The dango in Koizumi Town simply couldn’t compare to Konoha’s.
The texture was a little coarse, and the sweetness clung unpleasantly to the tongue.
Left with no choice, Shuji ordered a bowl of ramen to wash away the sugary aftertaste.
The local ramen, at least, was fairly good.
It wasn’t nearly as famous as Ichiraku Ramen back in Konoha but thanks to the region’s excellent ranches, the broth was rich and full-bodied, while the slices of meat were fresh and tender.
The only real flaw was that the noodles lacked a satisfying chew.
Itachi quietly listened to Shuji’s running critique while chewing his dango.
He apparently had no need for ramen to balance the sweetness.
While Shuji happily devoured his meal, Itachi focused on writing their mission report.
Shuji had been the primary operative during the mission, and they had agreed to split the payment sixty-forty—sixty percent for Shuji and forty percent for Itachi.
Because of that, Itachi had no complaints about taking responsibility for the paperwork.
Even without the larger arrangement, his sense of duty as a shinobi would never have allowed him to shirk it.
Shuji, by comparison, was…
different.
Itachi had no concept of someone who simply wanted to live an ordinary, comfortable life, but he could clearly sense that this senior of his differed subtly from most shinobi.
“Senpai.” Itachi looked up and called softly.
“Hm?” Shuji raised his face from his ramen bowl, a tiny drop of broth clinging to the corner of his mouth.
“What is a shinobi to you?” “A job.” Shuji answered without the slightest hesitation.
The answer caught Itachi off guard.
He had heard countless lofty definitions of what a shinobi was—the village’s blade and shield, the inheritor of its will, the foundation upon which peace was built…
but never an answer so simple and direct.
“I like good food, and I like enjoying life.
Being a shinobi is just how I make a living.” Shuji slurped another mouthful of noodles.
“What about you, Itachi?” “Me?” For once, Itachi found himself at a loss for words.
From the moment he was born, becoming a shinobi had seemed like a predetermined fate.
At four, his father had taken him to see a battlefield.
At seven, he graduated from the Ninja Academy.
As a prodigy of the Uchiha clan, he had never seriously asked himself why he was supposed to become a shinobi in the first place.
“Shinobi is only a profession.
If you strip that identity away, then who are you as a person?” Shuji set down his chopsticks, his expression turning serious.
“Are you the Uchiha prodigy?
The shinobi the village expects great things from?
What do you actually want, Itachi?
What are you hoping for?” Seeing Itachi fall into thought, Shuji’s voice softened.
“You don’t have to find the answer right now.
Someday, you’ll reach a conclusion of your own.
When you get down to it, ‘shinobi’ may carry all kinds of heavy meanings, but it’s still only one profession among countless others.” “Want a bowl of ramen?” Shuji suddenly asked, shattering Itachi’s contemplation.
“No, thank you, senpai.” Itachi gently shook his head, his black hair stirring in the breeze.
“It’s really good.” Shuji pointed at his bowl with his chopsticks.
“You can’t fill your stomach with dango alone.” “I think I’ll still pass…” Itachi’s voice remained steady, though there was the faintest hint of wavering beneath it.
“Listen to me.” Shuji adopted an unexpectedly serious expression.
“If you’re eating something sweet, you need something savory to balance it out.
That’s common sense.” “Senpai.” Itachi finally raised his head.
A rare trace of stubbornness appeared in his eyes.
“Sweet dango only needs a cup of light tea.” It was the first time since the mission began that Itachi had openly disagreed with him.
Shuji felt a touch of disappointment, yet the corners of his mouth still lifted in quiet satisfaction.
A faint smile appeared on Itachi’s face as well, so slight that it was like the first hairline crack spreading across a frozen lake.
Officials of the Land of Rivers soon confirmed that the bandits had been eliminated and publicly announced the news.
With their assignment complete, Shuji and Itachi returned to Konohagakure.
Submitting the mission report at the Hokage Building itself was straightforward.
The complication came from their encounter with a rogue shinobi from Sunagakure and the severed head Shuji had turned in afterward.
Their mission payment would be issued once the Intelligence Division finished extracting information from Shinya’s head.
If they were lucky, the additional reward from the mission might bring their total earnings to around 150,000 ryō.
If the intelligence proved less valuable, the total might rise only to roughly 100,000 ryō.
As for Shinya’s item-sealing scroll, the commission from the Land of Rivers hadn’t included the recovery of stolen goods.
Naturally, that meant whatever property remained inside could be kept.
Shuji entrusted the village with breaking the seal.
“Of course.” Torii, the chūnin responsible for registration at the Hokage Building, nodded.
“If the contents of the scroll involve confidential material belonging to another village, Konoha may retain an appropriate portion for safekeeping or research.
You will, of course, be compensated according to its actual value.
Considering that possibility, the village won’t charge you an additional fee for unsealing the scroll.” “Thank you.
About how long will it take?” “Come back in three days.
The Intelligence Division should have finished examining the head by then as well.” By the time all the administrative details were settled, dusk was approaching.
Itachi said goodbye to Shuji and headed home.
Sleeping rough and eating whenever circumstances allowed was normal while carrying out missions.
But once he was back in the village, Itachi was still an eight-year-old child.
Even he was expected to return home in time for dinner.
Shuji watched the boy’s small figure disappear around a street corner before turning toward the western outskirts of Konoha.
His destination was an old residence more than fifty years old.
Because it stood far from the village center, it had escaped destruction during the Nine-Tails’ attack three years earlier.
Cherry trees lined both sides of the estate.
The flowering season was nearly over, and petals drifted down on the wind, resting briefly on Shuji’s shoulders before silently slipping away.
“Grandma Momoka, I’m back.” An elderly woman sat upright in the courtyard, dressed in a dark-brown kimono.
Her silver-white hair had been arranged with meticulous care.
Hearing Shuji’s voice, she didn’t look up.
She merely gave a slight nod.
“Your body.
No problems?” “No.
I’ve gotten the hang of this power too.” Shuji raised his palm.
A soft emerald glow flowed across his hand, and a tiny green shoot emerged, unfurling and growing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Back then, Shuji had been critically wounded and already beyond saving.
When even Konoha’s medical-nin had run out of options, Grandma Momoka had taken him away from the hospital and injected the legendary Hashirama cells into his collapsing body.
The worst possible outcome was death—and he had already been dying anyway.
With that thought in mind, the woman, already well into her seventies, had performed the crude ‘operation’ inside this old residence.
Calling it an operation was almost too generous.
She had injected the cells, placed powerful suppression formulas over him, and then left the rest to fate.
This body still remembered the sensation with horrifying clarity.
The violent power had swallowed him like a flood bursting through a broken dam.
Hashirama’s cells had behaved like ravenous beasts, tearing into and devouring every inch of flesh.
Agony penetrated all the way to his marrow and exploded through every nerve ending.
For several terrible moments, it had felt as though enormous trees were growing wildly inside his body—roots drilling through his organs while branches tore through his skin.
Every inch of flesh felt as though it were being repeatedly pierced by thousands of red-hot needles.
His bones produced sickening cracks as they reconstructed themselves, while his blood seemed to boil inside his veins.
It was torture beyond the limits of language.
Even remembering it caused phantom aches to stir deep within his body.
“That Uchiha—the one they call a prodigy.
What do you think of him?” Grandma Momoka asked, her voice flat and unreadable.
“He’s just a child.” Shuji lowered his hand.
The emerald light vanished together with the tender sprout.
At his answer, the corner of Grandma Momoka’s mouth shifted almost imperceptibly, like a breeze brushing across still water.
The expression vanished in an instant, and she said nothing.
Only the faint whisper of falling cherry blossoms remained in the courtyard.
She slowly rose.
Her movements carried the composure accumulated over decades, along with a slight stiffness that age could no longer completely conceal.
“If there are no problems…” Her gaze moved past Shuji and settled on the falling blossoms.
Her eyes seemed distant and heavy, as though they were piercing through the dust of time.
“Then live well from now on, Shuji.” A gentle breeze swept through the courtyard and lifted several fading petals into the air.
The old woman’s voice grew lower, carrying a weariness and desolation that had been buried in her heart and left to deepen over many years.
“Our clan has already sacrificed too much for Konoha.” She paused, her gaze still resting on the petals falling soundlessly to the ground.
Her next words were barely louder than a sigh, yet each one carried the weight of decades.
“We gave up our lives.
We gave up our hatred.
And in the end, we couldn’t even keep the surname of our ancestors…” It no longer seemed as though she were speaking to Shuji.
Instead, she was whispering to the courtyard itself—to the names that had disappeared into the dust of history.
“Lord Hashirama…
Lord Tobirama…” Her voice trembled into something almost inaudible.
“For the sake of the village…
what does our clan even have left?” Her words gradually faded into a near-silent murmur, dissolving into the deepening twilight.
Only a heavy, lingering sorrow remained—like the fallen cherry blossoms carpeting the courtyard, silently telling of a brilliance that had once bloomed and the withering that had followed.