"Examiner? You chose me?"
Keizumi looked at the girl, his face emotionless. "You look weak, but at least you've got some courage."
Then he forced a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "It's simple if you want to pass my test. Just make sure that, within one month, I don't feel the urge to kill you. Do that, and you pass."
"Oh, hold on a sec. Looks like a rat's trying to run."
Izumi: "???"
Huh?
While Izumi was still dazed, she was shocked to see Uchiha Keizumi suddenly draw the ninja blade at his waist.
The blade flashed silver in midair, and a streak of crimson entered her vision.
In the next second—
She watched in disbelief as a short man collapsed to the ground headfirst.
—His left leg had been cut clean off!
"Aaaaghhhh!!"
The man's shrill screams and the heavy stench of blood in the air battered Izumi's senses.
Instinctively, she took half a step back.
Her forehead began to sweat profusely from the tension.
"Uchiha Izumi." Keizumi flicked the blood off his blade.
"Huh?" Izumi, who had been worried the man on the ground might bleed out and die, looked up in a panic.
Keizumi frowned. "When I call your name, you're supposed to respond with 'Present'."
"O-oh… Present!"
Izumi hurriedly corrected herself.
"So soft-spoken, and you want to join the Police Force?" Keizumi said coldly. "I couldn't hear a damn word. Is that the resolve you think it takes to uphold [Justice]? You think someone like you can protect it? You'd be better off going home and playing the obedient little girl."
Fugaku-sama wasn't wrong—Keizumi-senpai really was strict. This was their very first meeting, and she was already getting scolded like a dog.
Izumi had no choice but to dig deep and muster all her strength.
Her cheeks flushed red from the strain.
"PRESENT!!!!"
Seeing the senior's icy gaze soften just a little, Izumi finally breathed a small sigh of relief.
"Um…" she hesitated.
"Speak."
She quickly added, "Senpai, if we don't treat this man soon, he might die from blood loss."
"How long does he have left?" Keizumi asked, his voice calm—far calmer than she expected.
She answered quickly, "He could go into shock within ten minutes."
"Plenty of time." Keizumi looked at her. "Rookie, here's your first mission."
Izumi swallowed hard. "Senpai, I've never learned medical ninjutsu. Maybe we should… take him to Konoha Hospital?"
Keizumi gave her a sideways glance. "Who said anything about treating him?"
"Huh?" Izumi had lost track of how many times she'd been stunned today.
She asked awkwardly, "Then… what do you mean, Senpai?"
Keizumi held out his ninja blade. Izumi instinctively reached out and took it.
His expression didn't change as he said, "Prove to me that you're ready to join the Police Force. Take this blade and interrogate that man. Ask him—where the child's body is. You've got ten minutes. If you can't get an answer, then go home and don't bother coming back tomorrow."
Interro…
Interrogate?
Izumi was stunned. Her eyes darted around—this was one of the busiest streets in Konohagakure! She couldn't even count how many people were walking around here!
To interrogate a civilian—whose leg had just been severed—so openly in broad daylight?
And why ask about a child's corpse?
Was this the standard procedure of the Uchiha Police Force? Or was it just Uchiha Keizumi's personal style?
Izumi tried to sneak a glance at Keizumi's expression.
She noticed that his eyes were growing colder by the second.
A sudden chill ran through her.
Warnings from Clan Head Fugaku and that female Police Force senior flashed through her mind:
—"Don't defy his orders, if you want to stay alive."
—"Good luck. Sometimes, surviving really is a matter of luck."
Izumi was afraid.
Her grip tightened around the ninja blade still warm from Keizumi's hand. Cold sweat was steadily streaming down her forehead.
Her overwhelming instinct to survive forced her to take a few steps forward. She pointed the blade at the wailing man clutching his severed leg and stammered out the question: "Y-You… where did you hide the child's body?!"
A flash of panic flickered through the man's pain-stricken, desperate eyes.
"Take me… please, take me to Konoha Hospital!!!"
He didn't answer Izumi's barely confident question. Instead, he screamed in terror, "My head's getting fuzzy—there's more and more blood—I think I'm gonna die! Please save me! I don't want to die! Hurry, save me!!"
'I don't want to die either.'
That was the cry echoing inside Izumi's mind.
"Where exactly did you hide the child's body?!"
Izumi tried her best to stay calm. She didn't believe Keizumi-senpai would ask her such a question without a reason. Her tone sharpened as she said rapidly, "If you don't answer me right now, I can't take you to the hospital! You won't last more than a few minutes!"
But the short man kept shrieking in fear, "I don't know anything about any child! I swear I don't! Please, I'm begging you—save me!!"
"Senpai…"
Izumi tried to glance toward Keizumi for help, but found him standing there with his arms crossed, watching coldly from the side.
There wasn't a trace of emotion in those detached eyes.
Suddenly, she felt like she couldn't breathe.
This feeling…
It was all too familiar.
Years ago, on the night of the Nine-Tails attack, when she faced that colossal monster, she'd felt the same way—an overwhelming, suffocating sense of despair, as if her life were slipping away.
Izumi's will to survive once again overpowered her compassion. She clenched her jaw, raised the blade, and pressed it to the man's throat, shouting through gritted teeth: "Last chance! Where is the child's body?!"
The sharp edge scraped across his neck, drawing a thin line of blood.
The man's eyes widened in panic. The faint pain in his throat sent him into a frenzy. "I… I didn't mean to… I didn't want her to die! You have to believe me! Please believe me! She… she was my daughter…"
"I was just playing around with her. I… I never thought she'd die… I threw her… into the dry well in our yard…"
Izumi froze.
The man's fragmented confession revealed something that shook her to the core—
The man Keizumi-senpai had ordered her to interrogate in public… had killed his own daughter.
And dumped her body into a dry well.
He was a murderer.
"Rookie. This is your first lesson in enforcing [Justice] as a member of the Uchiha Police Force."
Keizumi's voice rang out coldly from behind her.
"—You will always carry out the orders I give you."
"No hesitation."
"No resistance."
"No mistakes."
Uchiha Keizumi's voice exploded in Izumi's ears like a sudden clap of thunder.
She inhaled deeply, the air thick with the ever-growing scent of blood.
As she slowly stood up, she could still hear the increasingly weak moans and cries of the small man at her feet.
"I've told you everything… please, save me… I beg you, don't let me die…"
Izumi pressed her lips together.
For someone who had graduated from the academy less than a month ago, this was all too overwhelming.
"Where do you live?" Upon realizing that this short man was the one who had murdered the child, all trace of sympathy vanished from Izumi's heart. She immediately interrogated him for his address—so they could locate the child's body.
When she faintly heard the man weakly mumble an address,
Izumi gathered her courage and turned to Uchiha Keizumi. "Senpai, should we split up? I can take him to the Konoha Hospital, and you could go look for the child's body?"
Uchiha Keizumi replied flatly, "Rookie, do you know what kind of sentence a man gets in Konoha for killing someone while drunk?"
Izumi froze. "L-life imprisonment?!"
Uchiha Keizumi shook his head. "Ten years. After ten years, a monster like this walks free under the sun again. In fact, if he behaves in prison, he might be out in seven or eight years."
"Tell me—do you think that kind of punishment is truly just?"
Izumi murmured, "Ten years... seems short. No matter how you look at it, that doesn't feel like a fair punishment…"
The twelve-year-old Uchiha genin girl instinctively felt that such a sentence was far too lenient.
Was taking a life in Konoha really that cheap?
Or could it be… that murder committed under the influence could be forgiven?
"When 'justice' isn't carried out absolutely, it can never be called justice. And evil will never receive the punishment it deserves," Uchiha Keizumi said. "No need to split up. And don't bother taking him to the hospital. Just bring him to the address he gave."
"Oh, and one more thing."
Keizumi took back the blood-stained ninja blade from Izumi's hands and sheathed it before adding, "Make sure you drag him. You're going to drag this piece of shinobi-world scum and follow behind me."
Izumi's face was filled with shock.
Keizumi-senpai… within the Uchiha clan, he must be among the most extreme, right?
She nervously swallowed and couldn't help glancing down at the small man.
Drag him?
Yikes...