The door to the club room nearly fell off its hinges.

Ise pushed Takahashi out of the way. Her makeup had blurred, her teeth clenched.

"Bring him back!"

Eyes wide, I held up Mimi's scroll on reflex. Her knife stabbed into it, missing my face by a centimeter.

"Ise!" Takahashi yelled. "Control yourself!"

Ise didn't hear him.

"If I'm not happy, I come tell you," she said, laughing madly. "Was that not what you said? Well then, I'm here to tell you! Uchiha girl, you bring him back. You bring him back, or you and your friends are never seeing daylight again!"

"Is that a threat?" Tamaki demanded.

"It's a promise." Ise yanked out her knife.

Before the bad girls could leave, Takahashi spoke up.

"Is it truly him? Is he guilty?" He needed to know.

Ise flinched. She said nothing.

Then:

"If he's guilty, then be terrified…" She clutched her knife harder. "... of what that makes the rest of us."

.

Shao's guilt was confirmed very fast. My clan busted into Shao's residence. They found a plastic bag with explosive powder inside. He had a lot of other suspicious stuff in his room too, including military grade foil and wire.

They then made Shao tell them where he hid the rest of the explosive powder. From my uncle's bad moods, I guessed the answer was not what they had hoped.

I knew Ise wanted me to free Shao, but I didn't know what I could do. Shao himself had confessed, and the evidence was all there. He had broken the law, and a very serious law at that. He was truly in awful trouble.

While my uncles kept Shao in interrogation, there was no way for me to talk to him. I was just a desk apprentice. For my own safety, Shisui never gave me a key to the back rooms. I couldn't even go into some of the confidential filing rooms, much less the actual jail cells and interrogation chambers.

Eighty-five kilograms of explosive powder…

It was enough for an entire battalion. It was enough to blow up entire buildings and districts.

I couldn't understand. I was more confused than I was at the beginning. Why Mimi got hurt became only one question out of hundreds.

But I couldn't talk to Mimi.

And I couldn't talk to Shao.

Neither could tell me what was happening or why. And everyone who could talk to me didn't know.

Ise didn't react well when I told her what the police found. She was unstable, and the news wasn't what she wanted to hear. She didn't want to hear anything that wasn't Shao getting released. She didn't want to see any face but his.

The other bad girls had to restrain her.

"I'm trying, I'm trying, but I need to know what's going on!" I cried, getting frustrated too. "No one is telling me what's going on! If the police made a mistake, then tell me where! If he's innocent…"

"He's innocent!" Ise howled.

"Then help me prove it! You have to help me help you!"

One of the bad girls, Murasaki, approached me afterward. Murasaki was Ise's closest friend after Shao. Murasaki couldn't watch Ise like this. She said she'd help me.

At my request, she showed me where Shao lived.

He was in one of the dense areas near downtown. All the doors and windows were super skinny, the buildings so close that the balconies between them almost touched. Lots of adults lounged outside, playing cards or having a smoke.

Ascending the narrow stairs, I expected a tiny apartment like Gin's. I realized I didn't know what to say to Shao's parents.

To my surprise, it was not an apartment I stumbled into.

It was a dormitory.

The first room was some sort of common space where crowds of people moved about. The air was heavy with steam and smoke from the kitchen, which looked like it belonged in the back of a restaurant, with rows of cabinets and entire jars of chopsticks.

Following Murasaki, she took me down a tight hallway with many doors on both sides. Peering into some of the open doors, I saw they were all bedrooms, with bunks stacked two to three levels. Some rooms had entire families inside, with a grandpa or a grandma on top and small kids playing on the lower bunks.

Shao had his own room at the end of a corner, just before another set of stairs. There were already little kids inside, who jumped in fright as soon as they saw Murasaki.

"Leave it," Murasaki commanded.

One of the kids froze at the door. Quietly, she dropped the thing she had taken, before rushing out with the others.

I picked it up, curious.

It was a dragonfly weaved from dry grass. It was on a piece of braided wire. I noticed there were other skewers of grass creations by the window.

Like the other rooms, Shao's room was not much bigger than a closet. But it felt less suffocating, because there was only one set of bunk beds instead of two. The space was also clean. There wasn't much stuff.

The bottom bunk had no mattress, just a wooden board covering. It looked like a workshop space with a single lamp, spools of string, and colorful paper. Anything else must have been confiscated by the police.

Besides the bunk, there was only a sink. The sink was the only place with clutter. There was a curling iron and scattered makeup. I picked up a pen and popped open the cap. It was eyeliner, I realized.

"Does Ise also live here?" I asked, noticing the white shirt folded over the top bunk.

Murasaki crossed her arms, leaning by the door. "Ise lives on the opposite side of the district."

Murasaki explained that Ise didn't like her home. Her dad was a shinobi. He had anger problems and an ugly side. So Ise stayed with Shao often.

"Where are Shao's parents? Are they in a different room?" I asked.

Shao had no parents.

He was raised by his grandmother. The two of them lived here, until she passed away. Then he lived here alone.

Murasaki lifted the wooden board from the bottom bunk. Below the board were compartments of stuff. Everything looked like it had been tossed when the police went through it, and someone then tried to clumsily stuff everything back in place.

There wasn't much. I noticed some old clothes in plastic wrap and a pair of slippers. There were lots of newspapers and scrap paper. A toothbrush kit. Old plastic cups. Dried herb packets and tiny jars that looked like it could be ointment.

I could not help but keep looking at the slippers. They were normal bedroom slippers, the cheap fuzzy kind that would get dirty easily and be thrown out after a year. But these, while old and worn, were well kept.

They were adult slippers.

"Is there anything else?" I whispered.

The bathroom was shared; you brought your own shampoo and soap to the showers.

That left the kitchen. Every family had a small section of shelf and fridge space that was theirs. Shao's section was, once again, very neat. He only had a few cabbages and sprouts.

"What do you think you're doing?" Murasaki demanded, seeing a woman take one of the cabbages for herself.

"They're about to spoil," the woman growled back. "You want it?"

When Murasaki said nothing, the woman closed the fridge. "Someone cooks it today, or someone throws it out tomorrow."

Shao's part of the pantry had a bag of rice, a bag of beans, a bottle of oil, and a jar of tofu.

I learned Shao ate simple meals. He was a vegetarian, which meant he did not eat meat, not even fish.

I had a hard time understanding this. Aunt Asa had tried vegetables only, but she tried all sorts of weird diets. It was very gross, and after a while even Aunt Asa gave up.

"Does he not have enough money?" I asked. I knew from grocery shopping that meat was much more expensive than vegetables and rice. If he did not have parents, he might not have the money for it.

"No, that's not it."

I waited.

Murasaki closed her eyes, as if trying to think of the best way to tell me without sounding too crazy.

"Ise's boyfriend can't… kill things."

"Can't kill things?" I echoed.

But Murasaki didn't need to explain more. I was beginning to understand.

When we got back to his room, the kids were there again. This time, some had nested on the top bunk.

Murasaki had to once again shoo them out.

"Is Brother Shaochin coming back?" the kid from before asked, the one who had tried to steal the dragonfly. She did not look older than five or six years old.

"Ask her," Murasaki said, glancing at me.

The kid looked at me.

"Yeah, of course," I said, smiling.

She smiled back.

"I knew the adults lying," she said, very pleased with herself. She ran out to join the others.

I noticed the dragonfly from the window was gone.

"So Shao can't kill anything," I whispered, staring at the grass-woven crickets and mantises and butterflies, the tiny antennas almost see-through in the light.

"No," Murasaki confirmed.

Because Shao was important to Ise, the bad girls let him in their circle. The bad girls protected him like one of their own. But Shao was not like them. He did not fight, not even in self-defense. He was as mild as the spring breeze, as gentle as the summer rain.

Ise knew him better than her right hand. She didn't care about police reports or evidence.

Shao couldn't harm anyone.

He was innocent.

.

Uncle Tekka caught me waiting for him at the police station.

He sighed but did not brush me away like my other uncles. He stacked his folders, listening as I blurted out everything I found out.

"He's a vegetarian!" I exclaimed. "Did you know that?"

Uncle Tekka paused. "No, we didn't."

I tip-toed. "So he's innocent!"

Somewhere nearby, Uncle Inabi snorted.

Uncle Tekka was more patient. With Shisui away, he was the youngest. So he felt the most responsible for me.

"And what's your evidence?" Uncle Tekka asked.

I blinked. I thought I just said it.

"He's a vegetarian."

Shao's innocence seemed very obvious to me. If he couldn't even eat a chicken, no way he could harm people. No way he could blow up Mimi!

Uncle Tekka gave a small huff, shaking his head.

That wasn't evidence, he explained.

I was small and naive. I hadn't travelled and seen what they had seen.

People weren't so clear-cut and logical. There were people who worshipped pigs yet sacrificed children. There were people who protected trees yet burned villages. If anything, strange eating habits was more proof that someone was not right in the head.

Real evidence was the sixty grams of explosive powder they found in Shao's room, the same quality of powder missing from shipment, the same quality of powder found on Mimi's body.

Real evidence was Shao's confession, detailing when he committed the crime, where he committed the crime, both in the exact time window and place the police suspected the explosive powder went missing.

There was a reason our clan was the police.

Not even elite shinobi could resist the Sharingan, much less a civilian boy.

Even if Shao wanted to, it was impossible for him to lie.

He was guilty. He said it himself.

The case was closed.

I couldn't say anything.

As student representative, I wanted to protect all the students. I wanted to make Ise happy. But… I didn't think I could protect Shao. And I didn't think I would be able to make Ise happy.

"What's his punishment?" I finally asked.

Maybe it wouldn't be too bad. Maybe I could convince my uncles to lower his community service time. Sewer duty would suck, but maybe we could work something out.

"No idea," Uncle Tekka said. "That's up to the correctional facility."

"Correctional facility?"

I learned that our clan didn't decide punishment. We only caught criminals and solved cases. Afterward we sent them to the correctional facilities, which then sorted everyone into the right place based on the person and the crime.

The correctional facilities weren't in Konoha.

"Not in… Konoha?" I echoed.

Suddenly, I heard the little girl's voice in my head. I heard Ise's scream and all the silence around her. My stomach knotted.

"But I… I didn't go to any facility," I said softly.

I learned that despite what I thought, my record was clean. My worst offense was defying Itachi's order, which he fully forgave. Even if I had gotten written up for some of my naughty behaviors, they wouldn't have been more than minor misdemeanors.

Stealing eighty-five kilograms of explosive powder was not a minor misdemeanor.

That was a felony.

Felons had no place in Konoha.

.

A/N: I'll be updating weekly until end of summer! :)