Chapter 144

The short shinobi in the bandana managed to dodge the first dozen attacks, but the shuriken and senbon flying at high speed first grazed his shoulder and then turned him into a real pincushion. Taking a quick glance around, I confirmed that my assistance wasn't needed—Tsume was finishing off her opponent, Kuromaru had already bitten the throat of a kunoichi who had exposed herself, and Rotaro was successfully holding off his shinobi with his sword—he carefully pulled a kunai out of his wound and started treating his leg.

By the time my teammates dealt with the remaining members of the Iwagakure team that had tried to slip past the front line, I was able to stand properly without blocking my nerves. Just think—I managed to get hit by a kunai from a lowly chunin while most jounin couldn't even reach me…

"Ryo, are you alright?"

The worried faces of Tsume and Rotaro made me feel even worse—they were used to me looking after them, and here I was, injured against two chunins.

"Yes, I'm fine now," I nodded to them, pulling out a scroll for bodies from the vest pouch.

"Stop zoning out and pay more attention to what's happening around you," the kunoichi frowned, poking me in the side with her knuckles. "If the opponents had been more serious, that mistake could have cost you your life."

"Sorry, guys," I sighed, pushing my glasses up to my forehead and rubbing my face with my palms. "I'm focused now."

"You should have done that when we first started patrolling," Ishii shook his head.

Fortunately, they didn't continue to chastise me, and we could seal the bodies and continue our route. As I jumped from stone to stone, I regretted that my last decent pair of pants had also developed a hole, meaning I'd have to mend them in the evening, as there were no replacements left. Though some fighters wore even worse clothing—it didn't affect their combat skills.

The response letters only arrived on the ninth day, by which time I was already fraught with anxiety and had avoided approaching the more delicate patients, as just yesterday I had nearly killed a boy due to a trembling hand. The letters had arrived, but not for me.

The only consolation was that no death notices had come, unlike for some in the camp. The tightly wound spring of anxiety began to slowly unwind—if they weren't dead, they could always be healed, even if it required dismantling a couple of bodies. Still, the uncertainty was stressful.

Meanwhile, my workload increased, and not due to enemy actions—upon receiving the death notices, a couple of shinobi had committed suicide. As I later learned from Chifuyu, one had lost his wife and year-old child, while the other had lost his entire family, including parents and a bunch of younger siblings. Another had been subdued by his teammates halfway and was brought to the infirmary.

There would have been a fourth case, but while anxiously pacing around the camp, I managed to restrain a young fool who had tried to slit her own throat and handed her over to her arriving friends. Although Saya's status was still unclear, I managed to learn some details about the attack on Konoha—the assistant allowed me to read part of her letter, which described the circumstances of the event.

Two hundred Iwagakure shinobi somehow managed to sneak through the territory of Amegakure, bypassing less stringent patrols on the border of the countries. In small groups, they reached the territory of Ho no Kuni, where, avoiding attention, they proceeded towards the well-known location of the Hidden Leaf Village. Given the ongoing conflict, there were significantly fewer internal patrols than in peacetime, so the infiltrators were not detected until they were almost at the village walls.

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