Five days had passed since the bar incident, and still no word from Gaara. Thursday found Naruto trudging across campus with blistered heels and sore arches—the price of spending hours hunting down every professor who'd taught Kurama last semester.
He'd been at it since seven that morning: a chase with no finish line. The plan had been simple—visit each professor from Kurama's old class schedule, working through the list Sasuke had gotten for him. It would be a matter of asking polite questions, gathering recollections, maybe even turning up a lead.
But the first office—Business Law—was a total stonewall. The professor, a heavyset Beta with hair like spun steel wool, didn't even look up from his emails as Naruto explained his brother's disappearance. "We're not allowed to discuss other students. Privacy statutes. Sorry," he said, his gaze fixed on the flickering cursor. "If your brother wants to contact me, he knows how. Have a good morning." The door clicked shut behind Naruto before he could protest.
The next three visits blended together in a blur of neutral carpeting, hand sanitizer, and the scent of cheap coffee. A Psychology adjunct who seemed to genuinely believe Kurama had "never set foot" in her class, even though the attendance roster had his name on it. A pair of bored TAs in the Chemistry lounge who shrugged in perfect unison—"We're not supposed to keep track of dropouts, sorry." A graying Literature professor who gestured at her bookshelves and said, "There are hundreds of students every semester. I can't possibly recall them all."
It was the fifth stop that really got to him. He found the office tucked down a windowless hallway in the bowels of the Science Center. The placard on the door read "Dr. K. Manabe, Applied Genetics." Inside, a woman perched on the edge of her seat, her spine so straight it looked painful, glasses perched at the tip of a nose sharp enough to pierce glass.
Naruto had barely introduced himself before she stiffened, her fingers locking around a red pen. "Kurama Namikaze?" he asked, then watched as her mouth became a pale, rigid line.
"I'm sorry, I can't help you," she said. The syllables came out forced, each word placed with the care of a land mine. "He was not my student."
Naruto stared at the cluttered shelf behind her, at the awards and the photo of some science conference panel. He remembered the roster, the printed proof of Kurama's name. "But your class was on his schedule," he pressed. "He talked about it all the time—"
Her jaw flexed. "There's nothing more to say." The pen snapped in her grip, leaking red onto her palm. She didn't notice. "Please don't come back." Then her eyes found his and held them, so direct and cold that Naruto's mouth went dry. "Ever."
He left, stumbling into the hall, the faint tang of leaking ink and bleach following him out.
After that, Naruto lost the will to keep up the routine. He bought a Sprite from the basement vending machine and sat on the concrete steps outside for the next forty minutes, watching the sidewalk fill with students moving between classes. Occasionally, his phone vibrated with a notification—one from Iruka ("Let us know if you're eating enough, okay?"), one from Kiba ("Gaara ever get back to you?"). He ignored them all, the screen's light too harsh for his tired eyes.
He finally mustered the will to cross the quad and navigate the dorm's endless stairwell. His steps echoed through the corridor as he approached the door to 327. He dug in his pocket for the key, only to find the door already slightly ajar.
Inside, the overhead light flickered weakly, casting shifting patterns across the carpet. He set his bag on the floor, shrugged off his jacket, and only then saw the envelope.
It sat alone in the dead center of the room, directly in his path. The envelope was a matte white, uncreased and intimidating, completely unmarked—no address, no logo, not even a smudge from handling. It was as though it had materialized out of thin air, an immaculate error in an otherwise grubby world.
Naruto stared at it, then glanced at the door, which was still cracked open from his entrance. There were no footsteps on the hall carpet, no retreating figures or signs of intrusion. Just him, the stale air, and the envelope.
He reached for it, expecting it to be lighter, expecting maybe a folded flyer for some campus event or an overdue bill. But the heft was wrong. The envelope was thick, its contents pressing against the seam.
He turned it over. Still nothing—no name, no return address, no sticker seal.
A chill ran through him. He held it in both hands for a moment, as if weighing whether to risk it.
He decided, then, that it was nothing. Just a piece of mail, probably a prank or a mis-delivery. He pinched the corner to tear it open—
A shadow filled the threshold behind him.
"What is that?" Sasuke asked, voice cold as steel.
Naruto jerked around, startled, the envelope caught in his half-closed fist. Sasuke stood framed in the open door, a thin layer of sweat making his face shine in the stark dorm light. He'd shed his jacket somewhere along the way, exposing a black t-shirt that clung to him in damp patches. His gaze was locked on the envelope, eyes narrowed and dangerous.
"It's probably just campus mail," Naruto said, but his own voice lacked conviction.
"Drop it," Sasuke repeated, stepping inside and nudging the door shut with his heel. "You know better than to open something like that."
Naruto rolled his eyes, but the envelope now felt radioactive. He placed it on his desk, hands up. "You're being dramatic."
Sasuke ignored the protest. He stalked to his own desk, popped open a drawer, and produced a pair of blue latex gloves. He snapped them on, the rubber popping over his knuckles. "You know what the most common vector for abduction is?" he said, as if reciting from a textbook. "Unmarked envelopes. Laced with anything from knockout powder to microchips. Some even use scent triggers." He approached the envelope as if it was a live grenade.
Naruto huffed. "Nobody's trying to assassinate me. It's probably an ad for therapy cats or something."
Sasuke's only response was a sharp look that cut through any hope of debate. He scooped up the envelope with his gloved fingers, considered the windowsill for a moment, then strode to the window. With a quick jerk, he pushed the glass up and extended his arm out into the open air, holding the letter as far from the room as possible.
Naruto watched Sasuke's methodical movements with growing disbelief. "Don't you think you're being a little... excessive?" he asked, the word catching slightly in his throat as he gestured at the gloves, the window, the whole production.
Sasuke ignored him. With a practiced flick of his thumb, he opened the flap, his shoulders tensing as if bracing for impact. When nothing exploded and no suspicious powder billowed forth, he exhaled through his nose. Inside lay only a single sheet of paper, its edges cut with mechanical precision, the paper heavy and expensive. After giving it another moment to potentially detonate, he seemed satisfied it wouldn't kill them and drew it back through the window.
He angled the paper toward the light. "Hand me your phone."
Naruto stopped pacing. "Why?"
Sasuke didn't bother with patience. "Evidence," he said, voice clipped. "Take a picture. No, don't touch it—use the zoom." He held the page flat with a pencil. "Now."
Naruto obeyed. Through the phone's screen, the contents of the page resolved with disturbing clarity:
STOP DIGGING
The words were constructed from letters cut out of different magazines—each character a different font, a different mood, arranged in a staggered line like teeth in a broken jaw. There was nothing else on the page: no signature, no threat, just the command.
The silence in the room grew thick and heavy. Naruto felt his tongue stick to the roof of his mouth. "Is this some kind of joke?"
Sasuke shook his head once, eyes locked on the message. "No. It's a warning." His hand, gloved in blue, hovered just above the page. "Someone knows what you're looking for. They don't want you to find it."
He reached for Naruto's phone, snapped a few close-ups of the letters and the envelope itself. Each click of the shutter sounded like a hammer falling.
Naruto slumped against the edge of his bed. His knees felt unsteady, his palms tingled with sweat. "This is… bad, right?"
"It means we're on to something," Sasuke said, voice calm, but there was a tension in the set of his jaw. "Close enough to scare someone."
Naruto didn't answer. He watched as Sasuke peeled the gloves off with care, folding them inside-out, then placed the envelope and letter in a Ziploc from the bottom of his backpack.
He suddenly felt small. There was no one to tell. No parents. Not even Kurama.
"Should we call the police?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Sasuke glanced at him. "And tell them what? That a college kid got a weird letter? It would disappear into a file cabinet by lunch."
Naruto stared at the envelope, its secret now exposed, and realized he was shaking.
Sasuke finally moved, crossing the space between them. He stopped just short of physical contact, but his eyes fixed on Naruto's with a gravity that left no room for doubt. "We keep going," he said. "But from now on, we don't separate. Not for anything."
Naruto nodded, the movement automatic. He felt as if he'd been dropped through a trapdoor, and there was nothing beneath but air and possibility.
Sasuke walked back to his desk, picked up his own phone, and began tapping out a text with clinical precision. Naruto couldn't see the screen, but he had a feeling Sasuke was already documenting everything, filing it away in some backup or sending it to a trusted third party. That was the kind of paranoia you developed when your entire family was erased.
Sasuke placed the Ziploc on his desk with the gravity of a hand grenade. His gaze tracked every angle of the surface, as if even looking away would give the threat more power. When Naruto, restless on the edge of his bed, made to reach for it—just to see if the letters felt as heavy as they looked—Sasuke's hand shot out, palm slamming down on the wood hard enough to rattle the lamp.
"Don't touch it," he snapped. The words were so sharp they seemed to splinter the air. "We need to preserve any trace."
Naruto's hand jerked back like a burned child's. "You think it's gonna explode? It's a piece of paper, Sasuke."
"That's what they want you to think," Sasuke said, voice gone clinical and brittle. He reached for a clean pencil and prodded the bag, eyes narrowing at the seam. "Maybe they laced the paper. Maybe there's a dusting, something you only get if you rub your face after handling it."
Naruto stood, jaw tight. "You're paranoid."
Sasuke's face didn't move. "It's not paranoia if people really are after you." He leveled his gaze at Naruto, black irises gone flat with a peculiar, icy resolve. "Someone went to a lot of effort to make this anonymous. No fingerprints, no tape, no saliva on the glue. That means they're careful. Professional."
Naruto paced the three steps to the window, then back. His fingers drummed against his thigh with increasing tempo. "Or it's just some asshole with a subscription to Vogue and too much time on their hands. Maybe they heard about the medical building stunt and decided to fuck with us. Maybe it's just a warning, you know, like a prank call."
Sasuke scoffed—a single, mirthless sound. "If they wanted to prank you, they'd have sent something embarrassing. This is surgical. It's a message. And they know exactly where you live." He lifted the letter a fraction, then set it back down.
Sasuke began to pace, wearing a groove in the threadbare carpet. One, two, three steps to the radiator. Pause. Turn. One, two, three back to the window. The rhythm was so exact it could have been clockwork.
Naruto watched him, arms crossed, back braced against the cinderblock wall. "You gonna walk a hole in the floor or come up with an actual plan?"
Sasuke stopped. "I am coming up with a plan." He stood in the center of the room, arms folded, every muscle in his body so tightly coiled he seemed to vibrate. "Orochimaru's office."
Naruto blinked. "What about it?"
Sasuke's eyes didn't waver. "He's the one constant. Your brother, every other missing kid—they all orbit that guy's department. Everything comes back to him."
Naruto let the thought hang in the air, dread rising. "You want us to break in?"
Sasuke didn't blink. "We have to. He's too smart to leave evidence on a public server. Whatever's going on, whatever he's doing to these kids, it's in the private files."
Naruto let out a bitter laugh. "Yeah, sure, let's just pick the lock and go through the mad scientist's private stash. What could go wrong?"
Sasuke's expression darkened. "You can stay here if you want. But I'm not waiting around for the next envelope. Whoever sent that wants us scared. I want them scared."
Naruto stared at the floor, the sick twist in his stomach a new and unwelcome presence. "Even if we get in, how do we know there's anything there?"
"We don't." Sasuke's voice was soft now, almost gentle, the edge replaced by something like—regret? "But it's all we have left."
Naruto paced to the window, pressed his forehead against the glass. Outside, two Alphas from the athletic dorm tossed a football back and forth on the quad. Their laughter was sharp, easy, untouchable. He envied them for a second.
He heard the chair creak behind him. Sasuke's voice came softer than before. "I'll go alone if you're not in."
Naruto spun, guilt and anger warring in his chest. "Don't be an idiot. Who would be your look out? You need me." He caught himself, voice thick. "We're a team, right?"
Sasuke's lips twitched at the corner, an almost-smile. "Right."
Naruto's shoulders dropped as tension left his body. "Good. But this time we need actual strategy. Not like the medical building disaster." His stomach clenched at the memory of Kabuto's cold fingers on his wrist, checking his pulse.
"We will make a plan," Sasuke said, already pulling out his laptop. "We can break in tomorrow, when most professors are off campus."
A beat passed between them, the silence almost warm.
Naruto nodded, the movement slow and deliberate. "Okay."
For the first time since the envelope, the tension in the room began to ebb. Sasuke picked up the Ziploc, turned it over once more, then stashed it in the back of the closet, behind an old box of textbooks and a pair of running shoes. He washed his hands twice before returning to his chair.
Naruto stared at the ceiling, brain racing. He tried not to think of Kurama, or the thin woman with the red pen, or the shudder that had gone through Gaara at the mention of his brother's name. He tried to focus on the new plan: Just one more job, like the others.
But when he closed his eyes, all he saw was the cut-out letters, the edges jagged and hungry, spelling out their fate.
Across the room, Sasuke sat perfectly still, already planning every step, every contingency. For a moment, his eyes softened as they found Naruto's.
"We'll get answers," he said.
Naruto opened his eyes, and the world snapped back into focus.
"Yeah," he whispered. "Let's do it."
The envelope was gone, but the promise of confrontation hovered in the blue light of their dorm. Neither of them would sleep that night, but it no longer felt like running.
They were done waiting for the next move.