The system shop nearly broke him.
Ren stared at the numbers floating in his mind and did the math twice, hoping the second time would produce a different answer.
It didn’t.
Five hundred and sixty points.
A fortune, he’d thought — right up until he opened the shop and found that a C-Rank Ninjutsu cost five hundred.
The Mangekyou Sharingan was priced at ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine.
Sage Mode — the full transformation, the toad-eye serenity, the godlike chakra reserves — sat at nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine points.
He closed the shop.
Fine.
He was broke.
He had always been broke.
The universe, it seemed, had a consistent sense of humor.
The roulette looked more promising — eight slots, five colored lights, and three slots labeled with things that sounded suspiciously like military rations and drinking water.
One draw cost a hundred and sixty-eight points.
Five draws cost eight hundred.
He needed two hundred and forty more points before he could even think about the five-draw.
He closed that too.
The quest panel, at least, offered some hope.
Two completed quests waited for him like forgotten coins in a jacket pocket.
[Achievement Unlocked: Awaken the Sharingan — You are now a marginally capable disappointment.
Progress.
+500 points]
[Affinity Unlocked: Mito Uzumaki — A nodding acquaintance.
+50 points]
[Affinity Unlocked: Tsunade — A chance encounter.
+10 points]
He collected the rewards.
The system’s editorial commentary was going to be a problem.
Marginally capable disappointment.
He’d been called worse by his actual clan, but at least they hadn’t automated the insult.
On impulse, he addressed the system directly.
What is Danzo doing right now?
“Information requires ten points.
Confirm?”
Confirm.
The image arrived without fanfare — sharp and clear, like watching a scene through glass.
The Hokage’s office.
The Third sat behind his desk, posture still carrying the coiled readiness of a man who hadn’t yet settled into the comfortable weight of leadership.
He was young in this moment.
Decisive in a way Ren had never associated with him.
The door opened and Danzo walked in.
He looked younger too — sharper in the jaw, the eye-patch not yet in place, both eyes dark and calculating.
Handsome, actually, in the way that certain dangerous things are handsome.
He crossed the room without waiting for acknowledgment and put his palm flat on the Third’s desk.
“Sarutobi.
A young Uchiha has made contact with Tsunade and Lady Mito.
I believe the Uchiha clan is positioning for something.
Hand the boy to me — I’ll find out what.”
Hiruzen Sarutobi didn’t move.
He pressed his fingertips together in front of his mouth and let the silence run long enough to become a statement.
“I know about him, Danzo.
Leave it.”
“You know, and you’re doing nothing?”
“The Uchiha are Konoha’s Uchiha.
If they wanted to rebel, they had their chance when Madara left.” A pause.
Something harder entered his voice.
“And Kagami is our teammate.
He is one of ours, recognized by Tobirama-sensei himself.
We are on the eve of war.
The Uchiha are a force I intend to keep pointing outward.”
Danzo’s lip curled.
“Kagami is one man.
The rest of the clan carries the Sharingan — three-tomoe and they match a Jonin.
You’re comfortable with that many Jonin-level assets outside your direct control?”
The Third’s hand came down on the desk.
The crack of it made Koharu flinch and Homura go very still.
“Enough.” His voice had dropped, which made it worse.
“I am the Hokage, Danzo.
Put your suspicions away.
The Uchiha clan will not be touched.”
Danzo stared at him — genuinely stared, as though recalibrating something.
This was the first time.
Ren could read it in the set of his shoulders, the slight parting of his mouth.
His oldest friend had just used the office against him, and over an Uchiha, and Danzo didn’t know what to do with that yet.
“You’ll regret this, Sarutobi.”
He left.
The door shut behind him with a sound like a punctuation mark.
Hiruzen sat in the ringing silence of the closed room.
After a moment, he reached for his pipe.
The smoke rose in slow curls, and neither Koharu nor Homura said a word — Koharu, who hated the smell, stood with her hands folded and her face politely blank.
The image dissolved.
Ren exhaled slowly.
The Third, at this age, was not the patient grandfather he’d eventually become.
He was a man who had just won a war and taken the most dangerous chair in the village, and he was still sharp enough to draw blood.
Good.
That was something to work with.
He was still turning the scene over in his mind when the door opened.
Tsunade came in with the easy momentum of someone entering her own house, which — Ren’s brain noted, slightly too late — she was.
Her long ponytail swung with her stride.
She’d been out; her boots left a faint track of courtyard dust across the floor.
As she moved toward the inner room, she reached up and unclipped her ninja armor, setting it aside with the absent efficiency of someone who’d done it ten thousand times, and the black bodysuit underneath—
Ren looked at the ceiling.
“Ren.” She stopped.
“You’re awake.
How are you feeling?”
The ceiling was very interesting.
It had a small water stain near the corner beam.
He studied it with great attention.
“Fine,” he said.
“Better.”
A beat of silence.
Then: “Why is your face red?”
“It isn’t.”
“It is extremely red.”
He could hear the smile in her voice, which was somehow worse.
He kept his eyes on the water stain.
“Tsunade.
You should — there are clothes — could you possibly—” He gestured vaguely at the room, at the situation, at the general concept of walls.
“What?”
“You could change.”
“I’m in my house.”
Three words.
Delivered with the specific satisfaction of someone who had won something without even trying.
He stood up, said “I’ll wait outside,” and left through the door with a speed that was not, technically, fleeing.
The courtyard wrapped around him like a cold hand.
Autumn had arrived in the Senju compound without ceremony — the kind of chill that found the gap between collar and jaw and stayed there.
A paper lantern hung near the gate, its flame guttering in the draft, throwing orange light across the stone in a slow, unsteady pulse.
Ren stood in the middle of it and breathed.
His pulse was doing something embarrassing.
He was aware of this and found it unhelpful.
He was a grown man — technically a grown man twice over, if the transmigration counted — and he had been undone by a woman removing her armor in her own home, which was exactly the sort of thing that happened in his situation and which he had absolutely no framework for handling with dignity.
He looked up.
The moon was out, nearly full, bright enough to silver the compound walls and make shadows of the garden stones.
Somewhere in the village, a dog barked once and went quiet.
He heard laughter from inside — bright, unguarded, the kind that slips out before a person remembers to hold it back.
His jaw tightened, but his mouth curved despite him.
She’d never laughed like that around him before.
He hadn’t known she could sound like that.
Unarmored in a different way than the bodysuit.
He kept his eyes on the moon and waited for his face to return to a normal temperature.
The lantern flame ducked and steadied.
Ducked and steadied.
From inside the house, the curtains moved.
He didn’t turn around.
But he heard the soft sound of her stepping back from the window, and for reasons he chose not to examine, his heart did something inconvenient in his chest.