“Why would she … ?” Naruto said.
Suigetsu cocked his head to one side. “No idea,” he said, not sounding like he cared either way. “There are a lot of researchers who want to keep the results all to themselves.”
The facility was enormous, with countless rooms. He could hear a sound like liquid boiling violently; the place was somehow not quiet. Whenever Naruto turned his eyes toward a door, Suigetsu gleefully asked if he’d like to see inside, grinning toothily, so each time, Naruto shook his head.
Once they had turned a number of corners and moved quite far inside the lab, Suigetsu stopped.
“This is it.” He pointed at a heavy iron door built into the end of the hallway. “And I’ll tell you one thing right now. Orochimaru almost never lends anyone a part of his own lab. You can’t possibly think he’s just being nice, right?”
“I know.” Naruto nodded and pushed on the door. “That’s just how valuable her work is, I guess.”
Chihare was sitting on the linoleum floor and working at the computer on the low table that had been brought in for her. There were also a desk and chair against the wall, but she couldn’t really focus unless she was working in the setup she was used to using.
While she was hunched over and reexamining her test results, she heard the sound of the door opening.
“Chihare! I’m here!”
It was Naruto.
She stood up slowly, slipped between the steel shelves that filled the lab space, and poked her head out. “Thanks for coming.”
“Sure.” He smiled at her and then frowned. “Uh, you have huge bags under your eyes.”
“I haven’t slept,” she told him. “The amenities are good here, so I’m making nice progress with my tests.”
Although the hallways and the entrance of Orochimaru’s lab were decorated with the rustic beauty of bare rock face, one step inside of any room revealed the most modern of facilities. The walls and ceiling were stainless steel that shone silver, the air conditioning could be adjusted in units of 0.1 percent of a degree, and there was even a clean room in the back.
Once she’d been given the blessing of these amenities, Chihare’s research had become visibly more efficient. Working here was better in every way than in a renovated Japanese-style room in the basement of a house. To start with, the space was large, so the number of shelves she could set up and the number of petri dishes she could put on them had tripled. The steel shelves were crowded together and so completely filled with glass petri dishes, it was like they shunned extra space.
Cameras were positioned openly near the ceiling. Everything about the experiment was being recorded, it seemed. Which meant that her results, if any, would be shared whether she liked it or not, but she had expected that much at least when she’d agreed to work in Orochimaru’s lab.
“Okay, let’s get right to it!” Naruto exclaimed and turned his goggles on.
Even though the number of petri dishes had clearly increased, he didn’t utter a word of complaint as he promptly got on with the work of checking the chakra in them. There was little space between the shelves, making it a fairly tight fit for someone Naruto’s size.
“So, Suigetsu was telling me.” He started talking to Chihare while he put a foot on the edge of a lower shelf and grabbed onto the ceiling with both hands to peer at the dishes on the very top shelf. “You told them you don’t need their help?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’ve done it all by myself up to now.”
“But wouldn’t you finish faster if you got them to help you?”
“It’s fine. It’s very stressful when there’s another person here.”
“Is that it?” Naruto said as if understanding. He fell silent, but soon enough, he turned his face toward her with a gasp. “But you did ask me to come, right?”
Well, yes, she did. It was painful for her to have other people around, so she’d been doing her research in that basement by herself. But for some reason, she’d naturally reached out to Naruto. When she thought about it, it was curious.
I wonder why …
While Chihare blinked rapidly in confusion, Naruto went ahead and found his own reason. “Oh! I guess because the goggles are handy.” And got back to work.
Yes, right. That was it. The goggles. She wanted to borrow the power of the goggles. That was why she’d reached out to him. Otherwise, she would never deliberately choose to be in the same space as another person.
“I’ve never really been comfortable with other people around,” she muttered, and Naruto turned a confused face toward her.
“You like being alone better?” he asked. “I like being with the whole gang myself.”
“But then you have to walk on eggshells, trying to get along,” she said. “Isn’t it easier when you’re alone?”
“Well, I guess some people are like that,” he mused. “But, you know, there’s a lot of fun you can have when someone else is around.”
“Such as?” Chihare asked in return.
“Right.” Naruto looked out into space. “The one that still cracks me up is back when Master Kakashi had just become Hokage.” He abruptly burst out laughing.
A bit excessive, laughing at a memory. He grinned so happily that Chihare nearly rolled her eyes.
“So we were told to go on this mission to take down this group of thieves,” he continued. “And Sasuke just happened to be in the village, so he came along too. He’s not a shinobi, strictly speaking, so he wasn’t officially helping.”
Uchiha Sasuke and Hatake Kakashi. He dropped these formidable names so casually, and Chihare was secretly impressed. He was strangely affable by nature, but this person really was the Seventh Hokage.