Kakashi was multi-tasking. On his left knee, a plate of salt-fried saury from the cafeteria steamed gently. On his right knee -- and spread around the floor -- piles of mission reports sifted together like a kind of literary leaf-mulch. His hands were occupied strapping a tight ace-bandage around a sprained wrist. Clenched between his unmasked teeth, a single chopstick hung forgotten. The other was somewhere on the floor. Behind one ear, a pen streaked ink into his hair. The rest of him was consumed with feeling bone-achingly, mind-blurringly tired.

The sharp, business-like knock at the door was expected.

"Argh," Kakashi muttered wearily, shucking food and paperwork and chopstick in favour of his mask. He grabbed a half-finished report, extracting himself from the mess.

"You'll have to come back later," he said, as he cancelled the seals and opened the door. "I'm not finished ye--"

It wasn't an Intel chuunin.

"Ginta?" said Kakashi inanely. He rallied, skimming the classified mission report onto his bed, out of sight of the door. "Look, I'm really busy--"

"You need to hear this. You really need to hear this." Ginta's voice was glass-cut sharp, underscored by a full-body wave of stressed scent. "Let me in, okay, Kakashi?"

'Kakashi', not 'genius'. Ginta was already halfway through the door.

Wordlessly, Kakashi stepped back into his apartment, yanked a blanket off the bed and tossed it wholesale over the heap of paperwork on the floor. It covered everything, including his lunch. Messy, but effective. He dropped a pillow over the half-written report left on the bed. Then he looked back at Ginta.

Ginta's arms were full of folders; his eyes looked hard and blue in his blanched face. There was nothing like a smile anywhere.

Someone, Kakashi suspected, was dead.

"What happened?" he demanded.