Chapter 121: The Questions Nobody Should Be Asking

The next morning, Ren was slouched against the padded side of the carriage with one arm resting across the open window while trees and farmland passed outside.

He sighed. “How much longer?”

One of the security men riding beside the carriage looked back. “Twenty minutes, boss. Maybe less.”

Ren let his head rest against the padding again.

Pakura was sitting opposite him with the forged transport amendment open across her knee. “You asked him the same thing a little while ago.”

“I was hoping we’d moved faster since then.”

Pakura glanced up at him for a moment, then went back to the document.

The trip should have been simple. Ren had expected to settle the transport problem, spend an hour arguing with the supplier, and be home before dinner.

Then the supplier showed him the second transport order.

It carried Ren’s commercial seal and matched the real shipment almost perfectly, right down to the supplier name, shipment number, and receiving division. The changes were small enough to pass as routine: a different arrival window, another receiving point, and a substitute employee authorized to accept the carts if the usual logistics manager wasn’t available.

Haruto’s signature sat at the bottom.

Ren looked at it again. “He transferred four months ago.”

“Which is why the supplier stopped the shipment,” Pakura said. “Any current amendment should have somebody else’s signature.”

Ren’s eyes moved to the altered receiving point. “A few weeks ago they were asking how our deliveries worked.”

Pakura nodded toward the amendment. “And now somebody’s tried to reroute one.”

Ren looked at the substitute receiving point again. “So they think they know enough to use what they learned.”

“Enough to try,” Pakura said.

The carriage passed into Konoha not long afterward. Ren watched the familiar streets replace the open road and finally folded the forged amendment before handing it back to Pakura.

By the time they turned toward the Uchiha district, he wanted a bath, food, and several uninterrupted hours in his own house.

Kushina was standing outside the main family house when the carriage stopped.

Naruto was balanced on her hip, rubbing one eye and looking thoroughly unhappy about being awake. Mikoto followed her out carrying Sasuke.

Ren had barely stepped down before Kushina started complaining.

“Your brother is going to hate my son.”

Ren looked at Naruto. “What happened?”

“He woke Itachi three times.”

“Two and a half,” Mikoto corrected.

Ren glanced toward the house. “Didn’t you say Itachi was only keeping them for a few hours?”

“That was the plan,” Mikoto said. “By the time we came back, both boys were asleep. Itachi said waking them just to carry them across the compound was stupid.”

Kushina adjusted Naruto against her shoulder. “And then he spent the rest of the night waking him back up.”

“More than once,” Mikoto added.

Kushina gave her a look.

She shifted Naruto’s weight again, and as she did, her free hand rested briefly at Mikoto’s waist. Mikoto didn’t react.

Ren looked between them again. “How much sake did you two drink?”

“Enough to regret letting her into my house,” Mikoto said.

Kushina frowned. “You invited me.”

Mikoto simply looked at her.

Kushina paused. “Fine. I invited myself.”

She left Mikoto’s side, caught the front of Ren’s travel coat, and kissed him.

Ren gave her waist a squeeze while kissing her back, until Naruto reached between them and grabbed Ren’s collar. Ren ended up taking the toddler from her.

Kushina pulled back and wrinkled her nose. “You smell like the road.”

“I know.”

“Go bathe before you touch me again.”

Ren gave her waist another squeeze before letting her go.

Pakura passed them with the document case tucked under one arm. “We have work.”

Kushina reached to take Naruto back, but Mikoto stopped her. “Leave him. Sasuke will complain the second you carry him away.”

Kushina looked at Naruto, who was already reaching toward Sasuke again, and left him with Mikoto. She turned and followed Ren toward his estate instead.

Kushina followed them into the office and immediately claimed Ren’s chair, settling into it with the forged order as though she had every right to be there.

Ren stopped long enough to look at her.

“What?” she asked.

He pulled another chair over and sat down without bothering to argue.

Pakura spread the real order, the forgery, and a couple of Haruto’s older amendments across the desk.

“I compared them before we left. Whoever made this had access to the format Haruto used before his transfer.”

Ren looked over the older papers. “So they had one of these.”

“At least one.”

Kushina leaned over the desk and compared the seals herself. Most of the shipping language meant nothing to her, but even she could see how close the forgery was.

“That would fool me.”

“It nearly fooled the supplier,” Pakura said. “The signature saved us.”

A clerk appeared in the doorway and told them the archive staff were still pulling the older supplier correspondence Ren had requested.

Pakura stood. “I’ll get it.”

Ren looked up. “They can bring it.”

“I know what I’m looking for.”

She headed downstairs.

Before going upstairs, Ren sent word to both Kurenai and Kakuzu. Kurenai needed to see the forged order herself, while Kakuzu was told to bring over any surveys or outside questionnaires Ren’s businesses had answered recently, especially anything asking about procedures rather than prices.

Ren finally escaped upstairs long enough to wash off the road. When he returned, his hair was still damp and he was halfway through buttoning a clean shirt.

Kushina looked up when Ren came back into the office. Her gaze lingered on the open shirt.

Ren caught her looking. “What?”

“Come here.”

Kushina caught his shirt as soon as he came within reach and pulled him into a kiss. Ren laughed against her mouth, abandoning the buttons while her hands disappeared beneath the loose fabric.

When Kushina finally let him pull back, she was still holding his shirt.

“You disappeared for an entire night.”

“For work.”

“I know.”

She kissed him again.

Footsteps downstairs finally interrupted them.

Kushina dropped back into the chair with a quiet laugh while Ren went back to buttoning his shirt.

A servant appeared at the doorway a moment later to announce Kurenai.

“Send her in,” Ren said, still fixing the last few buttons.

Kurenai greeted Ren with a kiss and took the forged amendment he offered her.

Kushina’s eyebrow rose. Kurenai noticed, but Kushina only smiled and shifted over to make room at the desk.

Pakura returned shortly afterward with two archive boxes and set them on the desk.

“Found it.”

Ren opened the first archive box while Kurenai went through the forged amendment. She read it a second time before putting it down.

“This is different.”

Ren leaned against the edge of the desk. “How?”

“At the Academy they were still trying to learn how things worked,” Kurenai said. “They asked about the delivery entrance, watched who came to the gate, tested what happened when somebody important gave an order.”

She glanced back at the forged amendment.

“Whoever sent this already knew enough to try using it.”

Kurenai opened the folder she’d brought with her. “I went back through the older requests after your message arrived. Some of them bother me now.”

She pulled one of the clerk’s notes from the folder and put it beside the forged amendment.

“Someone claiming to be from Records asked whether a parent could authorize another person to collect a child without coming here personally. Another clerk remembers being asked what happens if a household sends a different guard than the one normally listed.”

Pakura looked up from the note. “Clan households?”

“Some of them.”

“There was a medical request too. They wanted to know how a child gets released during an emergency if the usual guardian can’t come.”

Ren frowned. “Why would a medical office need that?”

Kurenai was quiet for a moment.

“That’s what bothers me. They’re asking about the children now.”

Kakuzu joined them while they were still going through Kurenai’s notes, carrying a thick bundle of questionnaires and payment records.

“Seventeen employees answered these during paid hours,” he said as he put them on the desk. “I can’t verify half the companies that sent them.”

“After this, I’m finding out who kept answering them,” Kakuzu continued.

“Fine. What matters?”

Kakuzu separated one questionnaire from the pile. It had been sent to one of Ren’s guesthouses, with the payment record attached behind it.

The first page looked harmless enough. Room capacity, meal service, staffing—the sort of boring commercial questions managers answered without thinking much about them.

Ren turned the page.

The questions changed.

How many rooms could be cleared on short notice for visiting officials? Where would their shinobi escorts stay? Who handled a medical emergency after curfew?

Ren looked at Kakuzu.

“Who was visiting?”

“Nobody.”

Ren checked the date printed near the bottom. The questionnaire was five months old.

Pakura frowned. “Who sent it?”

“A legitimate survey firm here in the Fire Country,” Kakuzu said. “I’m tracing who hired them.”

“Keep going.”

Kakuzu nodded and took the questionnaire back.

Ren’s attention remained on the date.

Five months earlier, nobody had been coming to Konoha.

Somebody had still thought it worth asking.