CH_119

"Tōji."

"!!!" Tōji jumped.

He saw Kokubō Kenji standing beside him…

"Captain Kenji…?" Tōji felt guilty.

"I heard you got poisoned yesterday. I wanted to visit you, but when I got to your place, no one was home. Figured you'd be at the arena." Kenji sat down beside him.

"Yeah… I wasn't too badly off, so I came to see how the exams turned out." Tōji saw no point in hiding—he took off his sunglasses and mask.

"Can you be honest with me?" Kenji asked quietly, his earlier smile gone. "To be frank—you could still get promoted to chūnin even without fighting this round. Did you intentionally try not to get promoted?"

"Didn't expect you to figure it out, Captain." Tōji scratched the back of his head—being seen through was genuinely embarrassing.

"You never showed much interest in poisons on the battlefield. I didn't think you'd suddenly take it up now. Is it about not wanting to go to the Land of Water?" Kenji lowered his voice even more on that last part.

"Captain—does the Land of Water mission require entering Kirigakure itself?" Tōji asked the key question first.

Because in the original story, Konoha had never uncovered the true situation of the "Bloody Mist Village" years later—so it stood to reason that their investigations had been complete failures.

Kenji gestured for them to find a more private spot.

After a few minutes, they arrived at an open area outside the arena…

"This is confidential—but I can tell you. The reason it's our squad is because we're going deep into Kirigakure. You, Natchi, and Neru are all especially suited for infiltration…" Kenji held nothing back this time.

"What if Kirigakure can detect every infiltrator the moment they enter?" Tōji posed a hypothetical—though in reality, that was probably exactly the case.

Seeing Kenji pause to think, Tōji added, "It's not that I'm scared because I was attacked by Kiri-nin before—it's that this is genuinely a suicide mission!"

Tōji suspected that in the original timeline, people like them—those who'd made it through the Third War—had died on these very investigation missions into Kirigakure's civil war…

Kenji didn't respond immediately. He just stared into Tōji's eyes, as if trying to read something.

"Captain—I have no reason to lie to you. But I can't explain how I know this. Just take it as some kind of unique intuition I have!" Tōji thought Kenji wouldn't screw him over, so he decided to give him a hint.

He added a bit of dramatic emphasis: "Everyone who goes into Kirigakure won't just die—they won't bring a single piece of intel back to the village!"

"You…" Kenji didn't know what to say.

Tōji thought to himself, 『So it's come to this.』

"Don't worry—I'll request someone else to go with me this time." Kenji suddenly broke into a bright smile.

"You'd still go even if it's a dead end?" Tōji actually liked this captain—apart from his slight greed, he was great in every way. "Or do you just think I'm making excuses to avoid the mission…"

"Are you willing to make your supposed precognition public? And can it even be proven?" Kenji laid out his reasoning. "Unless you can convince the entire village leadership, this mission has to be carried out by someone."

"…" Tōji felt that people in the Naruto world were too foolish—most of them were willing to sacrifice themselves!

"There's a saying—'duty calls.' You'll understand someday, Tōji." Kenji was already getting ready to leave. "I won't be watching the rest of the exams. You've all done excellently. Don't worry—your captain isn't as weak as you think!"

With that, Kenji—still carrying his "turtle shell"—turned and walked away, waving behind him with a flourish, as if he thought he looked cool.

『He's going even knowing it's a death mission…』