At that moment, Arai was afraid.
Genuinely afraid.
He was terrified that once Yuji spoke, the words would confirm everything he had been suspecting. So he said nothing. He couldn't bring himself to respond.
The sudden silence made Yuji's eyes shift slightly.
He was certain. The person in front of him had grown suspicious. The tracking of Sasori had been aimed at uncovering the truth. He wasn't sure what had given it away, but the silence told him enough.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
Then opened them, and smiled.
"I just wanted to discuss a plan with you, Arai-sensei. Nothing more than that. No need to be so tense."
"A plan?"
"Yes. A plan for selling the Hidden Sand Village's medicine. What else did you think it was?"
Yuji walked to the side and began pouring tea. "Even with the finished products ready, breaking into the market won't be simple. We need to give the outside world time to accept what we're offering. My initial thinking is..."
He began laying it out in detail.
Starting with paying out of his own pocket to approach other villages and countries directly, offering them upfront compensation and a share of profits in exchange for early adoption and distribution cooperation.
Moving through plans to use certain wartime conditions to build the medicine's reputation. Working through each stage methodically.
Arai listened and found himself unable to keep up with some of it. In his view, medicine this effective would sell itself. Why give other villages a share? Why pay them anything at all?
"It takes time for the ninja world to accept something new," Yuji said, not pausing. "Things aren't as smooth as they look. Once the value of these medicines becomes understood, we become a target, sabotage, hijacking, interference. So we make sure everyone profits alongside us.
We use local forces to ensure market stability. The money we give them is small. But over time, they grow accustomed to receiving a windfall for doing essentially nothing.
Once that habit is established, the chain of interest binds them to the Hidden Sand Village. They can't leave without losing something they've come to rely on. And if they dare oppose us, we cut the supply." Yuji smiled. "The deterrent value of a monopoly is no weaker than military force."
Arai exhaled sharply. A chill moved down his back.
"How is it? My plan?"
"I... don't know what to say."
Arai meant it sincerely, though his emotions were tangled.
"To truly make a fortune, we still need a war to drive demand," Yuji said, with a sigh that sounded almost wistful. "I keep wondering when the next one will come."
He paused, then looked at Arai directly.
"Arai Sensei, if this plan succeeds, how significant would my contribution to the Village be?"
Arai was quiet for a moment.
"If it truly succeeds, your achievement wouldn't just affect the Village. It would change the structure and ecology of the entire ninja world."
"It's not quite that dramatic. This is just another form of leverage and economic development. The Five Great Nations will still fight, their grudges run too deep for that to change. What this does is raise the Hidden Sand Village's status and influence among the Five Great Nations and beyond. That's what I'm actually aiming for." Yuji set down his tea.
"And the window isn't unlimited. Over time, other villages will reverse-engineer what we've made. Once their technology catches up, they'll produce copies. That's one of the reasons I haven't allowed any of the research participants to share even a fragment of information outside the lab."
Arai sat with that.
"Medicine is only the first step in changing the Village's economy. There's more after this."
"Yuji..." Arai said, and for once the words came without ceremony. "Having you in the Hidden Sand Village is a blessing."
He meant it completely.
Yuji looked at him for a moment. Then, almost casually, he asked, "What if I die before the plan is finished?"
Arai blinked. "Uh..."
Arai stared at him.
"Is my value greater, or the Kazekage's value greater?"
"You... what do you mean by that?"
Arai's breathing had gone slightly uneven.
"Hahaha, nothing at all. Just a joke." Yuji waved a hand with easy laughter. "As ninja, everyone aims to become the Kage of their village eventually. I won't pretend I have no interest in it whatsoever, even if it's not something I think about obsessively."
Arai let out a quiet breath.
"If your plan succeeds, becoming the next Kage would be completely natural," he said, and found he meant it. "The Third wouldn't have grounds to object.
In a few years you'll have military merit, concrete achievement, strength, and reputation all at once. Even Rasa, if you became a genuine competitor, I think he'd step aside on his own."
"So you support me, Arai-sensei?"
"Of course," Arai said.
They talked for another fifteen minutes before Arai stood to leave. At the door, Yuji asked him several times to say nothing to anyone about the finished medicines, not out of distrust, but because what was sitting in those jars and tablets concerned the village's entire future.
The implications of a premature leak were obvious. Arai understood the weight of it and agreed without hesitation.
But walking away from the hospital, the medicine wasn't what occupied Arai's thoughts.
He was replaying the conversation.
Every exchange, every question Yuji had asked, every small shift in tone or expression. The emotional arc of the past few hours had moved him through elation, then alarm, then something that hadn't fully resolved into either. It sat in his chest like pressure with no clear direction to release.
He had walked in carrying suspicion. He was walking out carrying something more complicated, and he couldn't decide if that was because the suspicion had been relieved or because it had been expertly managed.
"Is my value greater, or the Kazekage's value greater?"
The words wouldn't leave him.
Yuji had laughed them off immediately as a joke. And perhaps they were. The explanation that followed had been natural, the laughter genuine-sounding.
But Arai had spent years in environments where people said one thing and meant another, and the question had landed somewhere specific inside him that the laughter hadn't fully reached.
"Yuji," he said quietly to no one.
His mind was a tangle he couldn't immediately smooth out.
...
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