A long while passed.
Only then did Uchiha Hikari shake her head, looking bored.
Sarutobi Hiruzen's theoretical grasp was even weaker than she had expected.
It could be called utterly fragile.
The so-called Will of Fire had been preached since Konoha's founding, yet after generations had come and gone, it was still just the same few pretty phrases, with almost no substantive progress at all. And when those pretty phrases were placed alongside the sordid things that had happened in Konoha over the decades—even those yet to happen—they seemed all the more endlessly ironic.
"Is there anything else you wish to say?"
Uchiha Hikari looked directly at the two men before her and broke the silence. "If not, then please leave. Forgive me for not seeing you out."
Sarutobi Hiruzen and Jiraiya left Naruto's home wearing the same awkward expressions they had entered with.
Before leaving, however, they left something behind.
"Minato Namikaze's House Deed... This thing still exists?"
Uchiha Hikari looked at the stack of papers on the coffee table, somewhat surprised.
She did know that Naruto's current home was not where Minato Namikaze and Kushina had lived before their deaths—obviously. What Hokage would live in a tiny apartment of less than forty square meters?
Judging from her vague memories of the original story and the address written on the deed, the Namikaze couple's residence should not be far from here: a small two-and-a-half-story villa.
However, Uchiha Hikari had originally assumed that Minato and Kushina's property had been dealt with after the Nine Tails Riot, just as the Uchiha Compound had been reclaimed by Konoha after the clan massacre in the original timeline. She had not expected it to still be preserved. And Sarutobi Hiruzen had chosen this moment to return the deed, asking her to handle it