“Then there’d be two of you in Konoha?” Shibata concluded. “I’m beginning to form a better understanding of the reports I read from the interviews with your team.” He changed positions, uncrossing and then recrossing his legs in the opposite direction, like a full body subject change. “Let’s assume favoritism was a minor factor here. Shiranui’s report mentions that you had apprised him of your vulnerability to genjutsu. What else have you done to address that weakness?”

“Everything I could think of,” Raidou said wearily. “Solo training, further education classes. I tried working with an Uchiha for a while; that was a disaster. I have enough of a handle on it to cope in the average fight, and I compensate with taijutsu and ninjutsu. In a team-setting, I make my teammates aware it might be a problem and hope I won’t need their help.”

“Given the severity of the consequences of failure, that’s a significant thing to trust to hope,” Shibata said mildly. “When is the last time you worked intensively with a genjutsu specialist?”

“Eighteen months, give or take. I gave up finding a new one after I made Omashi Mito start throwing things.” Bruises were conducive to a lot of training, but there was a limit.

“And the last class you took?”

“Ten months. At this point, I’m just repeating them.”

Shibata fixed him with weighing look. “You strike me as a man who likes his world very ordered. Very controlled. Your reports are meticulous. You’re more than punctual — I note you arrived nearly an hour early to this appointment. But when that order is unobtainable — when genjutsu destroys it, or the battlefield is too chaotic, or your fear overwhelms you…” He made an exploding tag gesture with one hand, a fast detonation turning into a slow-motion expansion, and hissed a bursting sound through his half-lips.

Raidou sat with that for a moment. “You think I’m a control freak.”

Shibata chuckled, a light rumbling sound. “I didn’t say freak. But I think a loss of control is at the heart of this problem, yes.”

There’d been no control in the trenches. There’d just been survival, and those who didn’t. Bone-grinding exhaustion and bloody calculations: how many bodies dropped for every mile of regained ground. Chemical gas — the kind that burned half a face off — and bloodlines so extreme that the wielders died as often as the victims.

And some days, when too many people died, Raidou had stopped thinking about tactics, or strategies, or how much he wanted to make it home. He'd just wanted to rip into something until it hurt as badly as he did.

So he'd taken his filters off, and gone somewhere else for a while.

The demon mission had been intense, but he’d always had a plan. Even when Ryouma had fallen and Raidou’s heart had dropped to his boots, there’d been four other people to worry about, and a civilian village to protect. But when steel had punched Katsuko’s chest out, there’d been nothing.

I made a choice.

He’d made a choice in the screaming void of that moment, because seeing her fall had torn something loose. He’d forgotten about the rest of the team, about his duties to home and hearth, about the one-hundred rules of shinobi conduct. He’d iced over, cold-shocked, and then he’d let himself burn.

And he’d beaten a man to death.

Just for a second, the crunch-crack of breaking bone echoed under his hands. He flattened his palms against his knees. I made a choice.

Which meant, perhaps, that he could unchoose it.