Futures Trading Hall
"It's doubled?"
"Could war really be breaking out?"
"Move aside. If you're not buying, don't crowd the front. I'm going all in with 10,000 ryo!"
"..."
In the span of a single night, the futures hall had turned into something like a marketplace. It was not only unbelievably noisy now, it was also packed to the brim.
Haru and the Fire Daimyo had worked together to pull the market upward, doubling the price of pig iron overnight. In a single night, the passion of the futures market had been completely ignited.
In the past, if you wanted to hoard pig iron and profit from it, only nobles and major merchants with huge amounts of capital were qualified to get involved.
But things were different now.
Because Haru had appeared, the threshold for speculating on pig iron had been smashed to pieces. Even a roadside peddler with a little savings could toss in one or two months' worth of income and try his luck.
The very first group to eat the crab had already doubled their assets. One person told ten, ten told a hundred, and people from all kinds of trades had begun taking a strong interest in pig iron futures.
"How is it rising this fast?!"
Kakuzu stared at the rapidly climbing price of pig iron, the red upward section driving him nearly mad with envy.
White Fang's assets had already gone from a little over 10 million ryo to more than 20 million.
It was just a shame White Fang had hidden his account, so Kakuzu could not personally watch the profits growing.
Even so, just imagining it was enough for Kakuzu to picture how enormous White Fang's gains must be.
One night's profit.
That was enough to make Kakuzu work ordinary bounty jobs for several months.
Should he make a move?
Kakuzu's hands trembled slightly, and his heart pounded. He had not been reading White Fang's manual for very long. He had not reached the point where he could put any of it into practice yet.
If he acted rashly now and lost money, what then?
This old-school ninja, whose roots stretched all the way back to Hashirama's era, was torn inside. His old thinking still bound him. Faced with something this new, he still instinctively doubted it and distrusted it.
Every second, the price of pig iron crept upward.
People around him had not even figured out what futures really were yet, and they were already throwing money into it in a panic. Some were already making profits.
Kakuzu sneered at people like that.
White Fang's manual had described this kind of person in detail and used a very vivid word for them.
Leeks.
They were exactly like leeks, to be harvested again and again.
Kakuzu watched more and more people around him, eyes red, charging into the futures market. Yesterday's leeks had already doubled their money.
Now all these leeks were making money, while he was still standing here hesitating.
It was time to make a move. He could just buy a small amount first and test the waters.
"I want to buy 100,000 ryo worth!"
Kakuzu got up and shoved aside the people still waiting in line, cutting directly to the front.
Line up?
If he waited even one more second, the cost of buying in would rise again. What was the point of standing in line?
The man he cut in front of was about to curse at him, but one look from Kakuzu scared him silent.
"Yes, sir."
The paperwork was done in a minute or two, and a beautifully made card was placed in Kakuzu's hand.
As his fingers touched the card, he felt a strange texture.
It felt oddly satisfying.
The instant Kakuzu got the card, his heartbeat inexplicably sped up, as though he had returned to the day he first became a ninja. A strange and unfamiliar fear rose within him.
What if the price dropped the moment I entered?
Almost by instinct, Kakuzu lifted his head to look at the price of pig iron.
It was still slowly rising.
Hah...
Kakuzu relaxed slightly and returned to his old seat. Originally, he had planned to continue taking bounty jobs, but now he had no mood for work at all.
His heart was fixed entirely on the price of pig iron.
For a whole afternoon, Kakuzu did nothing. His dark green eyes remained locked on the steadily rising price.
An entire afternoon passed.
Pig iron had risen another thirty percent. Even Haru would have clicked his tongue if he saw the number now. The speed of the increase had already gone beyond Haru's control.
Originally, Haru had only wanted to harvest the money of the great nobles and wealthy merchants. Now even ordinary commoners had begun sticking a foot in. That had gone beyond even Haru's expectations.
Half a day later...
Grrr...
Kakuzu's stomach finally started protesting. Though his body had been altered by Earth Grudge Fear and was no longer normal, he still needed to eat every day.
The light of dusk fell across Kakuzu's face, and he could not help marveling at how quickly time had passed. Thinking back to the price at which he had bought in, he realized the market had already gone up thirty percent.
30,000 ryo?
He had earned it that easily?
So that was what White Fang had meant when he wrote that making money was as easy as breathing.
When Kakuzu had first read that line, he had dismissed it. Now that he was feeling it himself, he finally understood the depth of it.
It was too satisfying.
Damn it!
Why hadn't he bought more?
A wave of regret surged up in Kakuzu's heart. He began calculating in silence.
If he had bought 1 million ryo worth, then his profit now would be 300,000.
If he had bought 10 million, then the profit would be 3 million.
If he had bought 100 million, then the profit would be 30 million.
If he had bought 1 billion, then the profit would be 300 million.
Kakuzu had been in the bounty hunter business for over ten years. Working nonstop day and night, he could earn close to 50 million a year. If his luck was good and he killed a few high-value targets worth tens of millions, even making 100 million in a year was not impossible.
A mere 1 billion?
If Kakuzu gritted his teeth, he could still scrape that together.
Of course, that was basically his whole fortune.
If he had just gone all in earlier, he would have made 300 million in one afternoon.
300 million in one afternoon?
The speed of that kind of money-making was terrifying.
Still, that was only fantasy. Kakuzu could never have thrown his entire fortune into a completely new thing the first time he encountered it. If he won, of course he would be delighted.
But if he lost, Kakuzu would be so furious he might explode one of his own hearts.
Kakuzu shook his head and cast aside those unrealistic fantasies. He decided to go out and eat. Making 30,000 ryo so easily was already something worth celebrating.
As a bounty hunter, he had to travel, gather intelligence, and work both body and mind. It was not an easy trade at all, especially with the constant risk of death.
A better meal.
He absolutely had to treat himself.
Normally, Kakuzu would just swallow down ten or so rice balls and call it a meal. It was all just fuel anyway. He did not care much about taste.
Even so, rice balls were already pretty good. On missions and while traveling, what he usually gnawed on were soldier pills, and those tasted terrible. Dry, bitter, and miserable.
Today, he decided to make an exception and order himself a bowl of miso soup.
Thinking that, Kakuzu stepped out of the trading hall.
Not long after Kakuzu left, the price of pig iron began climbing again at an unbelievable speed.
Those great nobles and wealthy merchants were slower than ninja villages when it came to information, but they still reacted quickly.
The strange rise in pig iron prices had already made them feel something was off, but they were the kind who would never move until they saw the rabbit.
Only when the news reached them that Konoha's little brother, the Uzumaki clan, had raided Kirigakure did they finally panic and start buying in.
The Uzumaki clan and Konoha were so close they were practically wearing the same pair of pants. In the eyes of the nobles, an Uzumaki raid on Kirigakure and a Konoha raid on Kirigakure were the same thing.
So Konoha had finally taken the money and gotten restless, huh. It was preparing to make a move against Kirigakure.
This was going to be another brutal war.
The nobles of the Land of Fire who dealt in pig iron were the kind who rejoiced at the smell of war. It was not like they had to go fight. The ones dying would be those detestable ninja. Why would they not be happy?
This war was going to let them make another fortune.
It was just a shame...
They had missed the best time to buy in at the bottom. The price had already been pushed upward, meaning they would make much less than they could have. The great nobles beat their chests in regret.
Thinking back on the recent series of measures surrounding pig iron inside the Land of Fire, someone had to be pulling all of this from behind the scenes.
The answer immediately became obvious.
That bastard Daimyo was eating all the meat by himself behind their backs.
As for Konoha, none of them even considered that possibility. In their minds, ninja were a pack of people who only knew how to complete missions for payment. Why would they ever get involved in pig iron trading?
Konoha was just the Daimyo's white glove.
Still, considering Konoha's absurd military strength, the nobles did not dare try to settle accounts with Konoha itself.
These nobles had spent their whole lives in the business of manipulating prices. They understood the true secret of speculation better than anyone.
The fastest and most accurate information.
On that front, they were far inferior to the Daimyo.
The Daimyo had Konoha's intelligence channels. Those ninja could dig out information from anywhere. The nobles, by contrast, were only ordinary people.
Go find the Daimyo.
A group of well-connected nobles pushed forward a heavyweight from inside the Land of Fire.
The very same Minister of Finance Haru had once spat on.
Though the Minister of Finance had been worthless in Haru's eyes, inside the Land of Fire's game of power, he held substantial weight.
Every coin and every scrap of silver those parasites gathered had to be offered upward layer by layer. Since the Minister of Finance had accepted plenty of benefits from them in ordinary times, it was naturally his duty now to represent their interests and go discuss matters with the Daimyo.
Daimyo, your way of eating is too ugly.
Palace of the Land of Fire
After stuffing a thick red envelope into the hands of an attendant, the Minister of Finance was immediately rewarded. The attendant, who had been cold and dismissive just moments earlier, now broke into a bright smile and eagerly went to deliver the message.
Not even half the time of a cup of tea later, the attendant came back out of the Daimyo's chambers.
"My lord, the Daimyo is unwell and cannot receive you."
"But I have urgent business..."
"Please return."
The Minister of Finance had not even finished speaking before the attendant cut him off.
The Daimyo's stance was absolute.
This business had not been led by him, but by Konoha. He was merely profiting from it in the middle. This time, the people getting harvested were these parasites.
Normally, they all cried poverty in front of him, while their lands grew larger by the day, and each of them found ways to avoid paying taxes.
That alone would have been tolerable.
It was already common practice that noble land went untaxed.
But they had even dared tamper with the books of the national treasury. That crossed the Daimyo's bottom line completely. Unfortunately, these parasites were too deeply entrenched and worked together too well, deceiving him from above and below by every method they could find.
And now they wanted to come begging him?
Too late.
"How did it go?"
"What did the Daimyo say?"
"..."
The moment the Minister of Finance returned home, the parasites swarmed around him, eager for news.
They had personally gone to the door to ask. Surely the Daimyo could not refuse even to talk to them.
Pig iron was too huge a business.
Daimyo, you can't possibly eat all the meat yourself and leave us with nothing but scraps, bones, and maybe a little broth at the end.
Everyone could operate it together. The people getting harvested were only those ninja anyway. At worst, this time the Daimyo could just take a slightly larger share.
All eyes fixed on the Minister of Finance's face.
He could only smile bitterly and shake his head.
This time, the Daimyo was determined to feast alone. He really did intend to leave them only a little greasy residue.
The knife was in someone else's hand, and they were the fish on the cutting board. The channels had already been monopolized. At this point they had no room left to resist.
"..."
"It's all your fault. We should never have listened to those ninja in the first place. What accelerating pig iron circulation and transparent prices? All lies..."
"The Daimyo had us trapped from the start."
"And now you're blaming me? Back then, when I saw all of you agreeing, of course I nodded too."
"Why didn't you speak up and object?"
"Why didn't you? Were you not afraid a shuriken would get stuck in your head in the middle of the night?"
"..."
The parasites immediately exploded into useless rage and turned on one another.
Sitting in high office did not mean their talents surpassed those of ordinary people. More often than not, it meant...
After shouting at each other for quite a while, they turned to condemning the Daimyo for not acting like a human being.
This was clearly a domestic matter within the Land of Fire, yet he had let ninja get involved.
Government should govern. Military should fight.
In the ninja world, civil administration and military affairs were sharply divided into two separate systems. That was also why these parasites had always been so fearless in deceiving those above them and bullying those below.
The Daimyo simply did not dare let ninja interfere in governance. What if a talented one among them discovered how enjoyable administration actually was? Turn things over once or twice and it became white piles of money. Far faster than doing missions.
Then things would get truly amusing.
For over a thousand years, their ancestors had spent enormous money and effort establishing this rule and barely managing to trap the ninja in place.
Letting ninja touch civil administration would be like letting wolves into the house.
If Haru ever suggested to the Daimyo that the court was full of parasites occupying positions without doing real work and that Konoha could help replace them with capable officials, then the Daimyo would not even need to dirty his own hands with a reputation for killing ministers.
Konoha would take care of the evidence too. One genjutsu and they would confess everything, every dirty thing they had ever done over three lifetimes.
At that point, the Daimyo would probably pound his chest and swear that all of his ministers were spotless and incorruptible, and that Hokage-sama need not trouble himself.
Still, this time only a gray boundary had been crossed. Haru only wanted to do a little business and make some money. He also understood the current rules of the ninja world, which was why he had specifically asked the Daimyo's permission beforehand.
As for taking money from these parasites, the Daimyo naturally approved a thousand times over.
The parasites argued for half the day, only to discover that fewer and fewer people remained.
The quicker-witted ones had already slipped away quietly.
This situation could no longer be changed, so they might as well accept reality and hurry off to buy into futures now. The current price was no longer the very bottom, but the profit margin was still extremely attractive.
If they kept standing here arguing, they would end up with nothing but crumbs.
"The miso soup really is good..."
Kakuzu smacked his lips, still savoring the flavor.
The last time he had a bowl of miso soup might have been months ago. Even then, it had only been because he needed to approach a target, so he ordered one in a restaurant and sat there nursing it until the target appeared.
Back then, he had been so focused on the mission that he had not really taken the time to enjoy the taste. Thinking back on it now, that was a shame.
Kakuzu pushed open the doors to the trading hall.
Even though it was already night, the place was still brightly lit. The atmosphere was even more feverish than when he had left in the afternoon, and there were far more people as well.
Earlier, Kakuzu had still been able to find a seat in the trading hall.
Now it had turned into wall-to-wall bodies. Every trading window had a long line.
The people waiting were cursing nonstop.
Kakuzu forced his way through the crowd, which had already been squeezed all the way to the entrance, still not understanding why the trading hall suddenly had so many more people in it.
The first thing he did after entering was look at the pig iron price.
The moment he saw it, his breathing turned ragged, his dark green pupils shrank, and disbelief filled his face.
His mouth opened involuntarily, and his hands began trembling.
I didn't see that wrong, did I?
Kakuzu rubbed his eyes in disbelief, thinking they must be playing tricks on him. It had been a long time since he last drank miso soup. Had there been mushrooms in this bowl?
Was he hallucinating?
No.
He wasn't seeing it wrong.
Pig iron had gone up again.
And not by a little.
It had doubled again.
That meant White Fang's account had already climbed past 40 million ryo.
So in the time it took to eat a meal, White Fang had made another 20 million ryo?
Making money is as easy as breathing.
That sentence returned to Kakuzu's mind.
Before, he had thought he already understood it.
Now he realized he had still been shallow.
Too small.
His vision had been far too small.
A tide of regret surged up in his chest.
He had clearly thought about adding more before he went to eat. So why had he hesitated? Why had he wanted to wait and watch a little longer?
He had missed another chance to get rich.
Pig iron had doubled again.
So now, should he still go in?
The exact same question appeared before Kakuzu once more.
Leeks were always like this. They hesitated and watched the price rise little by little, never daring to act decisively, only standing there and looking on.
For a miser like Kakuzu, every single bit of money was hard-earned life money. He was like a mythical beast that only swallowed and never spit anything back out. The psychology of leeks was now being perfectly displayed in him.
"Move aside..."
Someone pushed past Kakuzu, holding a thick stack of cash, and rushed to the back of the line, eager to enter the market.
Kakuzu recognized the man.
Wasn't that the weapon shop owner from before?
Even he had started playing futures?
"It's gone up again!"
"Hahaha, I told you this futures thing could make money. Good thing I added more this afternoon!"
"..."
As the price kept climbing, cheers rang out all around him.
These were the lucky ones who had entered in the afternoon. They had happened to catch the wave of large-scale buying by the parasites, which had driven pig iron up further, and now they were celebrating nonstop.
It was the first time they had ever experienced the pleasure of making money this easily, and they were celebrating the correctness of their decision that afternoon.
But to Kakuzu's ears, every one of those cheers was painfully grating.
I was here first.
Whether it was discovering futures or getting White Fang's manual, I was ahead of them by so much.
So why are they making money faster than me, and more than me?
That's not fair...
Kakuzu had originally intended to take out the manual and calm himself before making a decision.
But now the line of defense in his heart had begun to crack.
As a ninja, calmness and caution were the foundations that let you survive on the battlefield. For a ninja, the tiniest mistake could be fatal. It could cost you your life.
Kakuzu understood this truth perfectly.
And to Kakuzu, making money was the same. He had to decide only when his mind was perfectly clear.
Right now, Kakuzu was anything but calm.
The cheers ringing around him, the constantly rising pig iron price before his eyes, all of it made calm impossible.
Every second was torture.
Should he add more or not?
What if the moment he bought in, the price dropped?
After all, there wasn't even a war yet. Pig iron rising this high was completely abnormal.
The instincts of a ninja forced Kakuzu to suppress the urge to add more.
He stepped out of the trading hall and took a deep breath of fresh air.
Inside, greed flowed everywhere, and the howls and shouts never stopped. Only by cutting himself off from those external influences could Kakuzu steady his mind.
Think calmly...
Kakuzu recalled White Fang's manual.
What was that line again?
When others abandon it, I take it. When the opposite happens, I do the opposite.
Everyone else dies, but I don't.
At that moment, it felt as if Kakuzu's Ren and Du channels had suddenly opened. He became convinced that he should do the opposite.
Pig iron had to fall eventually.
At a moment like this, he should sell.
Someone had to be manipulating the market from behind the scenes, raising the price of pig iron to harvest the money of these leeks.
I, Kakuzu, have inherited the true teachings of Master White Fang.
There is no way I'd be foolish enough to get cheated at a time like this.
Sell.
He had to sell before the fall started.
If he waited until it actually began dropping, it would already be too late.
Kakuzu's heart suddenly became agitated.
Not one second could be wasted now.
He had to go back and sell the little over 200,000 ryo worth of futures in his hand immediately.
The moment the thought formed, Kakuzu turned around and rushed back to the entrance of the trading hall, throwing the door open impatiently.
The crush of bodies, the screaming cheers, and the endless curses from those tired of waiting in line were still as intense as ever.
Hmph. These leeks.
Kakuzu coldly watched the revelry of the leeks, then shoved through the people still waiting and strode up to the service window, once again cutting the line.
Queue?
Kakuzu would never queue in this life.
Time was money.
What if the price suddenly dropped while he was waiting?
Naturally, his behavior provoked instant anger from the crowd.
Everyone else was lining up, so why were you cutting in?
But the moment Kakuzu released that frightening killing intent again, every trace of anger vanished.
Kakuzu's fists were bigger than theirs.
"I want to sell!"
"Hm?"
"Sir, are you sure you want to sell?"
The clerk thought he had misheard.
Pig iron had risen so much all afternoon and was still climbing. Yet this man wanted to sell at a time like this?
"Yes. I want to sell."
Kakuzu's firm tone made the people around him want to laugh, though each of them covered their mouths and did not dare let out a sound.
Kakuzu had clearly noticed the doubtful looks around him.
"What are you staring at? You bunch of leeks. Once it crashes, it'll cut you all to death!"
After taking his money, Kakuzu bellowed confidently at the crowd and strode out of the trading hall.
These leeks simply did not understand futures.
(End of Chapter)
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