Chapter 127: A Sinister Man
"Looks like... things are getting messy again."
Imai Kenta sighed helplessly as the surrounding mist grew denser and more suffocating.
He was starting to notice a pattern—whenever he found himself with Uchiha Kei and that Hyūga woman, Ayaka, disaster seemed to follow without fail.
Last time, it was a near-death suicide mission followed by a bridge explosion. And now? They were surrounded by a squad of Mist Anbu in the middle of nowhere.
Kenta didn't bother trying to make sense of it anymore—he couldn't even if he tried.
All he hoped for now was that Kei would stick to his future job as Vice Captain of the Konoha Military Police, and stop dragging his teammates out on these top-secret, totally-not-legal missions under mysterious pretenses.
With a resigned breath, Kenta silently drew his ninja blade.
His hands were clammy, his posture stiff with tension.
Suddenly—
The sound of wind slicing through the mist jolted him.
He spun around instantly and swung his blade toward the sound.
But his sword met only air.
There was no enemy—only the thick fog swirling in silence.
Instead of calming him, the lack of contact made Kenta even more jittery.
His nerves were stretched tight—like a bowstring about to snap.
"Whizz! Whizz! Whizz!"
At that moment, a barrage of kunai whistled through the fog from all directions.
Kenta had no idea where they were coming from.
Desperate, he thrashed wildly with his sword, slashing and spinning in blind panic.
The sound of steel clashing with steel rang out in chaotic echoes.
To his credit, Kenta's luck held—he managed to deflect most of the incoming kunai.
But his misfortune followed close behind—he couldn't see the exact trajectories, and a few blades still grazed his arms and legs, drawing shallow cuts.
His breathing grew heavier, loud and ragged.
He looked like someone who had just crawled out of death's grasp.
Yet the fear in his eyes was undeniable. It was growing—uncontrolled and raw.
Kenta swallowed hard, eyes darting left and right in paranoid alertness.
Every rustle, every faint breeze sent his body jerking around, trying to locate threats that might not even exist.
Sweat streamed down his forehead.
He was nearing his limit—physically and mentally.
The enemies were invisible, the fog was thick, and the entire atmosphere was twisted, like a nightmare closing in.
"How pitiful."
A voice whispered right in Kenta's ear.
"Allow me to put you out of your misery."
"Who's there?!"
Imai Kenta screamed hysterically, swinging his ninja blade violently behind him—
And once again, he struck nothing but empty air.
"Is this the level of Konoha's shinobi? Pathetic. Honestly, it's laughable."
The mocking voice rang out again from behind him, laced with scorn and amusement.
"Don't worry. Your suffering will be brief—it'll all be over in a moment."
"Whoosh!"
A terrifying blade cleaved through the fog with a piercing whistle—
—and in the blink of an eye, Imai Kenta was split clean in two.
"What a pitiful brat."
A Mist shinobi slowly emerged from behind the corpse, sneering.
"Seems like Konoha's running out of decent shinobi… sending out trash like this. What's even funnier is—they managed to find us. But we're not even here for them."
"Stop wasting time, Fujii," another voice called out from the mist.
"We have more important things to do. Cut off his head and bring it back—we need to figure out what they know. We can't afford to expose ourselves."
"Yeah, yeah, I got it."
Fujii chuckled and crouched beside Kenta's body.
But the moment his eyes landed on the corpse, his entire body stiffened in alarm.
It looked disturbingly real—
A clean, fatal wound. A look of unwillingness frozen in the eyes.
Blood and viscera scattered everywhere...
But it was all saturated with chakra.
A clone? A transformation? A trap?!
Fujii's instincts screamed danger, but before he could even warn his comrade—
—a blade silently sliced through the fog toward his throat.
He reflexively clutched his neck, blood spilling between his fingers.
A figure caught his collapsing body before it could hit the ground.
"What's wrong, Fujii?" the other Mist shinobi asked casually.
"Hurry it up. We need to assist the others."
"No problem," came the reply—
"I just wanted to take a closer look at him before he died."
Fujii, his consciousness fading, looked up in horror—
The figure beneath him, the one mimicking his voice, tone, and cadence perfectly,
was none other than Imai Kenta.
"Huh?"
The second Mist shinobi froze.
His expression shifted instantly as realization hit:
"Careful! This guy's not normal—!"
But his warning came a second too late.
In a flash, Imai Kenta appeared before him, closing the distance with unbelievable speed.
The blade in Kenta's hand arced in a strange, deadly curve.
The Mist shinobi tried to react, but his instincts failed him—he had let down his guard, assuming Kenta was just a coward.
That fatal assumption cost him his life.
Kenta was anything but timid—
He was cunning, a master at exploiting weaknesses in his enemies,
and his speed was so sharp that even Uchiha Kei had once praised it.
"Guh—"
No scream.
No bloodbath.
Just a soft, strangled gurgle as the blade ended the Mist shinobi's life in one clean stroke.
All he saw before darkness claimed him was a flash of cold steel—
beautiful and deadly.
Imai Kenta didn't spare the corpse a second glance.
Instead, he smiled—a sincere, gentle smile.
Gone was the panicked, trembling figure from before.
His ambush had been flawlessly executed—swift, efficient, and devastatingly lethal.
"Looks like you guys really were on a mission. And not targeting Konoha, either."
Kenta looked up at the final Mist shinobi, still smiling softly.
"It's clearly a highly confidential operation—even you people seem reluctant to talk about it."
"Tch."
The last Mist shinobi stood on high alert, staring at the smiling boy like he was facing a ghost.
"Let me guess," Kenta continued thoughtfully, as if talking to himself.
"Maybe you're working with Iwa. After all, Iwa and Konoha are negotiating peace right now, and if someone wanted to sabotage that… it'd definitely benefit Kirigakure."
"Or maybe," he mused, eyes narrowing,
"you're here to investigate something. Something top secret. Just a guess, of course. But you know… you could save us both the trouble and just tell me the truth."
"That depends on whether you can make me talk."
The last Mist shinobi gripped his blade tightly, gaze wary and unblinking.
Then suddenly, without warning, he turned and fled into the mist.
Kenta blinked—then chuckled.
"Looks like I scared him."
He glanced down at the two corpses at his feet, then began to move.
Dealing with one enemy was way easier than going to help the others,
he figured.
Besides, no one said he had to kill the last one… right?