Names on the Receipt

Mission update is live.

Get comfortable. The village is watching.

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By the time Naruto reached the mission office again, the cloth around his hand had worked loose. He had a bag of rice and eggs hooked over his good wrist, bandages in his pocket, and absolutely no intention of explaining to the clerk why he had come back after collecting his pay.

"Sakura," he said, "the stamp is already on the report."

"I know."

"The cat is already home."

"I know that too."

She held the door for him. Her left sleeve was rolled above the two red lines Tora had put on her forearm. Sasuke came in behind them, quiet enough that Naruto might have believed he'd gone home if not for the reflection in the glass. Kakashi had left them at the corner with instructions about breakfast and the forest tomorrow. Whatever this was, it was Sakura's idea.

The clerk recognized them. His eyes went from Naruto's hand to Sakura's arm and then to the grocery bag.

"No second reward for bringing her in twice," he said.

"We're not asking for one." Sakura put her copy of the completed report on the counter. "The damage figure and the injuries are right. The account is missing what we spent to get her down, and who helped us find her. Can I attach an addendum to my copy?"

"Your copy is yours. If you want it entered with the office copy, I have to mark what is an expense and what is a claim."

"That's why we're here."

He brought out a blank sheet and an ink pad. He did not reach for the payment drawer. Naruto was relieved and then annoyed at himself for being relieved.

Sakura spread three scraps of paper beside the report. One was the receipt for the fish they had used as bait, softened at the corners where Naruto had carried it against a damp bag. One listed two baskets and the onions lost when the stack went over. The last was from the repairman's counter, where Naruto had bought a two-hundred-ryo roll of bandages along with his wire. Sakura tapped the first two.

"The fish was one hundred and twenty ryo," she said. "The baskets and produce came to six hundred and eighty. Those are paid, not requested."

Naruto stared at the numbers. He remembered pulling coins out while people watched, but the numbers had not held still in his head afterward. Six hundred and eighty was easier to feel now than the scratches.

"The fishmonger wanted more," Sasuke said.

"For fish Tora ruined before we arrived." Sakura pointed to a line she had drawn through the seller's first total. "We didn't pay that. And we didn't pay for the roof."

"I remember," Sasuke said. "I was there."

Sakura looked up at him. "I need you to say whether these two amounts are accurate. I'm not asking you to approve every future expense."

Sasuke read the receipts. His finger stopped at the vegetable seller's mark, a heavy, uneven stroke beside the paid total. "These are accurate. Keep my name off anything that calls the roof our fault."

"It isn't on here."

The clerk took a closer look at the paper. "Your original report says partial reimbursement for baskets and produce. This tells me how much. But the fish isn't damage."

"It's bait," Sakura said. "Bought during the assignment."

"Then label it that way. There won't be another disbursement."

"I understand."

Naruto set the groceries on the floor. "Wait. If the office won't give us the fish money back, why tell them?"

Sakura turned the receipt toward him. At the top, in a square stamp blurred by his thumb, was Kado Fish Stall. Below it, the price. "Because tomorrow someone can read the report and think we caught Tora with a clever jump and nothing else. Or think the fish stall owes us for helping. We bought the bait. He pulled his awning back when I asked, even after Tora had torn through it. Those are different things."

Naruto pictured the man bracing the awning pole and trying not to look at the ruined fish beneath it. The stall had been a mess before Team Seven arrived. After they left, it still had to open for the evening customers.

"His name's Kado?" Naruto asked.

"On his license and his receipt. I asked before we left." Sakura hesitated. "The attendant at the house was Daichi. I wrote it down when he told us where Tora hid."

Naruto had noticed the old man's punctured hands and the useful detail about red cloth. He had not noticed the name. "He got us there before the guards started searching all the wrong roofs."

"Yes."

"Put him in."

Sakura held her pen above the blank sheet. "His employer sees the mission report."

Naruto thought of the old man carrying a tray into a house where a lost cat mattered more than his punctured fingers. Credit in the wrong hands could sound like blame: he had known where Tora went and had failed to stop her sooner. Naruto had wanted his name in the report because it was fair. He had not asked what it might cost him.

"Can we ask him?" he said.

"It's getting late," Sakura said.

"Tomorrow isn't going to be easier."

The clerk cleared his throat. "I can take the expense page now. A witness name can be attached later, if the witness agrees. You have his role and the information he gave you. Don't invent a signature for him."

Sakura nodded and wrote: Household attendant, name withheld pending consent: identified red cloth at the fish stall as Tora's usual route. Naruto leaned over her shoulder.

"That's not the same as giving him credit."

"No," she said. "It's what we can prove without putting him on a form he hasn't seen."

There was enough room for the fish seller's name. Sakura wrote that Kado had sold bait at the listed price and moved the awning on request. She did not call him a rescuer. She entered the vegetable seller, Mrs. Ise, as the recipient of reimbursement, not as a witness to the capture. The clerk copied the amounts and initialed the addendum, then slid it back to her.

"Your office copy?" Sakura asked.

"Attached. No change to the completed stamp or the payment."

Sasuke finally let go of the counter. "Good."

Outside, the air had cooled. Naruto picked up his bag and nearly dropped it when the cloth slipped over his fingers. Sakura caught the handle before the eggs hit the paving stones.

"Sit down," she said.

"It's just three scratches."

"I counted them. Sit."

The public washstand was under the eaves of a closed tea shop. Sakura poured clean water over his hand while he held it above the drain. It stung enough to make him bite the inside of his cheek. She had the patient expression she used when he was being stupid in a way she expected but refused to reward.

"Did you wash this before you wrapped it?"

"I rinsed it."

"With what?"

"Water."

"From where?"

He considered making up a better answer. "The pump by the mission office."

"Fine." She unwound the old cloth. The claw marks were shallow but angry. "You bought bandages."

"For tomorrow."

"Your hand is attached to tomorrow."

He had no answer to that. Sakura took a strip from the roll in his pocket and wrapped it around his palm, leaving his fingers free. Then she handed him the roll and turned her own arm toward the water. Her scratches were shorter. She washed them anyway and used another strip, narrow enough that it would fit beneath her sleeve.

Sasuke watched from the edge of the eaves. He did not offer to help, and Sakura did not ask. He did say, "You used half the roll."

Naruto looked. It was nowhere near half, but more was gone than he had expected.

"That's the other cost," Sakura said. "It doesn't go on the village's damage claim. It comes out of what Naruto bought, and out of our time before tomorrow."

"I didn't ask you to pay me for it," Naruto said.

"I know. I'm writing down that we used it, not charging either of you."

She took out the little notebook she had carried since the academy and made a second, smaller entry. The fish receipt and damage payment belonged to the mission. The bandage was Naruto's purchase, used by two people. She recorded the roll's two-hundred-ryo price, but left the value of the used strips blank because the shop had not sold him a measured length. On the next line she wrote two arms, one hand; check before training.

"You don't have to make a list of everything," Naruto said.

"No. But if I don't write it now, by morning I'll remember that we paid for something and not how much. Then we'll decide we can afford it again."

That made him look at the groceries. Rice, eggs, tea, wire, bandages: each had looked manageable on its own. His share from the earlier annex assignment was already smaller than the tidy figure he had written down with Sakura, and the cat job had carried its own costs before he ever reached the repairman. They had received the cat mission's pay; none of this was a new advance. Whatever remained in his pouch had to last until a task that actually paid again.

"We can still do tomorrow," he said.

Sakura closed the notebook. "Kakashi said breakfast and the forest. That's what we know."

"I didn't mean a mission."

"I know. I mean we shouldn't spend tomorrow's money tonight when we don't know what tomorrow asks for."

Sasuke pushed away from the wall. "And I don't want this notebook deciding what comes out of my share."

"It won't," Sakura said. "The baskets and onions were a cost we settled today. The roof wasn't. The bandage is Naruto's. If we buy something for all three of us next time, we decide before anyone opens a pouch."

Sasuke gave the smallest nod. It wasn't an apology or a promise. It was enough to keep the conversation from becoming another argument at the washstand.

Naruto flexed his fingers. The new wrap held. "Daichi should still get credit."

"Then we ask him when we can," Sakura said. "And if he says no, we keep the part he gave us without making his name the price of it."

Naruto glanced toward the street leading back to the house. The shutters would be closed soon. He could race over, bang on the door, and probably earn one more complaint for the report. He stayed where he was.

"Kado's name is there," he said instead.

"For what he did. Not for the mess he didn't make."

"And Mrs. Ise gets the right amount."

"Yes."

It sounded smaller than a heroic account of a capture. Naruto found he preferred it. The old servant had pointed them in the right direction. Kado had sold the fish and held the awning. Mrs. Ise had lost baskets and onions because three genin had brought a frightened cat through a crowded street. If a story left any of those people out, it got easier to tell and harder to trust.

Sakura slid the initialed addendum behind her report. The paper made the folder no heavier than Naruto could feel. His bag was heavier, and his pouch was lighter, and the clean bandage pulled when he gripped the handle. Whatever Kakashi had planned in the forest tomorrow, Naruto would bring the same sore hand to it.

"Breakfast first," he said.

"That's what Kakashi said," Sakura replied.

They split at the next corner. Sasuke took the straight road home. Sakura carried her folder beneath the sleeve that covered her scratches. Naruto shifted the groceries to his uninjured hand and walked toward his apartment, trying to remember the attendant's name without looking at her notes. Daichi. He had the name now. He could wait to use it until the man said it was all right.

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