide' book on the side for now, Haruto started messing around with the system as his confusion grew more and more.
'The entire operating system is only three hundred kilo bytes?'
'There's literally nothing in here other than a program connected to the scanner, the Logger program and a program connected to a printer…'
'And why is it still so slow!?' Haruto cursed as he looked at the time it took to open the scanner program.
It took a minute and a half for the pc to become functional after he double clicked the icon and three minutes for the program to fully open and stop showing the loading icon as the cursor.
Without any way to inspect the hardware specifications Haruto found himself frustrated.
'Did frontend devs make this shit!?'
'Why didn't they just stick to ms dos style if everything was going to be so slow!?'
But he tried looking at the bright side.
'Ok. So now I know that I need to invest my money into whatever company's making pc's since it's bound to get stronger and only blow up from here.'
'Easy money.'
And with that, Haruto started to study the softwares he was expected to use and quickly started his work once he was confident he could handle everything just fine.
***
"Kakashi!!!" Kushina shouted excitedly.
"I wonder if he still has Obito's sharingan…" Minato whispered but everyone clearly heard it causing him to freeze.
"You know him!? Did he steal that sharingan then!? Why did you let him keep what rightfully belongs to the Uchiha!!!" Izuna asked indignantly, his face a frown as he looked right at Minato causing the usually sunny man to frown with sorrow for the first time in a while as he came down from the high of identifying his disciple and a person on the outside.
"Yes…I know him. He was my student." Minato revealed to everyone present. "Kakashi lost his father at the age of six and that was when he decided to graduate from the Academy to become a Genin."
"He went on several missions but because he lost his teammates too often as the tension of war was ignited and unpredictable skirmishes claimed their lives more often than not, he turned cold and unfeeling."
"He was strong but he was slowly turning into a shell of a human. And especially since his father, one of the pillars of the village, took his own life after a mission went wrong…"
Tobirama and Hashirama frowned at that.
"What was that mission about?" Hashirama immediately asked, his tone rather strange since in his eyes no person who could readily take his own life from disappointment would ever do a thing that would require such a punishment in the first place.
Tobirama also leaned in, his ears open.
Minato tried explaining but paused and sighed, "...well no one really knew much, but from the rumours circulating the village I learnt that while I was away during a mission, Kakashi's father, Hatake Sakumo, also known as Konoha's White Fang-"
[Ding! An available soul was mentioned! Summoning Konoha's White Fang, Hatake Sakumo.]
Being forced to pause Minato and everyone else looked with wide eyes as merely a few feet away from them a bright light coalesced into a humanoid figure before it turned into one that some of them recognised.
"No way…" Kushina whispered as she tightened her grip around Minato's hands who was open mouthed himself.
"Huh?" The person looked around confused before he spotted Hashirama first, Tobirama next, Mito after that and finally Minato and Kushina.
"....erm….what?"
***
Loki looked at the first few pages of the data he'd scanned.
'Hmm…'
'What is this data for?' Haruto pondered as the rest of the pages kept scanning at a slow pace and uploading into the weirdly large storage space of his pc.
Yes, the storage space was very large, about thirty gigabytes.
Why?
Well, Haruto didn't understand.
As for why things were like this, or if someone was playing a prank on him on the first day? Haruto didn't have Tanaka to ask since he'd already left, and the others too seemed to be busy doing something similar.
Whenever he saw someone use the scanner, they'd just continue doing other things for a while, like bundling up previously printed files that had been delivered to them by someone etc.
With no printed files for now, Haruto had some free time to go over the data in his pc and analyze what it was truly about.
'There seem to be purchases from several stores made by the village.'
'Things like herbs, incense sticks for some reason, and electricity bills.'
'Huh…so we're dealing with the daily record keeping of the village?'
'...but.'
Haruto's face scrunched up in confusion.
'What does it have to do with holding rooms then?'
'Where even is the data about the inventory in the holding rooms?'
Nevertheless, Haruto continued studying the purchase records some more and made a few rough calculations.
'So the village bleeds roughly seventy seven million ryo each day.'
'I wonder how much they make then…'
'And given that these records don't have information about any sensitive departments I bet the expenditure is even more egregious.'
The biggest expenses in the records came from the shinobi housing region.
There were currently too many orphans in the village. And as such with each one of them having their own house to boot, the village was bleeding six million ryo each day just to keep the houses running with things like electricity, gas, and water.
The other major expense was basic ninja tools.
That too went to the orphans in the village.
'Why don't they just resharpen the tools instead of supplying the academy students with new tools each month?' Haruto asked, puzzled but then his eyes widened as a vague memory showed up in Haruto's mind, a memory that was part of the original Haruto.
'No way the village is seriously that kind…' Haruto's eyes widened as he remembered selling the blunt kunai and shuriken at a low price to fund his own daily expenses.
A weird kind of trust and pride filled Haruto's chest suddenly.
'Maybe…all that about the 'Will of Fire' is not really wrong?'
'After all they already give the students free houses. Free tools that they can sell off for funding their own daily expenses. Even the academy tuition is waived for the students. Plus they're given a stipend for as long as they're attending the academy…doesn't it at least deserve some loyalty?'
'Hmmm…food for thought.' Haruto nodded but before he could delve any further a voice called out to him from the front of the room.
"Hayashi Haruto. Your assigned handler is here."
It was Shinakawa, she was standing by the open door waiting for Haruto.
'Ah..the holding area.'
Haruto quickly made sure everything was right for the scanning to continue uninterrupted as long as he wasn't here and quickly left.
Shinakawa had already walked back to her desk and so Haruto freely left the room and spotted Kakashi waiting for him calmly.
The teenager gave Haruto what he assumed was a kind smile as before putting his hand on his shoulder once again as he guided him while talking.
"So are you prepared?"
Haruto nodded eagerly.
He didn't know why a person like Kakashi was here, but leaving a good impression might help him in some way in the future, even if it wasn't the near future.
"I can't wait to get to the holding area. I went through all the data and wondered why there was no data corresponding to the holding area in there, especially since I was specially recruited for working with data regarding it."
Kakashi looked at Haruto with a slightly confused stare but Haruto didn't notice and continued speaking.
"I think it's because the others are testing me! But I'll prove my worth to them and show them that I can spend all my day working with complicated data! The village has already given much to me since my childhood! And I can't wait to pay it back by making some serious cost saving discoveries!"
Haruto had to stop talking so loudly again since he spotted Daichi standing outside a heavy looking door.
Seeing his stern gaze shut Haruto as he quietly let Kakashi guide him past the heavy gate.
As soon as Haruto stepped into the corridor beyond the heavy gates he halted. Almost instinctively, as if something about it all felt, 'not right'.
If not for the slight pressure from Kakashi's palm resting on his shoulder, Haruto would've forgotten to walk.
Something in his gut-
No scratch that, everything in his being told him to get out of here.
Haruto felt his gut churn as he spotted a shimmering puddle on the edge of a prison cell-like door nearby.
They continued to walk however. As if the puddle turning suspiciously more red each second wasn't of their concern.
And soon they passed by the place.
Haruto's eyes flickered into the room wondering what sort of animal butchery was being carried out so ruthlessly-
The walls were covered in 'red paint'.
Every spot on the wall had an explosive outburst of red paint as if a can of paint had been smashed into it to cause it to explode and paint the walls.
The ground was worse.
Bits and pieces of fleshy chunks hung around floating in pools of puddles that leaked out of the rooms behind bars.
"Good. You didn't stop walking." Kakashi said as he walked alongside Haruto while his hand remained on his shoulder now feeling more like a vice grip in spite of the almost gentle touch.
Haruto's mind had already shut down.
His body was simply repeating his last moves.
As they walked further, they finally passed by one of the room's behind bars.
His brain restarted, unable to believe what he'd just seen, a slight spark of hope lit up in his mind.
'Ah…there's no screaming anywhere so this is probably just animal blood and Kakashi's just playing a joke. Maybe it's just another genjutsu or something? Haha~ Yeah that's the case definit-'
A flicker of movement in the room beside them caused Haruto's eyes to spot the scene inside.
A man was hung up on chains.
Naked.
His body had lacerations that quietly and slowly caused blood to stream out of them, leaking into a short pool underneath his dangling feet.
As soon as Haruto passed the man, he unfortunately looked up.
Almost immediately, Haruto saw black squiggly symbols appear on the man's body before they turned red hot and-
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"Tsk." Kakashi clicked his tongue before pushing Haruto along further.
"He's an idiot, I already told him that moving around only makes the pain worse. Why does he keep forgetting about it? Hmm…maybe he didn't hear me the first time since he had a kunai up his hip? Nah…couldn't have been me, I'm always a professional…I guess he just hasn't had enough time to work out how those seals work…"
The words fell on deaf ears.
Haruto's mind collapsed as the prisoner's screams echoed in his ears.
His rather obvious rose tinted view of the world suddenly turned crimson.
'Ah…'
Tears filled Haruto's eyes, he didn't know why, they just did.
The 'red paint' on the walls transformed into shaky limbs out to get him, the puddles on the floor suddenly had fleshy bits floating on their surface and felt alive, twitching randomly as they walked deeper into the 'unknown', his stomach felt heavy as foul liquid flavoured his tongue.
Haruto couldn't hold it in.
Suddenly his ears started ringing, almost like the world had suddenly exploded.
His own body became hollow as he simply walked along feeling like a noodle stretched too thin.
The world swirled in front of his eyes as faint memories flashed by his mind.
'I.T.'
'Interrogation and Torture.'
Before long Haruto was seated behind a new desk.
He didn't know when but the foul liquid in his mouth was gone, where it went he didn't know, but it was gone. He was sure he hadn't puked. His jaws shut from some form of autonomous response while his mind collapsed. Maybe he drank it all? That was his best guess.
He wasn't in any condition to know right now.
"This is your spot for the next hour!" Kakashi said cheerfully before continuing to explain further as if nothing wrong was happening, "You will fill in all the required details of all the shinobi that visit this place in the next hour. The first column is their village shinobi ID, the second is the time of entry, you can refer to the table clock on the desk, the third is the cell number they will visit, and the final is the time of exit. You also need them to sign alongside them, both when they enter and exit, in this column here." Kakashi said rapidly.
A thin silence stretched for a moment.
'...Haruto.' Megumin said calmly, there was a tinge of sorrow and pity but her words still remained steady and focused.
Just as the silence was about to stretch further, Haruto's mind snapped back together-
'Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha~'
'I have already drunk the bitter medicine of truth! My eyes have opened and I have realised everything!'
'I am the Blessed of the Dark God! The God that granted me the chance to complete my ascension as an 'Author'!'
'This is but a part of my trial! And I shall overcome it to become the greatest 'Author' that has ever lived!'
'This will be legendary!'
-with a few missing pieces perhaps.
"Yes. Hatake-sama, I understood all of that. It is my sworn duty as a part of Konoha to do my very best to help the village like my parents before me did! I will make sure not a single record goes wrong or is missing. Thank you for your kind patience to teach something as simple as this to me!" Haruto said, his face holding a clean smile as he looked directly into Kakashis's only visible eye and spoke with fervent submissive authority, to an extent that even Kakashi looked a little taken aback.
He rubbed his hair for a second before he nodded, "Erm…good to know. I will be back in an hour, I've got to deal with that guy from before, so if you could, please make sure you note down the names and signatures of everyone else that comes in the meantime."
Haruto nodded and Kakashi left.
No one interrupted the screams that followed.
Allowing Haruto to peacefully firm his mind as he stared at the thick register in front of him.
The pages were smeared in blood. From simple smudges to sometimes finger prints.
Previous loggers even seemed to have had the time to doodle on the various smudges to turn them into rather cute chibi 'anime' like characters for passing the time.
But Haruto held his smile.
He held his pen.
And waited.
Waited as the clock on the table beside him slowly ticked away.