“Be sure to leave some bloody fingerprints on it.” She slid a form out from her folder and handed it over, stamped at the top with Konoha’s official seal. “You’ll have to wade through quite a bit of paperwork to claim the bounty anyway, but this should get you started. Hyuuga Momoe, in my division, is our liaison with the Bounty Office. You can contact her with any questions.”

“Joy,” Kakashi drawled, but he folded the form and put it safely on his bedside table.

When a follow-up question failed to immediately present itself, he took a slice of initiative and asked bluntly, “How do you know Ueno?”

That earned him not one but two raised eyebrows. “There's one active-duty kunoichi to every three shinobi in Konoha, and I was only one year above her in the Academy. Why wouldn't we know each other? Some people actually make an effort to talk to their classmates, Kakashi-kun.”

He’d forgotten Kurenai’s particular talent for looking at you like you’d monopolized all the stupid in the universe and put it into a sentence.

“I’ll rephrase,” he said. “Do you like Ueno?”

She regarded him for a long, silent moment. In Kurenai’s hands, silence was as effective as an insult, and more worrying.

“I’d never spoken more than half a dozen words to her at one time until two years ago, when she extracted me out of a potentially lethal situation in Tea Country,” she said, calmly and precisely, a woman building a wall of words. “She visited me in the hospital until I healed. Yes: I like her. She’s smart and sweet and funny, and you’re lucky to have her on your team.” She smiled then, mouth tucking up in an impish curl. “Though I imagine she gives you headaches in more ways than one.”

Kakashi wasn’t sure what he thought of Katsuko anymore, but it wasn’t all bad. It hadn’t been for a while.

“Sometimes,” he said, and turned the conversation away from its suddenly thin ice. “Was there anything else you wanted to know about Iebara?”