Kori. Dawn of the sixth day.
Kaito had not slept that night.
That was not unusual for him—but this time, his mind was not the reason.
It was something else.
A feeling he could not name. As if the air in the village had changed in a way no one else could see, but the body knew before the mind did. As if something was approaching—not by footsteps, but by weight.
He sat on the edge of the roof, staring at the single road that entered Kori from the north.
And waited.
The man arrived with the first light.
On foot. Without haste. Like someone who already knew he would find what he had come for.
Dark clothes with no insignia. Medium height. And a face Kaito could not read—which was rare.
The man stopped in front of the house.
He did not look at the door.
He looked at the roof.
He looked at Kaito.
And said, calmly—using his name at once,
"Kaito."
Kaito did not move.
He knows my name. He came straight to the house. That means he is not searching—he already knows exactly where I am.
Who told him?
He spoke in a steady voice.
"Who are you?"
The man smiled. A faint smile that softened nothing.
"Someone who knew your mother."
The front door opened sharply.
Sato.
She stood in the doorway, eyes narrowed, one hand resting against the frame in a way that seemed casual—but Kaito noticed how tense her fingers were.
She spoke in a low, steady voice.
"I was wondering when you would come."
"Five years, Sato."
"I know how long it has been." She looked at him with eyes that hid nothing. "And I know why you waited."
The man was silent for a second.
Then he looked up again.
"Come down, Kaito. The answers you've been waiting for—this is the time."
Kaito climbed down.
He was not afraid. But he noticed everything—the way the man stood, the distance between his feet, the stillness in his gaze.
A shinobi. But one who chose not to show it.
That meant he was capable of showing much more.
He stopped in front of him and looked straight into his eyes.
"You said you knew my mother."
"Yes."
"Her name?"
The man paused for a moment—not hesitating. Measuring.
Then he said,
"Kimi. Kimi Uchiha."
The name struck Kaito's chest like a stone dropped into still water.
Uchiha.
He knew the name. He had read it in history books. The clan of the police force. The clan of the Sharingan. A family said to have vanished from Konoha years ago. The books used words like extinction. Internal purge.
They had never said anyone survived.
He looked at Sato.
Her face did not change—but her eyes confirmed what her mouth never had.
He turned back to the man.
"The Uchiha are gone."
"Most of them, yes."
"But my mother was one of them."
"Yes."
"And I—"
"Yes."
A long silence followed.
Kaito did not ask the questions an ordinary child would have asked. He did not ask why Sato had never told him. He did not ask who his father was. He did not ask whether he was in danger.
Instead, he asked,
"The men who chased her—who sent them?"
The man's gaze sharpened.
For a moment, he looked almost surprised.
"This child knows about the pursuit?"
"Who told you that?" he asked.
"No one." Kaito glanced at the small wooden box he had brought with him. Inside it was the cloth. "My mother did not leave that piece of cloth because she wanted me to remember her. She left it because she knew I would need the symbol on it someday. And anyone who leaves a symbol behind for a child who has not even been born yet... already knows they will not be there to explain it."
He took out the cloth.
"And anyone who knows that... already knows they are being hunted."
Sato closed her eyes for one brief second.
The man looked at the cloth. Then at Kaito. Then said, and for the first time there was something in his voice that almost resembled respect,
"Five years."
"Yes."
"And you reached that conclusion by yourself."
"I had a lot of time."
The man sat down on a nearby stone.
He looked toward the horizon for a moment, as if deciding how much he would say and how much he would keep.
Then he spoke.
"The symbol on the cloth is not your family's symbol. It is a seal—a fragment of a larger forbidden seal that was banned in Konoha twenty years ago." He paused. "Your mother used it on the night she escaped. That is why you are here now."
"And what does the seal do?"
He looked at Kaito directly.
"That is the question we have been trying to answer as well."
Then he added, in a quieter voice,
"Since the day you were born."
Kaito did not respond at once.
He looked toward the horizon—the same place Sato always looked when she did not want him to see her face.
Then he said,
"So you did not come here to tell me the truth. You came because you need us."
It was not a question.
The man did not deny it.
And for the first time in five years, Kori felt very small.