Kurosawa Daichi had been looking at the same set of registration requirements for nearly an hour when he finally accepted that they were not going to change.
The village had sent the notice three days earlier. Every recognized shinobi clan had been given a personnel requirement based on its size, status, and available resources. The Kurosawa were expected to provide a number of shinobi for the coming mobilization.Daichi had read the notice several times when it arrived.
He had not liked it then either.
The Kurosawa clan was not a large one. It had never been among Konoha's most influential families, and its strength had declined enough over the past few decades that Daichi's father had once remarked that maintaining their status as a jōnin clan required more effort than being one.
That status came with privileges. Access to certain contracts, a larger share of village resources, and influence within the administrative system were all tied to the number of shinobi a clan could provide when the village needed them. It also came with expectations.
The village expected the Kurosawa to contribute.
Usually, that was manageable.
The clan's active jōnin had already served for most of his adult life and had long since reached the point where nobody was particularly eager to send him back into extended field service unless there was no alternative. Their chūnin were needed for command, training, and administrative positions, while the older genin were already scattered across existing assignments.
The younger ones were another matter.
Daichi ran his finger down the list.
There were academy graduates who had been registered through the clan's sponsorship program. Civilian children whose education had been funded by the Kurosawa in exchange for an agreement to repay the cost once they became working shinobi. During normal circumstances, they were expected to train, join squads, complete missions, and eventually settle their debts over time.
War had changed the calculation.
The sponsorship agreements allowed the clan to include eligible students among the personnel it registered to fulfil its obligations to Konoha. It was a clause Daichi had probably read dozens of times without giving it much thought.
Now it had become relevant.
He disliked that more than he was willing to admit.
Daichi moved to the next page.
The clan's quota was listed at the top. Beneath it were the names of those already assigned, unavailable, or counted under other obligations. There were enough explanations on the sheet to satisfy anyone who wanted to know how the Kurosawa had reached their current position.
There simply were not enough genin.
Daichi understood that.
He continued down the page until he reached the names marked for review.
There were three.
All three were covered by active sponsorship agreements. All three could technically be registered.
Daichi stared at the final name for a little longer than the others.
Morita Shogi. Age: Twelve.
He sighed quietly.
Twelve.
He knew, of course, that there were children younger than twelve already serving in Konoha's forces. Some clans began training their children almost as soon as they could walk, and by the time they entered the academy, those children already had years of experience behind them. If the Kurosawa had been able to produce someone like that, the decision might not have troubled him nearly as much.
Shogi Morita was not one of those children.
Her academy record was on the next page.
Daichi had reviewed it the previous evening. She was competent. Diligent. Physically healthy and consistent in her training. Her instructors considered her serious and well-behaved, with no obvious disciplinary problems.
She had been a genin for one week.No squad assignment and not even a single D rank to her name.
Daichi closed his eyes briefly imagining the ridicule this would cause. An untrained sponsorship student being rushed to the forward camps to meet a quota.
He was supposed to leave for a mission that afternoon. Nothing particularly dangerous, as far as he knew, but the timing had left the registration work in his hands until another clan member returned from the border.
Which meant he needed to speak to the remaining students before he left.
He looked at the clock.
There was still time.
Daichi gathered the relevant forms into three separate packets. Wartime registration, service conditions, debt reduction terms, and the exemption agreement.
The exemption agreement was particularly unpleasant.
Daichi did not believe the Kurosawa expected a twelve-year-old to pay it.
That was not the point.
The fee existed because the village required it, and someone had to carry the cost if the clan could not provide the personnel.
He placed Shogi's packet on top of the stack and called toward the doorway.
A genin from the clan's household staff appeared a moment later.
"Daichi-san?"
"Do you have anything scheduled this morning?"
The boy shook his head.
"Not until training this afternoon."
"Good. I need you to deliver a message for me."
Daichi picked up the file again, glancing once more at the name written across the front.
Morita Shogi.
"She's staying in the civilian district. The address is inside the file." He handed it over. "Tell her the Kurosawa administrative office would like her to come in. Don't explain the details."
The genin took the file and looked down at it.
"Alright."
The boy left.
Daichi sat alone for another moment before reaching for the next packet.
He still had two more names to contact and several hours of paperwork to complete before he was expected to report for his mission.
There was no point sitting there feeling sorry for a girl he had not even met.
He returned to work.
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Shogi had been a genin for seven days when someone from the Kurosawa clan came looking for her.
She was in the middle of deciding whether there was any point going to the village offices again.
There probably wasn't. She had already gone twice that week, once on the morning after graduation and again two days later. Both times, she had been told that her squad assignment had not yet been finalized and that she would be notified when it was. The second clerk had been slightly less polite than the first, though Shogi suspected that had more to do with the number of newly graduated children asking the same question than with her personally.
Still, she did not have much else to do.
The academy had kept her busy for years. There had always been something to study, some exercise to practice, some instructor reminding her that she would never survive as a shinobi if she continued holding a kunai incorrectly. Now she had graduated, received her forehead protector, and discovered that there was a surprising amount of waiting involved in becoming an actual shinobi.
She had continued training every day because she did not know what else she was supposed to do.
That morning, she had finished her exercises, washed, eaten, and was considering whether to spend another hour practicing her chakra control when somebody knocked on her door.
Shogi looked up.
She set aside the cup she had been drinking from and stood.
When she opened the door, she found an older boy waiting in the corridor.
She recognized him vaguely from the Kurosawa compound. He was probably around fifteen or sixteen, and the forehead protector around his head marked him as a genin. Shogi had seen him a few times over the years but could not remember ever speaking to him.
"Shogi?"
"Yes."
"The Kurosawa clan offices asked you to come by."
She frowned slightly.
"Did they say why?"
"No."
That was unfortunate.
The boy did not appear to know anything else. He stood there for another moment, perhaps waiting to see whether she had more questions, before Shogi nodded.
"Thank you. I'll come now."
He gave a brief nod of his own and left.
Shogi closed the door and stood there for a moment.
The Kurosawa clan had sponsored her education through the academy. She was not a member of the clan herself, but their scholarship program had allowed several civilian children to receive the sort of support they would otherwise have struggled to afford. The arrangement was not a gift. Once the recipients graduated and began earning a regular income, they were expected to repay the amount the clan had spent on them.
Shogi had always considered that fair.
The Kurosawa had paid for her education. She would repay them when she was able.
She had expected someone to discuss the details with her after graduation, though perhaps she had assumed it would happen after she had actually been assigned to a squad and begun earning money.
Still, that was probably why they had called her.
She changed into her usual clothes, tied her forehead protector into place, and left the apartment.
The Kurosawa compound was not far away.
Shogi had spent enough time there over the years that she knew her way around the areas open to visitors and sponsored students. She knew which buildings contained the administrative offices, where she was supposed to report when there were scholarship meetings, and which training grounds she was allowed to use. There were other parts of the compound she had never entered. Nobody had explicitly forbidden her from wandering into them, but she had learned early that clan members generally preferred their homes and private training areas to remain private.
She had no particular interest in testing how tolerant they were about it.
At the entrance to the administrative building, a clerk directed her to a room on the second floor.
"Second door on the left," the woman said, glancing at a sheet in front of her. "Kurosawa Daichi is expecting you."
"Thank you."
Shogi went upstairs.
The door was open when she reached it. She stopped outside and knocked against the frame.
The man behind the desk looked up.
"Shogi?"
"Yes, sir."
"Come in."
She entered.
The room was not particularly large, though the desk made it feel smaller. There were papers everywhere. Not in the careless way that suggested the man had lost control of them, but in several carefully arranged stacks that seemed to correspond to different types of problems.
Shogi suspected she was one of them.
"Sit," he said.
She did.
Daichi looked younger up close than she had expected when she first saw him. He was clearly an adult, though perhaps not by as much as his chūnin rank had led her to imagine. His expression was neutral, and his forehead protector was tied properly beneath his dark hair.
There was a file in front of him.
He opened it.
"My name is Kurosawa Daichi. I'm handling the current registrations for the clan's sponsored personnel."
Shogi's attention sharpened slightly at the word personnel.
Daichi pulled several documents from the file and placed them on the desk in front of her.
"I understand that there's a fair amount here," he said. "Read through everything before you sign anything. If something isn't clear, ask."
Shogi nodded.
"Yes, sir."
She pulled the documents closer.
The first page was a cover sheet. Her name had been written near the top, along with her academy registration number and the date of her graduation. Beneath that was the name of the Kurosawa clan.
The next page was a form.
Shogi read the heading.
Registration for Wartime Service Under Sponsorship Agreement.
She looked at it for a second longer than necessary, then turned to the next document.
Exemption Agreement and Financial Responsibility.
For a moment, she thought she might have misunderstood what she was reading.
She looked at the first heading again.
Then she glanced toward Daichi.
"I'm sorry, sir. Is this about the war?"
"Yes."
The answer was simple enough that Shogi looked back at the papers.
She had known that Konoha was mobilizing. It would have been difficult not to know. Their teachers had been talking about troop movements and border tensions for months, although they generally stopped when children entered the room. More recently, the conversations had become harder to ignore. There were more shinobi moving through the village, more notices posted around the administrative buildings, and more people speaking about assignments.
The opening pages concerned her scholarship agreement. Most of the information was familiar. The Kurosawa clan had sponsored her academy education and certain related expenses. The total amount had been fixed at the time she graduated, and she was expected to begin making monthly repayments once she had established herself as a working shinobi.
There was no interest attached to the debt, which Shogi had always been grateful for.
She continued.
The wartime registration form referred to a clause in the sponsorship agreement concerning periods of village mobilization. Sponsored shinobi whose agreements remained active could be registered through the sponsoring clan to fulfil military obligations assigned to that clan.
Shogi slowed.
She vaguely remembered signing a very long agreement when she was younger. An official from the scholarship office had gone through it with her, although at the time most of her attention had been on the fact that she was being offered a place in the academy.
Apparently, there had been more to the agreement than repayment.
She read the paragraph again.
It did not say that the clan could send her anywhere it wanted. There were procedures for registration and assignment, and her age and current shinobi rank were listed elsewhere in the file. But the basic point was clear enough.
The Kurosawa clan could put sponsored shinobi forward when it was required to provide personnel.
Shogi turned the page.
There was a section explaining how wartime service would affect her existing debt.
She read that more carefully.
A portion of the outstanding amount would be forgiven for every year of qualifying service. The reduction depended on the assignment and the conditions of service, with a maximum reduction of thirty-five percent in a single year.
Shogi paused.
Thirty-five percent was a substantial amount.
She knew roughly how much she owed. It was not a small sum, but neither was it impossible. Under the ordinary repayment schedule, she would likely spend several years making monthly payments while taking missions and building up some savings of her own.
Three years of substantial wartime service, if she received the maximum reductions, could eliminate nearly all of it.
She was still looking at the number when it occurred to her that she was thinking about the financial advantages of being sent to war.
That was probably not a particularly healthy way to approach the situation.
Shogi continued reading.
The registration form did not specify where she would be sent or what she would be doing. Those details would be decided later, once the clan's personnel had been organized and assignments issued.
That was considerably less useful than she would have liked.
She glanced at Daichi.
He was reading another document and did not appear inclined to interrupt her.
Shogi returned to the forms.
There were references to her age, academy record, and current status. She had no completed missions. No squad assignment. No field experience.
The form simply recorded those facts.
Shogi frowned slightly.
Children were not normally sent to war immediately after graduation. She knew that much. Civilian academy students in particular were generally given time to gain experience. They were less likely to survive otherwise, which was apparently a sufficiently obvious conclusion that even Konoha's military administration had accepted it.
Clan children were different.
Some had been training long before they entered the academy. Some knew techniques their families had passed down for generations. Others simply had access to better teachers and more resources. It was not unusual for younger clan genin to be considerably more capable than civilian children of the same age.
Shogi was not one of those children.
She was not terrible, but she was not exceptional either. There had been several students in her class who were better at ninjutsu than she was. Others had stronger taijutsu. A few were so naturally talented that she had learned to stop comparing herself to them altogether.
She had never considered that a problem.
Being a shinobi was not a competition, at least not most of the time.
But now she was sitting in front of a wartime registration form and wondering why she was there at all.
She looked up.
"Daichi-san."
He glanced toward her.
"Yes?"
"I understand that the sponsorship agreement allows the clan to register me for service." She placed a finger against the relevant section of the document. "But I've only just graduated, and I haven't been assigned to a squad yet. Why am I being put forward now?"
Daichi looked at the form for a moment.
"The clan has been given a personnel quota. The sponsored genin who fall under the relevant agreements are part of the pool we can register."
Shogi waited, but he did not add anything else.
There was no particular answer to why her beyond that, then.
She was eligible.
That was enough.
She turned to the second document.
The exemption agreement was shorter, although she found it considerably more unpleasant.
If she did not wish to fulfil the wartime obligation attached to her sponsorship agreement, the Kurosawa clan could pay the required exemption fee to the village instead of registering her for service.
Shogi thought that sounded relatively straightforward.
Then she reached the amount.
She read it once.
Then again.
The exemption fee was nearly three times her existing scholarship debt.
Her expression changed before she could stop it.
"Something wrong?"
"No, sir."
There was nothing wrong with the number.
The number was simply large.
Her original debt was manageable. She could repay it over several years without completely ruining her life, provided she found regular work and did not do anything foolish with money.
Adding the exemption fee to it would be different.
The repayment schedule included an estimate based on a genin's expected earnings. Under the longest projection, it could take as much as fifteen years.
Fifteen years.
She could be paying the Kurosawa clan for the decision she made today until she was in her late twenties.
She continued reading.The exemption only applied to the current wartime obligation attached to her sponsorship agreement.
Shogi stopped.
She went back and read the paragraph again.
Then she looked toward Daichi.
"Daichi-san."
"Yes?"
"This exemption is only for the Kurosawa clan's obligation?"
"It exempts you from clan registration for the war."
"And if I agree to pay it, I'm still eligible to be drafted by the village later?"
"Yes. You're still a shinobi of Konoha."
Shogi looked back at the form.
That made sense.
She wasn't sure why she had expected anything else.
Her relationship with the Kurosawa clan and her relationship with the village were two separate things. Paying an exemption fee to prevent the clan from submitting her now did not somehow make her disappear from Konoha's military records.
There were further notes concerning later mobilization. Shinobi could be called for individual campaigns or periods of service as the war continued. Some people were exempted or deferred because their civilian work was considered essential, while others were left alone because removing them from a particular position would be more harmful than useful.
If the village decided it needed her later, there was very little she could point to and say that she ought to be somewhere else.
She looked from one document to the other.
If she accepted service now, she would at least receive substantial reductions to her existing debt. She would also be assigned through an organization she knew and had some connection to.
If she refused, she would take on a debt almost three times as large as the one she already had, and the village could still decide to send her to war at some point in the future.
The exemption did not guarantee that she would never see a battlefield.
It only meant that she would not go with the Kurosawa clan now.
Shogi leaned back slightly in the chair.
She had assumed there would be an obvious option hidden somewhere in the documents. Some clause she had missed. Some reasonable compromise.
Instead, there were simply two choices.
The forms did not have to be returned immediately. There was a deadline listed near the bottom of the final page. She had until the following evening.
That was not a great deal of time, but it was enough to read everything again and think about it without somebody sitting across the desk from her.
Shogi placed the papers together.
"When do you need these back?" she asked.
"Tomorrow evening."
She nodded.
Daichi gathered the remaining documents from his side of the desk and handed her the completed packet.
"Make sure you read the service conditions again. The reductions to the scholarship debt depend on the length and type of assignment. Don't assume the maximum applies automatically."
Shogi accepted the papers.
He nodded.
"Good."
She stood.
"Thank you, Daichi-san."
Shogi bowed slightly before leaving the room.
The corridor outside was empty.
She walked down the stairs, passed through the administrative building, and left the compound without really paying attention to where she was going until she had reached the street.
The forms remained tucked beneath her arm.
By the time she reached her apartment, Shogi had not reached a conclusion.
She set the papers on the table.
Then she made tea, because it seemed like something useful to do with her hands while she thought.
The forms remained where she had placed them.
Eventually, she sat down again and opened the first one.
She read it from the beginning.