Chapter 32: Two and a Half Years
Kakashi was not, at this particular moment, in the best of spirits.
He'd thought, after everything he'd lived through, that very little in this world was still capable of shaking him. Turned out he might have been wrong about that.
Because the person sitting across from him right now was a pink-haired little girl calmly sipping tea out of a teacup.
Objectively — she was kind of cute.
But Kakashi wasn't about to be fooled by appearances. This pink-haired kid looked harmless. Her insides? Absolutely pitch black.
In the two and a half years since the Third Hokage had taken this child as his disciple, no small number of changes had swept through Konoha, through the Land of Fire, and through the wider shinobi world.
The most visible of those changes: grain prices had been pushed to historic highs, while iron goods, medicine, and ore had all dropped significantly in value.
And every bit of that had started the day Lord Third took this little girl on as his pupil.
Kakashi had tried very hard to stay out of these matters. And yet — here he was anyway.
Because over the past two years, as grain prices had climbed and climbed, plenty of opportunists had surfed that wave to obscene wealth — but the Lands of Wind, Earth, and Lightning had gotten absolutely hammered. Their domestic grain output had always been limited. They depended on imports from the smaller neighboring states and from the Land of Fire.
Life over there was, to put it mildly, not going great.
And of course, they couldn't just sit there and take it. Today's meeting was a negotiation session between representatives of the Land of Earth and the Land of Fire.
Kakashi and a handful of other elite shinobi were serving as the security detail for the event.
Or, more accurately — they were here to guard this one pink-haired kid.
Sakura was seated behind a folding screen, quietly listening to the negotiation on the other side. She pointedly ignored Kakashi's assessing stare from across the room.
This world placed very little emphasis on economics as a discipline — which was precisely why her interventions had landed with such outsized effect. In a world where personal power was everything, economics was an afterthought. Which made it perfect.
Everything was going exactly according to her expectations. Like a puppet on strings — a light tug here, a pull there, and the puppet danced.
Sakura hadn't pushed too hard, though. She had no interest in provoking any of these simple-minded, muscle-bound warmongers into flipping the whole game board. That would end the party real fast.
As she listened to the Earth delegation's voices on the other side of the screen grow progressively quieter, Sakura knew the dust had settled.
High above, a sharp raptor's cry rang through the sky. A powerful black eagle sliced through the air like a loosed arrow and came to rest on the windowsill of the Hokage's office.
The old man in red-and-white Hokage robes untied the message capsule from the eagle's leg, drew out the slip of paper inside, and scanned it quickly.
A look of genuine relief spread across Hiruzen's face.
Looks like I can breathe for a moment now.
A cooperation agreement with the Land of Earth had been successfully reached. The pressure from that front could be set down, at least for the time being.
All they had to do now was maintain the equilibrium.
Thank the heavens for Sakura...
If he'd been forced to rely on Danzō alone, who knew what kind of disaster that man would have cooked up by now.
Hiruzen sank back into his chair and allowed himself, for once, to genuinely relax.
Choosing Sakura had been, in a very real sense, a gamble. But so far, he'd bet correctly.
That didn't mean he could let his guard down. The real tests were still to come.
When Sakura gets home, let the child rest too...
"Mom! I'm home!"
The moment she cleared the entryway, Sakura kicked off her shoes and bellowed toward the kitchen.
"You little — did you have to yell like that?"
Mebuki came out of the kitchen, giving her daughter a look of pure exasperation.
"Put those shoes straight. I have to line them up every single day. What did I do to deserve this? I honestly don't know who's ever going to put up with you when you grow up."
Her forehead was twitching at the sight of the shoes Sakura had flung in opposite directions.
"No one'll want me?" Sakura, under Mebuki's steady glare, reluctantly lined the shoes up neatly. "Fine. Then I won't get married. I'll just stay home. You'll keep supporting me, right?"
"You — you little—"
The pink streak shot past her and into her bedroom, leaving behind only a hollered "I want fish for dinner!" before the door slammed.
Mebuki stared at the closed door, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "Has she hit her rebellious phase already?"
Back in her own room, Sakura dove face-first into her bed and disappeared under the covers.
One green eye peeked out from the blanket at the tree outside her window — where two little orioles were chirping and hopping around together on a branch.
A pencil whistled through the air, passed cleanly between the two birds, and buried itself in the bark of the trunk.
The two orioles, shocked out of their minds, went flapping off in two different directions in a panicked, ungainly scramble for their lives.
I'm planning to stay single for the rest of my life. Nobody is allowed to flaunt a relationship in front of me. Not even the goddamn birds.
Watching them flap frantically in separate directions, Sakura couldn't help the slightly wicked smile that curled the corner of her mouth.
When disaster strikes, every bird flies its own way. The ancients weren't wrong.
She buried her face in the blankets and closed her eyes.
Minute by minute, that plain little chest rose and fell in even rhythm. At some point, she had drifted off to sleep without realizing it.
She had been running on fumes for a while now. Every single thing in the village, it seemed, eventually landed on her desk.
"Sakura? Sakura?"
Sakura surfaced from sleep to find Mebuki gently shaking her.
"Mom..."
She blinked up at her mother with heavy, sleep-fogged eyes.
"Why on earth did you fall asleep? Come on, get up, it's dinnertime."
Mebuki didn't know exactly what her daughter had been doing with her time lately. She just knew that ever since Sakura had become a ninja, she'd suddenly been — busy. All the time. But given that Sakura was the Hokage's personal disciple, Mebuki hadn't probed. Lord Third would look after her daughter. Of that, she was certain.
"Didn't you want fish? Mom went and got some special for you~~"
Mebuki ran a hand through Sakura's soft pink hair, her eyes gentling.
"I'm coming."
Sakura pressed a palm to her forehead.
And then, almost on reflex, she sensed inward.
The chakra accumulating in her forehead seal was already more than halfway there.
Within two years, that S-rank technique should finally be ready to manifest.
From age six until now, plus another two years to go — the total journey would come to a full six years.
"What are you thinking about?"
Mebuki watched her daughter stare into space from the bed, puzzled.
Sakura was about to answer when a familiar, theatrical voice came booming in from the living room.
"Sakura clearly needs her father's love! Daddy's coming!"
The pink-haired girl's mouth twitched. Her green eyes radiated pure, unimpressed resignation. Her voice came out completely flat.
"No. I refuse."
"What?! How could you be so cold~~!"
Kizashi, who had been two steps from crossing into Sakura's bedroom, turned the color of old ash, the very picture of a man whose heart had just shattered into a thousand pieces.
Chapter 32: Two and a Half Years
Kakashi was not, at this particular moment, in the best of spirits.
He'd thought, after everything he'd lived through, that very little in this world was still capable of shaking him. Turned out he might have been wrong about that.
Because the person sitting across from him right now was a pink-haired little girl calmly sipping tea out of a teacup.
Objectively — she was kind of cute.
But Kakashi wasn't about to be fooled by appearances. This pink-haired kid looked harmless. Her insides? Absolutely pitch black.
In the two and a half years since the Third Hokage had taken this child as his disciple, no small number of changes had swept through Konoha, through the Land of Fire, and through the wider shinobi world.
The most visible of those changes: grain prices had been pushed to historic highs, while iron goods, medicine, and ore had all dropped significantly in value.
And every bit of that had started the day Lord Third took this little girl on as his pupil.
Kakashi had tried very hard to stay out of these matters. And yet — here he was anyway.
Because over the past two years, as grain prices had climbed and climbed, plenty of opportunists had surfed that wave to obscene wealth — but the Lands of Wind, Earth, and Lightning had gotten absolutely hammered. Their domestic grain output had always been limited. They depended on imports from the smaller neighboring states and from the Land of Fire.
Life over there was, to put it mildly, not going great.
And of course, they couldn't just sit there and take it. Today's meeting was a negotiation session between representatives of the Land of Earth and the Land of Fire.
Kakashi and a handful of other elite shinobi were serving as the security detail for the event.
Or, more accurately — they were here to guard this one pink-haired kid.
Sakura was seated behind a folding screen, quietly listening to the negotiation on the other side. She pointedly ignored Kakashi's assessing stare from across the room.
This world placed very little emphasis on economics as a discipline — which was precisely why her interventions had landed with such outsized effect. In a world where personal power was everything, economics was an afterthought. Which made it perfect.
Everything was going exactly according to her expectations. Like a puppet on strings — a light tug here, a pull there, and the puppet danced.
Sakura hadn't pushed too hard, though. She had no interest in provoking any of these simple-minded, muscle-bound warmongers into flipping the whole game board. That would end the party real fast.
As she listened to the Earth delegation's voices on the other side of the screen grow progressively quieter, Sakura knew the dust had settled.
High above, a sharp raptor's cry rang through the sky. A powerful black eagle sliced through the air like a loosed arrow and came to rest on the windowsill of the Hokage's office.
The old man in red-and-white Hokage robes untied the message capsule from the eagle's leg, drew out the slip of paper inside, and scanned it quickly.
A look of genuine relief spread across Hiruzen's face.
Looks like I can breathe for a moment now.
A cooperation agreement with the Land of Earth had been successfully reached. The pressure from that front could be set down, at least for the time being.
All they had to do now was maintain the equilibrium.
Thank the heavens for Sakura...
If he'd been forced to rely on Danzō alone, who knew what kind of disaster that man would have cooked up by now.
Hiruzen sank back into his chair and allowed himself, for once, to genuinely relax.
Choosing Sakura had been, in a very real sense, a gamble. But so far, he'd bet correctly.
That didn't mean he could let his guard down. The real tests were still to come.
When Sakura gets home, let the child rest too...
"Mom! I'm home!"
The moment she cleared the entryway, Sakura kicked off her shoes and bellowed toward the kitchen.
"You little — did you have to yell like that?"
Mebuki came out of the kitchen, giving her daughter a look of pure exasperation.
"Put those shoes straight. I have to line them up every single day. What did I do to deserve this? I honestly don't know who's ever going to put up with you when you grow up."
Her forehead was twitching at the sight of the shoes Sakura had flung in opposite directions.
"No one'll want me?" Sakura, under Mebuki's steady glare, reluctantly lined the shoes up neatly. "Fine. Then I won't get married. I'll just stay home. You'll keep supporting me, right?"
"You — you little—"
The pink streak shot past her and into her bedroom, leaving behind only a hollered "I want fish for dinner!" before the door slammed.
Mebuki stared at the closed door, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like "Has she hit her rebellious phase already?"
Back in her own room, Sakura dove face-first into her bed and disappeared under the covers.
One green eye peeked out from the blanket at the tree outside her window — where two little orioles were chirping and hopping around together on a branch.
A pencil whistled through the air, passed cleanly between the two birds, and buried itself in the bark of the trunk.
The two orioles, shocked out of their minds, went flapping off in two different directions in a panicked, ungainly scramble for their lives.
I'm planning to stay single for the rest of my life. Nobody is allowed to flaunt a relationship in front of me. Not even the goddamn birds.
Watching them flap frantically in separate directions, Sakura couldn't help the slightly wicked smile that curled the corner of her mouth.
When disaster strikes, every bird flies its own way. The ancients weren't wrong.
She buried her face in the blankets and closed her eyes.
Minute by minute, that plain little chest rose and fell in even rhythm. At some point, she had drifted off to sleep without realizing it.
She had been running on fumes for a while now. Every single thing in the village, it seemed, eventually landed on her desk.
"Sakura? Sakura?"
Sakura surfaced from sleep to find Mebuki gently shaking her.
"Mom..."
She blinked up at her mother with heavy, sleep-fogged eyes.
"Why on earth did you fall asleep? Come on, get up, it's dinnertime."
Mebuki didn't know exactly what her daughter had been doing with her time lately. She just knew that ever since Sakura had become a ninja, she'd suddenly been — busy. All the time. But given that Sakura was the Hokage's personal disciple, Mebuki hadn't probed. Lord Third would look after her daughter. Of that, she was certain.
"Didn't you want fish? Mom went and got some special for you~~"
Mebuki ran a hand through Sakura's soft pink hair, her eyes gentling.
"I'm coming."
Sakura pressed a palm to her forehead.
And then, almost on reflex, she sensed inward.
The chakra accumulating in her forehead seal was already more than halfway there.
Within two years, that S-rank technique should finally be ready to manifest.
From age six until now, plus another two years to go — the total journey would come to a full six years.
"What are you thinking about?"
Mebuki watched her daughter stare into space from the bed, puzzled.
Sakura was about to answer when a familiar, theatrical voice came booming in from the living room.
"Sakura clearly needs her father's love! Daddy's coming!"
The pink-haired girl's mouth twitched. Her green eyes radiated pure, unimpressed resignation. Her voice came out completely flat.
"No. I refuse."
"What?! How could you be so cold~~!"
Kizashi, who had been two steps from crossing into Sakura's bedroom, turned the color of old ash, the very picture of a man whose heart had just shattered into a thousand pieces.