“What do you think happened to Sai?” Kakashi asked.
“He’s alive.”
“Well, I agree with that.” The bottom of Kakashi’s mask moved as if he was smiling. “When you look at his obsessive sounding praise of this ‘Gengo’ he mentions in his letter…” Kakashi touched the fine, delicate handwriting on Sai’s message.
Seeing what he was thinking, Shikamaru kept speaking.
“It’s not something I want to believe, but we can’t discount the possibility that Sai’s been taken in by this man called Gengo.”
“Sai’s so pure, after all…”
“If Sai’s alive, we can’t just not save him.”
“That’s true…” Kakashi’s left scarred eye seemed to darken with despair.
Shikamaru could tell precisely what he was going to say without needing to hear it out loud.
This situation had a greater and more important matter than that of saving a comrade.
Shikamaru himself forced out the words.
“If the internal affairs of the Country of Silence are really as Sai’s reported, if the goings-on within are as you’ve guessed, then we have to take action immediately.”