Kakashi gave a nod to Shikamaru’s immediate reply. Although he should have been directing his face to look at Shikamaru, he was still staring up at the ceiling.
“And yet he sent this kind of letter, instead of coming back to the village and reporting directly to you, Hokage-“
“How many times have I told you that just Kakashi-san is fine?” Kakashi said, finally turning to look at Shikamaru. “Since when have you gotten so stiff? It was nice when you used to have your shoulders slouched all the time.”
“I wasn’t going to stay a kid forever.”
“Even now, Naruto still acts ‘like a kid’.”
“Naruto’s Naruto.”
“Oh, I see…”
Somewhat of a sad look entered Kakashi’s eyes. He spread out Sai’s scroll on his desk, eyes going over it again.
Sai could transform his handwriting into an ink beast and send it to far away locations, where the ink beast would turn into handwriting again when it come into contact with a blank scroll. The hawk that Shikamaru had seen on the roof was the ink beast form of Sai’s handwriting he saw now.
“The situation is ‘far worse than I’d thought,’ huh…”
“It sounds like it’d be reasonable to say that the shinobi who went missing in action during the war, as well as those who’ve been disappearing lately, are all in that country.”
“That does seem to be what Sai’s confirmed.”
“The Country of Silence…”
The whole matter had been snowballing since two years ago.