It was another chilly morning; the mist was seeping through the streets, trying to get into a fight with the casual sore throat around the vicinity. Its desperate anti-community health attempts however had little to no success since most people – even those coming from the working class strata – were still embracing the comfortable warmth of their beds, having an hour or so before getting up to prepare for their daily routines of patrol and commerce. Even the roosters in the village were keeping quiet, but that – as some people loved to lowkey joke about – was quite understandable when it came to smart birds living in Kirigakure, the perfect military heaven where everything was part of a strict and non-vocalized world order.

Eishi – in stark contrast to certain realities – was already up on his feet, chaotically walking around in spirals, looking for a good spot to crash in. The boy was tired, severely so, for he could not get a proper sleep for the past couple of days; his chuunin's duties had already caught up with him without first asking whether he had found a proper place to call home. The honest answer to that question – as every keen observer of the boy's desperate trajectories would have already guessed – was negative; Eishi was as homeless as they come, yet again. "Damn it..."

After the clash with his father the Yuki boy had found shelter in one of the hospital's many recovery wards, but as it became clear that his condition could not improve any further, he was released from state custody and was forced to look after himself. Since then he had no luck in finding an affordable place to rent, and spending more nights under the leaking arches of abandoned bridges was really out of the question.

What Eishi did not expect at first became common knowledge to him not long after; there were those whose fate did not smile on, bandits and thugs of all sins who – in fear of Kiri's harsh laws – were constrained to a solitary marginalization underground. The village's crime rate – although going rather high of late – was still incomparable to other popular places all due to the iron clad of exercised fear. Sadly, the light of the guards' lanterns could not reach every moist corner, and in places like the ones the Yuki usually picked for camping, bad things tended to happen. A lot.

For example, there was a time when the white-haired shinobi had fallen asleep only to find himself disturbed by the touch of a rascal. The heavily-bearded man-animal held a sharp knife to his neck and insisted of being rude, bloodshot eyes fixed at the chuunin's pack. It was against Eishi's old moral code to cause too much harm to the poor chap, so – when the encounter ended – only the guy's limbs were broken in various places, mouth filled with sticks and dirt. Others like him were not as lucky; they had to find out the chuunin's new predisposition to indifference.

The constant fighting however soon grew tiresome, and the exhausted shinobi found himself in a dire need of placidity. A necessity he had decided to end today.