Old man Teuchi, right on schedule with canon, did indeed turn out to be the owner of a small diner, which I hastily ducked into.
Truth be told, it was hard to call him an “old man” at this point—he looked more like a “friendly uncle slightly over forty.” I was starting to suspect that canon Naruto was the only one who actually called him an old man.
That kid had a habit of throwing around those kinds of labels, like calling any girl older than him “big sis.” Where did he even pick that up?
And calling Tsunade “grandma”…
look, my self-preservation instincts might be terrible—must be a bloodline limit—but they weren’t that bad!
After wolfing down a hearty bowl of ramen that was both cheap and surprisingly delicious (unlike that instant crap), I realized there were actually some good things about a certain blond’s habits.
I also realized I was definitely going to become a regular here.
The only disappointment was that I didn’t see the owner’s daughter—or maybe granddaughter—anywhere around this hospitable establishment.
That fact alone clouded my walk home.
Then again, I knew perfectly well she wasn’t that much older than me, meaning it was a little early for her to be working the counter; at most, she was probably just helping out in the kitchen.
And it certainly wasn’t too late in the evening.
Besides me, there were only two other people in the shop.
One was a silver-haired guy in a mask who flinched the second he saw me and immediately ordered two more bottles of sake (even though he was already sitting there getting hammered).
The other was a Chunin I didn’t recognize.
There was no point trying to build a bridge with the first guy.
If Kakashi wanted to establish contact with me, he would have done so himself, and he easily could have kept it hidden.
“Elite Jonin” isn’t just a fancy title.
If he didn’t want to talk, why should I risk blowing my cover?
The identity of the second guy was a bit more interesting.
Why?
Because the answer was painfully simple: I had seen this exact Chunin about twenty times today alone.
And if I thought back on how many times I’d caught glimpses of him throughout the week…
He was subtle, I’ll give him that.
He made it seem like he genuinely had business wherever I spotted him.
For instance, his stomach letting out a mournful howl earlier definitely didn’t raise any red flags, but our fleeting encounters were getting a bit too frequent.
I did have a working theory: instead of an ANBU detail, they had just assigned a Chunin to tail me.
And why not?
Why guard me so heavily that they’d waste an ANBU operative?
What could a little kid realistically do anyway?
A Genin could easily keep me out of trouble, watch my back, and subtly ward off anyone overly aggressive.
But Genin are young, and you don’t trust them with such boring, monotonous work.
Plus, if a civilian did decide to try something (say, on the anniversary of the Fox attack), a Genin would likely end up killing the civilian while trying to protect me—assuming they even intervened at all.
A Chunin, however, would handle things properly and keep their personal feelings out of the job…
most of the time.
Besides, a Chunin was more than enough to protect me from small fry.
And if someone bigger came after me as a Jinchuriki (though seriously, who would want me in my current, useless state?), they wouldn’t be able to instantly eliminate a Chunin without a fight.
Even a brief skirmish would create chakra spikes easily detectable in a shinobi village, and then the real heavy hitters would show up.
So it made perfect sense.
And it worked out great for me—a Chunin isn’t an ANBU.
I didn’t need to completely mask my behavior around him; he’d likely just write off my weird quirks as exactly that.
Awesome!
I’d had this nagging thought hovering at the edge of my mind for days that I’d need to go deep undercover, but nope.
A Chunin wasn’t the kind of piece on the board that was going to microscopically analyze my every move.
[Complex logical deduction has granted you +5 INT!] You bastard System.
The message looked perfectly normal, but I could smell the mocking undertone.
I was so happy about having a full stomach that I didn’t even notice the drunk Kakashi grabbing the Chunin observer by the sleeve and interrogating him about something.
As I mentioned, I was walking home in a great mood.
My little deductive exercise on the way had lifted my spirits even higher and pushed down my anxiety.
Because of that, I didn’t immediately notice the other Chunin walking toward me down the empty, essentially nighttime street.
No, not my observer.
A completely different Chunin.
A drunk one.
And he was making a beeline straight for me.
“Oh, the little demon spawn!
Everything’s because of you!
Do you have any idea how hard it is for me?” Damn it.
I had optimistically hoped all the grieving drunks had cleared out a couple of days ago.
I checked his stats and my stomach instantly dropped.
Some of his parameters were hovering just below two hundred; others were well above.
I’m a realist, and I knew perfectly well that even with an epic surge of willpower—which, by the way, I completely lacked—I couldn’t even scratch this guy!
Since fighting was out, and running wasn’t going to work either, I slapped on a serious, slightly mournful expression, pitched my voice low, calm, and soft, and…
action!
“I can roughly imagine it, but only roughly.
I’m just an orphan.
I’ve never known my family, so how could I understand the pain of losing them?
Just like I can’t know how exhausted you must get working for the sake of the village.
Judging by your flak jacket, you’re at least a Chunin, which means you’ve likely had to do things that aren’t entirely clean…
for the sake of the village, of course.
And I definitely can’t understand how much you must want to just get drunk after all that, or how much you crave warmth and care, or how badly you want your sacrifices to be recognized…” I kept going, dumping a massive pile of sympathetic babble on him.
Fortunately for me, the shinobi was hammered, so he didn’t stop to question where a six-year-old had developed such a profound worldview.
If necessary, I could always bullshit my way out of it in front of the Hokage by claiming I read a lot.
What else was a quiet boy who didn’t like active games supposed to do?
I’d just say I read it all in books and pieced it together—it was completely impossible for anyone to track exactly what I had read back at the orphanage anyway.
And if someone did check my reading history, well, thank god I hadn’t found and read one of Jiraiya’s books before the System arrived, or I would have gotten some absolutely insane titles from it!
But right now, I was trying to recall the most common psychological issues shinobi faced and weaving them into a continuous thread, speaking in a soft, deeply empathetic tone, as if I genuinely felt the man’s pain.
“Bleeding his soul,” wasn’t that what they called it?
Somehow, without me even noticing, we ended up sitting on the roof of the nearest building.
The shinobi beside me had probably dragged me up there.
That was fine by me.
If he had wanted to beat me up, he would have dragged me into an alley, not onto a moonlit roof.
That realization gave me a surge of confidence!
I started paying much closer attention to my companion’s reactions, completely ignoring the System’s notifications and everything else around me.
I leaned heavily into the topics that got a reaction out of him, actively validating his pain.
At some point, my monologue shifted into a dialogue, and the Chunin started pouring his heart out to me, completely forgetting that he was sitting next to the “little demon spawn.” It wasn’t until a couple of hours of this “hell” had passed (my tongue nearly dried up, I wasn’t used to talking this much) that my child’s body started to violently shut down.
Not even the Uzumaki or Fox bonuses could save me; my Stamina bar was practically screaming that I was going to black out at any second.
The Chunin—who had sobered up a bit, though clearly not entirely—finally noticed.
And the most terrifying and bizarre part of the whole situation was that, without a second thought, he offered to walk my sleepy ass home.
The same guy who, just a couple of hours ago, viewed me as the cause of all his misery.
I didn’t have much of a choice, so I agreed.
I was practically out on my feet, so the shinobi essentially carried me back to the apartment.
It was a miracle my body had held out this long after such an intense day, considering both the physical exertion (which I wasn’t used to) and the sheer mental strain.
The moment I stumbled inside and locked the door behind me, I collapsed straight onto the floor and passed out.
The very last thing my fading consciousness managed to process was a System notification floating in the dark: [Congratulations!
You have created the skill “Talk no Jutsu”!] “Looks like I only have two career paths left,” I mumbled as I drifted off.
“Either a shining paladin, or a psychiatrist.”