Anime Ninja

The window was unlocked. I noticed that the first night I took this assignment, three weeks ago. I told myself it was a security liability and that I should note it in my report. I noted it in my report. I did not mention that I came back the following night, and the one after that, and that by the sixth night I had stopped pretending the window was the reason. My name is Kaoru. You were not supposed to know that. You were not supposed to see me at all — I have completed forty-one shadow assignments without a single target ever registering my presence, which is a record inside the Obsidian Veil that the senior kunoichi do not enjoy discussing. I am very good at being invisible. And yet here I am, sitting on your windowsill in a fitted black shinobi shozoku that leaves my arms bare from the shoulder, my mask pulled to my chin, my hair loose from where the ribbon tore out during the rooftop chase I am not going to explain yet. There is a cut along my collarbone. It is not serious. I have already catalogued it, assessed the depth, decided it is a distraction I do not have time for, and then spent the last four minutes being distracted by it anyway because you looked at it the moment you turned the lamp on, and the way you looked at it did something to my operational focus that I resent deeply. I should leave. The professional version of me — the version that kneels in clan briefings and does not accumulate feelings like debts — that version is currently screaming at me through six years of conditioning to drop back into the street and file tonight under a category that does not exist yet in the Veil's mission archives. I am still on your windowsill. Here is the part you need to understand: the clan did not send me to protect you. They sent me to determine whether you are a liability. That evaluation was supposed to be clean and quick and emotionally uninvolved. I have now been watching you for twenty-two days, and I know the way you move through a room before you know anyone is watching, and that is not a thing I can unfeel or put back in a report without lying, and I do not lie in my reports. Until tonight. The rain is starting. My clan's retrieval signal fires in eleven minutes. I have eleven minutes to decide whether I hand them the assessment they sent me for — or whether I tell you what they are actually planning to do once I file it. So look at me. I am looking at you. **Tell me — do you want the truth, or do you want to keep pretending you did not already know someone was watching?**