But he was fascinating to watch: all prickles and anger one moment, all charm and self-satisfaction the next. She hoped he did manage to drag Kakashi out to one of Konoha's watering spots soon. Kakashi might even enjoy it. Katsuko certainly would.

A flicker of challenge sparked in Kakashi's eye. "Idiocy is more noticeable," he drawled.

"So you can enjoy yourself snarking at us," Tousaki countered. "I'll buy you a mocktail. Or a lemonade. You can stay obnoxiously sober and make scathing comments at everybody else."

Kakashi brightened. "Deal."

"Deal," Tousaki confirmed, and looked for a moment as if he meant to spit in his hand and shake on it. He swung around instead, looking at the bare hospital room, the midmorning view out the long window, the cheerful posters tacked up on the opposite wall. His gaze passed without faltering over Kurenai's corner and settled on the battered file over Kakashi's bedside table. "You know what to do with those? Lieutenant read me off a spiel, but they were changing his bandages when I came in, so it got kind of interrupted."

Kakashi tipped his head to look at the folder with his good eye. "If I said no, what would you do?"

"Figure you for a henge and stick a kunai in you," Tousaki said promptly. "You always know what to do." He rifled through the folder, though, and pulled out a set of red notebooks. "Training logs, the lieutenant said. And here's the paperwork for your mission report — though I dunno why you have to do it when you just told everything to Intel…"

"Because Intel likes redundancies and killing trees," Kakashi sighed, and pulled the file over to leaf through the paperwork. Tousaki dropped the logbooks on the table again and leaned hipshot against it, watching.

Out in the hall, far too close, chakra snapped and flared.

A shinobi's polite greeting, warning of approach — except this chakra was unmistakable, sun-bright and summer-warm. Kakashi's head came up. Tousaki looked automatically toward the half-open door.

Spying on Konoha agents, in service of a higher cause, could be excused. Spying on the Hokage very certainly could not. Kurenai gathered her genjutsu around herself and slipped out of the room just before the Yondaime reached for the door.

Not even the edge of her tightly inverted chakra grazed him. He paused all the same, one hand in the door slot, and looked around. The blue eyes touched her where she stood frozen in the hallway, and narrowed.

Kurenai dropped the genjutsu. "Hokage-sama," she said, tight-throated. She kept her voice low enough that no one in the room could hear, but her knuckles whitened on her clipboard all the same.

"When you're moving under an invisibility genjutsu," he said, just as quietly, "don't forget the air currents." His gaze stayed steady, piercing her through. "What were you doing?"

"Shirotani-kakarichou sent me to debrief Agent Hatake. His teammate, Agent Tousaki, arrived as we finished." She hesitated. "Kakashi raised...some concerns about Tousaki's status after the last mission. I stayed to observe their interaction."

"And your conclusions?"

She glanced toward the sliver of the room she could see through the half-open door. Tousaki hadn't moved yet, but he would soon…

And the Yondaime was waiting.

She drew a breath, and let it out. "Tousaki was disturbed by the actions he was required to take. But his team is supporting him. Kakashi talked to him longer — and more freely — than I've ever known him to speak to anyone but Rin. They're both concerned about their captain, but they're holding on."

His gaze pinned her a moment longer. Then he nodded, short and sharp. "Thank you for your work, Yuuhi. I'll see that report on my desk this afternoon."

"Hokage-sama," she managed. She bowed, clutching her clipboard to her chest, and fled.