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———
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Maruboshi sensed something was wrong when he returned home to find Takuma brooding in the living room. He was still dressed in outdoor clothes and had an untouched bottle of water on the table before him.
"How did the visit to the iryō-nin go?" he asked as he sat across from Takuma.
Takuma pushed the bottle of water across the table to him. "I want to tell you something."
"Is something wrong?"
After living with him for several months, Maruboshi had observed that Takuma didn't like to be free. He was always doing something, being productive in some fashion, often putting his time into learning different things. At a single glance, it seemed like he was averse to sitting still, but he had also seen how Takuma shut himself in his room and bed during his rare breaks as though he had no energy to even eat.
To him, it almost felt like Takuma was scared of wasting time and was desperate to make the most out of it. So, to see him sitting there doing nothing was out of the ordinary.
"I've a secret I want to share." Takuma looked him in the eyes.
"Okay, I'm listening." Maruboshi felt this was something serious.
"I... don't have memories before I was ten," Takuma said while he looked down at his hands in his lap. "The farthest back I remember is roughly a month before our meeting. I don't know what kind of person I was before then. I could barely remember the directions to my home. Almost everything, important or trivial, was gone and continues to be missing..."
Maruboshi's mind was on a tape delay as he tried to catch up with what was just said. He recalled Takuma's academy days and remembered thinking how poor his skills were for a final-year academy student. He had simply thought of him as a bad student trying to learn things he had missed. Knowing that memory loss was probably the cause, he looked at the situation differently.
"Oh, Takuma. I'm so sorry. It must've been so difficult for you."
Takuma rubbed his forehead, and it looked like he was struggling to control his emotions, which were threatening to overflow. "I never told anyone because I didn't want anyone to know," he said with his eyes closed. "I don't know what I would've done if you weren't there to walk me through training. If you weren't there to guide me, I would've collapsed under the combined pressure of training and learning to manage my life with the orphan allowance. I didn't even know how to cook; I was so relieved when you taught me how to cook and meal plan to get my weight up. I was so..." he couldn't continue and went silent.
Maruboshi felt surprised because, from what he remembered, he was surprised how well Takuma followed and handled his instructions. His perception of Takuma was that he was a bad student, but he never complained, which impressed him. That was partially why he continued to teach; he felt his efforts were being returned.
He had no idea that Takuma was struggling so much.
"I regularly tried to remember, but all I got were headaches. After some time, I stopped trying and moved on. Eventually, I was fine with not knowing because I was fine with who I was. But recently, I started having visions..."
"Memories?"
Takuma nodded. "They're not good memories. The Yamanaka iryō-nin says my… amnesia is most probably a result of traumatic memories. I saw Kon in those visions."
"The ROOT agent?"
"If it was just that, I wouldn't have cared that much, but today, the Yamanaka told me there's a partition in my mind and all of my memories and experiences are on the other side. It's unusual, even compared with people who repress their memories, and he said we can't know what's happening on the other side."
"You must get help and take care of this as soon as possible," Maruboshi said with some insistence, because if Takuma had ignored it for so long, then there was a chance he might continue to do so because of the comfort. "I have some connections. I can have a Yamanaka with great skill in their hiden jutsu to work with you—"
"No, I'm going to continue with Yamanaka Inenpachi," Takuma said with a tired expression. "I already told him about the missing memories, and I don't want this information to spread and possibly reach ANBU because they'll kick me out if they find that I'm not in good health. More people knowing even a little bit means greater chances of this getting out. I can't risk that."
Maruboshi felt sorry for his student, who now had to hide his struggles to avoid risking his employment. He wanted to tell him not to care about them and unabashedly seek him and prioritise his health, but he also knew what ANBU meant for Takuma, and given his personality, he would rather take a kunai in the gut.
"That's okay, but you must make this a priority."
Takuma nodded, smiled, and looked at him. "I wanted you to be the first one to know," he said.
Maruboshi was so touched that he didn't know what to say. He had just heard Takuma credit him for being the guide who helped him succeed in a very stressful time, and now he told him that he was the first person he wanted to know about his secret.
He tried to be helpful throughout his entire life and had aided many people who had expressed gratitude to him, keeping him going and always being there to help. But this was perhaps the first time he had been so involved in someone's life. He had tried to keep some distance and not get involved due to his fears, but Takuma had continued to come back to him, and he was grateful for it.
His voice cracked as he tried to speak, and in the end, he just nodded with a grateful smile. Takuma had, in some ways, helped him just as much, so this acknowledgement that he could do the same felt so much more than he thought it would.
"Let's see this through together."
———
.
The next day, Takuma returned to work. He sat behind his office desk with an official document in his hand. It was the access pass that gave him the right to learn a B-rank ninjutsu from the ANBU archives. It was the thing he most wanted from his time at ANBU, yet he found it difficult to be joyful seeing the result of his efforts.
There was a knock on the door, and Takuma looked up to see Amami.
"Come, my dear Thirteen. Time for the first meeting."
She was smiling brightly, excited to be on the ROOT case. Seeing her joy made him sizzle with irritation. Why did everyone have a good time while he suffered on several fronts? He clenched the letter momentarily before catching himself and calming down.
"Let's go," he said, putting on a smile while putting the crumpled letter into the drawer.
They had reserved one of the archive rooms as the location of their meeting. Krait, along with Jotomi and Boginori, two staff members who would be the primary support for the case, were waiting for them.
Takuma noticed Krait stretching his neck with fatigue on his face as they sat down.
"When did you return?" he asked.
"A few hours ago."
Krait hadn't returned with the rest of the squad and had remained at the bunker site to ensure everything was properly collected and documented.
"Okay, before we start. I have an announcement," Krait said after taking a deep breath. "Barbary has given us the big space on the second floor for this case. Until we have sorted through whatever we collected, we'll be exclusively using that space. Nothing related to the case leaves that space. Next, it might take a couple of weeks at least for the biological and medical material to be analysed by a team of iryō-nin at another site. We'll be working with them and interrogating the scientist to find out what exactly they were doing in there. While they figure out the inside, we're responsible for the outside. Our team will be focused on finding the bunker's connection to a part of the ROOT network."
Barbary assigning them a separate space and restricting material movement within the space was a sign of importance that he and the captain had tacked on to the case. Anything ROOT was going to be treated with importance, and with a department-wide shift in focus on the horizon, this could be seen as the captain's decision to gain a foothold to then gain a spearhead.
"There's a lot of stuff I've hauled back from the temporary storage site," said Jotomi with pursed lips. "It'll take weeks for us to go through all of it."
"Get ready for a hectic month and then a busy few after that," said Krait. "We're in for a rough time."
"Great," said Takuma with a spark of enthusiasm in his words.
Everyone turned to him with varying reactions, but all of them looked at him as though he had done something strange.
"I'm just excited to work with all of you," Takuma said.
"I'm sure that's it, buddy," Amami teased him.
Takuma cleared his throat and leaned into his chair as Krait resumed speaking. Before, he was enthusiastic about the case because it gave him an in to ROOT. Now, he was going to rely on it and welcome the business because if he were left alone with his thoughts right now, he would collapse into himself.
His friends often called him a workaholic, so it was time to lean into that reputation.
———
.
To start it off, Amami was put in charge of the interrogations. Because the iryō-nin also needed access to the scientists to get answers from them about their research, she would also work with them. Takuma went with her for their first meeting to introduce himself as a secondary contact.
"You know, I'm excited about this. Other than the interrogations I did for you, this is my first time doing this since joining ANBU. I've missed this," Amami said as they were guided to the location by a staff member.
"Tell me if you need me to play a dynamic," Takuma said. He was assigned to review the document and the material to find things. It was going to be a lot of indoor time for the next month.
He needed to find things that would help Amami in the interrogations, and she would see vital intel that could be used to focus or narrow down their search in the documents. It was going to be a mutually-beneficial process, and they had to work as a team, even though they probably weren't going to spend a lot of time together.
They arrived at the location, and the person waiting for them turned around when they called out to her.
"Ah," the woman with short hair exclaimed when she saw Takuma. She put on a contemplative expression before shrugging. "I don't remember your codename. What was it again?"
Takuma sighed when he saw Sango, or Copperhead, standing before him.
"Ratel." He pointed to Amami, "This is Kestrel."
"Ratel and Kestrel. It's nice to meet you both. I'm Copperhead. I'll be your contact with my team," Sango replied with a smile.
"You two know each other?" asked Amami, looking between them.
Takuma hung his head. "Yes..."
"We go way back, don't we, Ratel?"
"We know each other from before ANBU," Takuma replied as he shot Sango a glare, and she mouthed a "don't worry" in response.
Even though he trusted both of them to keep his personal information to themselves, he could already tell they would share "innocent" tidbits to make jokes at his expense.
.
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The link is in the synopsis!