Chương 525: INTERLUDE_13.12 (525)

Perched at the sunny edge of the concrete terrace, Nenro sat at a table of a rooftop café that offered him a balcony view of the midday market bustle below. It was a simple wrought-iron construction, shaded by a canvas umbrella that gently snapped in the afternoon breeze. He absentmindedly fingered the lip of his glass covered in condensation as he took in the cobblestone pedestrian street below that was a vibrant, moving mosaic. The shoppers and lunch-goers drifted seamlessly between stalls and shops.

The rich aroma of spices and fresh citrus drifted upward, mingling with the hum of bargaining below and the chatter behind him. It was a perfect place to get lost in one's thoughts. He turned at the sound of footsteps to see the host who had previously led him to his table bringing along a man in his early thirties dressed in a semi-formal sleeveless vest over a shirt and pants, whereas Nenro was dressed more casually in a flower-patterned haori jacket over a long linen tunic.

"It's nice to meet you, Genin Nenro." The man sat down, quickly ordered something from the menu, and offered his compliments to the host on the atmosphere of the café with a charming smile that made him seem genuinely friendly and outgoing. It was a very different impression from what Nenro was expecting from ANBU.

"Thank you for taking the time to meet me here," said the man who claimed to be an ANBU liaison.

"How do I know you are who you claim to be?" Nenro asked. The liaison smiled.

"A completely valid question. Don't worry, the legitimacy of this will be proven when you walk to the front entrance of the ANBU Headquarters, and they allow you in." Nenro considered the man for a moment.

"This is real then?" he asked.

"Rest assured, this is as real as it gets." Three days ago, Nenro was cooking dinner in the evening when the phone rang. Masaaki picked up the call and said it was for him, and the caller didn't identify themselves. So, Nenro was surprised when the person on the line claimed to be from ANBU and wanted to meet regarding an opportunity, if he was interested.

"You were brought to our attention when you pulled that stunt during the ROOT eradication raid. That was some impressive high-pressure work you did there, Genin Nenro." Nenro thinned his lips.

"That got me an official reprimand." Of course, that was completely expected. They had snuck their way into a position that they had no part in. It was a blatant defiance of proper orders from the jōnin and had potentially put a mission-critical task at risk. Even though it was on Okubo Momoe's orders—and she had claimed complete responsibility as promised—Nenro and Masaaki had been truthful during their closed-door hearings that they knew what they were getting themselves into and weren't deceived.

Although both of them lost six months of pay, they weren't punished severely. It was a slap on the wrist considering Nenro's base pay was only a small part of his income, as the majority of it came from the missions he took; Masaaki, on the other hand, had his Akimichi clan stipend, which was more than enough for him. The only thing that hurt was that it was a mark on his official record slated to be there forever.

"Which has benefited you greatly," the liaison smirked.

"You have been very busy recently." However, the mark on his record only stung a little because instead of ruining his reputation, Nenro had become more desirable to many chūnin who wanted someone capable of working under pressure—and successfully going against ROOT agents inside their base was a great showing of that—and had come to hire him for missions. Nenro had wanted to go on a break.

The raid and the hearings had been stressful, and he wished to relax, but the newfound attention brought in opportunities too valuable to go unrealised, so instead of taking a break, he got right into it. Very few genin ever participated in B-rank missions. Over the past two years, Nenro had been on eight B-rank missions—three in the first year, and five in the second—something that was usually only reserved for genin working under a jōnin, or well-connected clan kids, or genin who were soon going to be chūnin.

But he had managed to do it, and it had been a long and arduous road of building a reputation and doing spotless work. He thought he had done well. However, in the two months after the raid, he had been on three B-rank missions with a discussion about a possible fourth. He was going on B-rank missions as though he was a prized and talented student with a great future, aggressively being backed by his jōnin teacher. The reprimand on his record? It was the best deal of his life.

"I'll cut to the chase, Genin Nenro," the liaison said after his drink was served.

"ANBU is interested in you. We like what you've done up till now, so we would like you to test out to see if we are going to be a good fit." He retrieved a scroll from his person and placed it between them on the table; the ANBU insignia sat atop it as a seal.

"Of course, your participation is voluntary. We don't force people who don't want to work with us."

"So, if I get in, I'm free to leave at any time?" The liaison laughed.

"We do demand commitment, Genin Nenro. If you join, you'll be expected to serve the term."

"And how long is that?" The liaison tapped his finger on the scroll.

"Show up, and we will answer all the questions pertaining to your employment." He finished the rest of his drink and got up.

"All the information is in the scroll… I do hope you join us, Genin Nenro. The Hidden Leaf needs shinobi like you in ANBU, protecting the village and country against threats…" This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. And then the charming man was gone, paying the bill on his way out. ———. It was all real.

Nenro was convinced when he passed through multiple guard checkpoints and walked into the ANBU Headquarters without getting stabbed, and he now sat in front of two masked ANBU operatives. One of them introduced himself as Tapir.

"We will expedite your promotion. If you pass our recruitment, you'll be a chūnin by the end of this month," Tapir suddenly said as he explained why joining ANBU was worth it and detailed its benefits.

"Complete transparency, Genin Nenro—your promotion is already in the works; you'll be a chūnin regardless of whether you join us or not, but because of the stunt you pulled, the village can't see you promoted so soon after the actions that earned you a reprimand.

"According to the estimates, they'll wait for another six months before approving your promotion; add another month to complete the formalities and procedures." Nenro was stunned. The chūnin promotion didn't surprise him; he knew that it would come one day or another, but being told that he was locked in for it hit his mind and body, and it took him a moment to speak up. He cleared his throat when he felt the two operatives staring at him. They were wearing masks, but he could tell that they were smiling.

Next, they talked about ryo and mission point compensation. It was fair, as he would be starting at a higher pay grade than newly promoted chūnin, but he was sure he would have much higher compensation if he were a regular chūnin. However, he got something in return just as valuable, if not more. For a civilian-born shinobi, who wasn't even born in the Hidden Leaf Village, an ANBU pedigree would resolve many of the shortcomings in his background.

"I'm interested," he said.

"People rarely aren't," Tapir said with a smile in his voice. ———. Sitting in a room for four hours with nothing to do really got the brain thinking. As part of the ANBU recruitment test, Nenro was left alone in a room with pictures on the wall.

At first, they were seemingly random—pictures of a seating area, a grand wooden gate with brass hoops, an old table with a spread of vegetables sprayed with water, a movie poster, and many more—but then he recognised one of them, and suddenly he realised all of them were places he knew. The seating area belonged to the hospital clinic where Ai worked. The wooden gate with brass hoops was the entrance to an Akimichi training facility. The old table with vegetables belonged to his grocer.

The focus of the movie poster wasn't on the poster, but the frame that hung in Taro's favourite cinema hall. ANBU had looked into his life and immediately recognised what was important to him. They were trying to rattle him, and it worked before he managed to calm himself down. The subtly terrifying pictures slowly lost their effect, and the silence with nothing to do got him thinking. Why did he want to join ANBU? He wasn't seen as a young genius, but he had built a reputation as a reliable and competent shinobi.

Once he became a chūnin, B-rank missions would become common, and he would even eventually lead missions. He had spent the past five years building everything, from connections to skill to experience, brick-by-brick with his own two hands and hard work, and it had given him the freedom to pivot if he wanted. Why was he throwing away the hard work of five years—building from nothing to something he was proud of—for the sake of joining ANBU? The silence made his motivations clear to him.

He was a civilian-born shinobi who wasn't even born in the Hidden Leaf Village and thus didn't attend the village's shinobi academy. Sometimes he didn't feel like he belonged. Masaaki had the Akimichi as the umbrella over his head; he had even gained the attention of Akimichi Choza. Ai had her education as an iryō-nin, who were cherished by the village; Doctor Oishi was also invested in her growth as her mentor. Taro had both of his highly successful parents supporting him.

Takuma had built a genuine relationship with Lady Uchiha and could one day join the Uchiha clan if he put aside the clan's past treatment of him. If Nenro could be part of ANBU, he would have something that would help create a foothold for him in the Hidden Leaf Village. But was it that important? Hadn't he built enough connections with a variety of people from the Genin Corps to various departments to various clans?

He was sure if he wanted to leverage those relationships, he could get himself a comfortable position. The simple truth was that Nenro didn't want to settle for a comfortable position by leveraging his connections. He wanted to do more; he wanted to be more. He wanted to be the one people came to so he could help them gain something. He had joined Okubo Momoe's civilian-born shinobi group; they had been growing steadily. People networked with each other, shared information to help each other.

The chūnin of the group, like Momoe, took the genin on good missions when they could have sold the slots to clan shinobi. They had even established a fund by pooling some resources for various purposes like special training and gatherings. It was a fledgling organisation, but he saw the vision and potential. They didn't share blood like clans, but they could be united by the lack of that shared blood. It could become a support structure for those who deserved it but lacked it.

Nenro recalled his third day in the Hidden Leaf Village. It was utterly nerve-wracking, as it was the first time he had seen a jōnin—the pinnacle of their kind, the dream of all shinobi—only for that esteemed man to reject him, Ai, and Masaaki, and later that same day, select a team of clan kids, none of whom were even close to attaining a chūnin promotion. Apparently, a bunch of country hicks would never be good enough. Nenro didn't want help from a support structure.

He wanted to be strong enough that he could be the support structure for those who needed it. To be a jōnin was a grand dream, something Nenro hadn't set his sights on, but he could still guide new genin who had been called to the Hidden Leaf Village right after graduation because they were the best in their respective academies.

For the young children who were away from their homes for the first time and didn't know anyone in the busy and bustling village, he wanted to give them some direction—something he and many others had lacked. In the silence of the room constructed to intimidate him, Nenro decided that he was joining ANBU for himself, but also for others. Only by helping himself be the best version of himself could he help others. The slot in the door opened, and a booklet flopped to the floor.

He picked it up and realised it was a questionnaire with pages upon pages of multiple-choice questions. Nenro read through them and quickly realised that if he answered them honestly, he would give ANBU insight into him. They wanted to know him. If he wanted ANBU to select him, he would have to make himself as attractive as possible. Nenro looked at the pictures. He couldn't blatantly lie; they had clearly observed him, so he didn't know what they knew and didn't.

"—Half truths make for the best lies, Nenro. A little bit of embellishment goes a long way—" Nenro recalled the words of the first friend he had made upon coming to the Hidden Leaf Village. He looked up at the wall and realised that Takuma was the only close friend that they didn't have a photo related to. Perhaps ANBU didn't clock him because he was so busy. Nenro picked up the pen and began lightly embellishing truths about himself to present the best version of himself.