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Chapter 22 - In plain sight
🕑 Added 2025-04-17 14:53:39 +0000 UTCRight at the heart of the village, Konoha Library sat like an afterthought between a tea shop and a weaponsmith — broad wooden doors, unassuming sign, the kind of place civilians walked past without a second glance. Open, quiet, and accessible to anyone.
No guards, no chakra seals at the doors, nothing that screamed important.
One’d think a village of professional liars and killers would keep their knowledge buried deep, behind locked doors and a dozen Anbu chokepoints. And in most places, they do.
Most places weren’t a great shinobi village.
Enemy-nin walking by either ignore it entirely, assuming it was just public fluff, or they get paranoid and overthink it. It’s too obvious, they tell themselves. It has to be a decoy, or worse, a trap.
Turned out, hiding it in plain sight was exactly how you keep something safe.
The Konoha Library was the real thing.
There was, of course, another library — the Konoha Archive Library — tucked away beneath the Hokage Rock. But that one for bureaucrats and high-level intel. Mission reports. Classified scrolls. Boring shit with seals so tight even reading the titles wrong might trigger a lockdown.
The real collection — the one with jutsu scrolls, chakra theory, historical battle data, and developmental records for every shinobi art Konoha owns — that was all here. On shelves. In rows. Right under everyone's nose.
If you know where to look, that is.
I walked in just after sunrise. The scent of old paper and ink hit me like a nostalgia kick. The place was empty except for an old librarian sipping tea behind the desk and a genin kid asleep with his face buried in a scroll.
The receptionist sat flipping through a worn little novel, her tea steaming beside her. Mid-forties, graying hair tied in a neat bun, thick glasses that made her look harmless. A civilian, technically—but only on paper. The lines around her mouth were the kind carved by stress, not age, and her fingers were calloused in the way that came from years of holding senbon, not pens.
“Morning.” I gave her a warm smile.
"You're up early.” She barely looked up from her book, but her eyes flicked to mine once, “Trouble or curiosity?"
"Would it impress you if I said both?" I leaned on the desk, tapping my fingers absently—two quick, one slow, then a pair in rhythm.
"Your last visit,” she replied flatly, taking a sip of her tea, “ended with you triggering the flame-resistant seal on Section C. Took a week to air the place out."
"Woa, that was years ago — are you growing senile?" I gave her my best smirk. "This boring gig’s not good for your mind. Say…. ever think of ditching it and running away with the most handsome Jonin in all of Konoha?"
“I’m too old to babysit.” She didn’t even blink. She grabbed a slip of paper and started writing—nothing unusual at first glance. Just a book title and author. “And you’d cry the first time I made you do dishes.”
She handed me the paper — Fifth row. Second aisle. Shelf six — and I gave her a small salute. “You’re the best, Reiko.”
“I know,” she muttered, already flipping the page on her novel. “Don’t break anything.”
With a grin, I headed off into the stacks.
The civilian-grade sealing scroll was the official reason I dragged myself into this dusty, paper-filled hell that still gave me claustrophobic flashbacks.
But it wasn’t the only reason.
There was another project brewing in the back of my skull — one that had kept me up all damn night, staring at the ceiling like some hormonal idiot.
After I pumped Anko full, I found myself wondering why I didn’t do that more often. I mean, yeah, giving Mebuki a facial was hot and all, but wouldn’t it be better — much better — to dump a full load inside her? Bury it to the hilt and not worry about pulling out?
Only problem was… I didn’t trust that bitch to not “accidentally” get pregnant. And her as a mother of my child was simply a no.
There were condoms in this world. Or medical contraceptive pills. But honestly, I liked none of that. Rubbers ruin the feel, and medicine was a gamble, and it removes matters from my hands.
And why the hell would I rely on any of those when I could make my own solution?
My expertise was fuinjutsu and jutsu shiki, why not?
A contraceptive seal of some sort. Low-maintenance. Chakra-anchored. Discreet.
Of course, this thought process was exactly why I rarely trust myself with too much free time. I’d just promised—yesterday—that I was going to cut back on the casual screwing. Get back in the field. Refocus. Be professional.
But in my defense… this was a project about future sex.
Technically, I wasn’t breaking anything…… yet.
Eh?
Deeper in the library, past the civilian-level shelves and into the more technical stacks, I caught sight of someone standing still. Slender figure, slight hunch, blonde hair pulled behind one ear.
I smiled and took a few quiet steps forward, hands in my pockets, and called out just loud enough for her to hear, "Early as always, Shiho-chan. You never miss a sunrise, do you?"
She jumped like I’d set off an explosive tag.
Her head whipped around, and her wide eyes, magnified behind those comically thick glasses, locked onto mine. That same nervous energy hit her all at once. A smile bloomed across her soft, pale face, lighting her up before she flushed crimson from the neck up.
“S-Sasayaki-san,” she stammered, like it was still a surprise I existed outside of dirty fantasies and dusty blueprints. Then her eyes darted left, right—probably remembering the last time we saw each other. In a cramped records room. After hours. Clothes halfway off, her glasses fogged up, and her whimpering kept to a whisper so no one heard us in the next wing.
Her voice cracked as she tried to play casual. “W-What are you doing here?”
I tilted my head, letting my eyes glide down the length of her without shame. It’d been… two months? Something like that. Way too long since I’d seen my favorite little bookworm.
She was dressed almost exactly how I remembered—modest maroon dress under that crisp white lab coat, tied neatly at the waist with a dark blue sash. That knot hugged the curve of her hips, slight as they were, hinting at softness under all that professionalism. From above, I could just catch the subtle hint of cleavage the neckline allowed—not much, but the kind of tease that stuck with you. Her skin still had that pale, untouched quality, like she'd never spent more than five minutes in the sun.
I licked my lips before speaking, more out of habit than anything.
Her posture was classic Shiho—shoulders slightly hunched, trying to disappear even when no one was looking. But that sway in her stance, that awkward weight shift from foot to foot… Yeah. She remembered. I bet she was thinking about it now.
"What, no warm welcome for an old classmate?” I grinned. “We haven’t seen each other for so long, and don't even get a hug?"
She flushed even redder.. She clutched the scroll to her chest like it might shield her from embarrassment. She opened her mouth, closed it, then tried again, words spilling out in a mess of vowels and nerves.
“I-I didn’t know you were back! I mean—uh, I mean I didn’t think you’d be at the library this early! Or—at all! Not that you’re dumb! Just, you don’t usually—uh—” She stopped, flustered, and gave a little bow like she was apologizing to the floor.
I forgot how fun this was.
I leaned against the shelf beside her, deliberately invading her space without touching her yet, arms crossed, pretending to read the spines while I watched her squirm. “You wound me, Shiho-chan. What, you think I don’t read?”
“N-no! That’s not what I—!” she started, frantic again, but I waved her off with a chuckle.
“I’m kidding,” I said, smiling. “Mostly.”
She let out a little breath, still red but starting to smile again. The kind of smile she tried to suppress, the one that pulled at the corners of her mouth like she wasn’t sure if it was allowed.
I liked that smile.
I liked making her fumble, making her blush. Shiho was the kind of girl who could catalog a hundred formulas by memory but couldn’t handle a compliment without short-circuiting. It made teasing her addictive.
Cute as hell.
But mostly, I liked being the only one who got to see her unravel like this.
I let my arm drape casually over her shoulders, feeling the way her body instantly tensed, then curled inward like she was trying to fold into the bookshelves. Her pale hair tickled my forearm— clean, smelled vanilla soap, and that faint, warm scent of ink and paper that clung to her skin from hours spent hunched over scrolls.
And lower, just visible from this angle if I let my gaze dip, the modest neckline of her dress gave way to the hint of soft cleavage, rising and falling too quickly now.
"Wh-what are you—?"
I leaned in, close enough that my breath stirred the fine hairs at her ear when I spoke. "You hate me, Shiho?"
She jerked like I’d shocked her. "No! Of course n-no—"
"Then why the hell do I still get ‘Sasayaki-san’?" I pointed out, thumb brushing the side of her throat where her pulse fluttered wild as a caged bird. "After everything. Really?"
She swallowed hard. "It's... it's not... proper..."
Proper had nothing to do with the way her breath hitched when I tightened my grip on her shoulder, or how her thighs pressed together under her skirt.
“Mm,” I snorted, nudging my nose against the shell of her ear just to feel her shiver. "I remember someone screaming my name loud enough to wake up the village. Was it proper then?"
An exaggeration, Shiho was not one to let loose like that.
A whimper. A full-body shudder. The way her fingers clutched uselessly at the scroll to her chest. She didn’t pull away.
I forced myself to pull back, "So," I said, nodding toward her cipher work. "You figuring out some new sealing algorithm in your free time, or did the archives finally bore you?"
“I-I was just—testing a nested substitution cipher with hexagrammatic components.“ She blinked owlishly behind those ridiculous glasses. "It’s nothing groundbreaking, just…"
"Just something our favorite cryptographer does for fun," I finished, amusement curling in my tone.
Shiho ducked her head, but not before I caught the fleeting pride in her expression.
“Perfect.“ I leaned in again, this time letting my knuckles graze the back of her hand. "Because I could use someone with your kind of brain right now."
If I asked outright, Shiho would say yes. No hesitation, no demands. Her eagerness to please was downright tragic. And yeah, it made me feel guilty about exploiting that.
But I could make it worth her while.
My fingers slid along her wrist, her soft hand, slow enough to make her shiver. "Got a problem I think you’d like," I murmured. "Auto-triggered seals. Civilian-grade. Needs to be dummy-proof and durable."
Her lips parted—not in protest, but in interest.
Shiho deals with symbol relationships every damn day. Patterns, transformations, and the kind of logic that turns a cipher into readable text or rewrites an equation without breaking its core. That may be exactly what I need to convert these chakra-reactive seals into mechanical triggers.
She’d spot which symbols are anchors, which ones can bend, and where to slot in the mechanical analogs without collapsing the whole thing.
A cipher wasn’t just letters; it was a sequence waiting for the right touch. And a button wasn’t just a switch — it was a translation.
A mechanical cipher for intent. Press down, and the system translates that into action.
I’ve been overcomplicating it. Trying to reinvent the wheel when all I need is the right mapping. Shiho would look at the problem differently.
