[i]"Do you mind if I ask you a quick question?"[/i]
Katsu shrugged. ”Sure, what's on your mind?”
[i]"Lady Kaede told me that people say bad things about you...Why do they say these things?"[/i]

The kind and innocent smile faded away, even if only for a moment, being replaced by a horrified visage. He shook his head and smiled again. ”That... It's just that my old master and teammates and I had gone to hunt a missing-nin, A-Rank. It was quite a few years ago. I was the only one who got back and there was a wound in my master's chest, inflicted by my sabre,” he said. ”But he was already dead when that happened. Some people don't believe me but it was the replacement technique the target had used to replace with his dead body.”
His voice trembled towards the end of his sentence but he kept the smile on his mouth. He heaved a sigh and looked ahead. ”We should keep going and meet the others,” he said, trying to change the subject. ”We wouldn't want to keep Lady Kaede waiting, would we?”

Katsu could understand why people would think he had done it. It made sense, from what most people heard. He always tensed up whenever someone asked about it because no matter how he told the story, it would always be reasonable to think that he was the one responsible, and maybe he was. He couldn't see whether or not Konoe was alive when they'd switched places. He shook the thought away. [i]He had the wound that had killed him on his chest, a vertical slash. That wasn't dealt by me.[/i] He looked back over at Karela, waiting for her to move forward, ready to leap off the ground.