Child King

The Aburame Clan had produced quite a few powerful ninja in the story Tetsumaru knew. Each wore a coat and dark glasses, and their unique, eerie Insect Manipulation Secret Technique left a deep impression.

The foundation of the clan's secret technique was the Kikaichū, much like the gu insects of Miao territory—mysterious and strange.

This caused the Aburame Clan to have poor relations with ordinary villagers. Aside from familiar teammates, they were generally respected from a distance.

Moreover, the greatest traits of the clan's ninja were their faint presence and their tendency to talk too much. That was deadly.

Rule One for surviving in the Aburame Clan: Never talk to yourself anywhere except your own bedroom.

There might be an Aburame ninja sitting beside you whom you had overlooked for a long time.

Rule Two for surviving in the Aburame Clan: Once you leave your bedroom, always behave in a manner fitting your identity.

There might be one or several Aburame ninja's Kikaichū stuck to you.

Rule Three for surviving in the Aburame Clan: Do not chat with any Aburame ninja other than your family.

You might pique the interest of some chatterbox and have them talk to you until you wanted to die.

What was the first rule of survival for a transmigrator? Keeping a low profile.

Blend into the crowd, disguise yourself as an ordinary person, do not stand out, and do not attract attention. After all, transmigrators were naturally different from everyone else and could not withstand close scrutiny.

A transmigrator was a Lurker.

Thus, life was truly stressful for a transmigrator living in the Aburame Clan.

After a full fifty days, Aburame Tetsumaru had gradually tamed his body. Even behaviors like hopping around could be controlled, and his daily conduct slowly grew closer to that of the other children.

Aburame Tetsumaru let out a huge sigh of relief.

However, he had relaxed too soon.

A group of children noisily ate together. Several older boys wolfed down their food, puffed out their cheeks, and shouted, "I'm full!"

The boys stood and ran outside, only to bump into a female ninja at the doorway. They hurriedly lowered their heads and called, "Aunt Sachiko, we're done eating."

Aburame Sachiko flicked each boy on the forehead, then let them go after punishing them.

With the postwar baby boom, the number of Aburame children had rapidly increased. During the day, there were more than forty children in the Nest House. Aburame Sachiko simply could not watch over them all, so she could only be more lenient with children over four and focus on cooking for them.

After eating, the children formed groups and ran wild through the village. The other children in the village did much the same. Konoha had barely any public facilities for preschool children at the moment, so they were simply left to roam free.

Aburame Tetsumaru led his cousins to the edge of the woods, met up with the other children, and they all swarmed into the forest.

Tetsumaru caught several grasshoppers, threaded them onto grass stalks, and took them to the reeds by the river.

He tied a grasshopper's belly with a sturdy thin cord, tossed it into the reeds, then dragged it back out. Repeating this several times, he quickly caught two greedy frogs.

Then he tightly tied the frogs with finger-thick rope, threw them into the deep water, and dragged them back. The panicked frogs struggled desperately, and the splashing water attracted a predator from below.

A huge mouth swallowed a frog in one bite, hook and all. Several boys behind Aburame Tetsumaru cheered loudly. They had finally caught it this time.

No one knew when a huge fish had appeared in the deep pool around the bend in the river. It had severely disrupted the children's "hunting" plans, stealing countless homemade fishhooks, lines, and nets. More than one boy had even been dragged into the water by its immense strength and left in a miserable state.

Especially over the past two months, the fish's territory had expanded from the deep water to the shallows, and it had begun actively attacking the children.

Fortunately, the shallow water only reached their calves, and the children catching fish were all older boys, so no one had died.

None of the children who played here were direct descendants of great clans. They had neither the money nor the means to hire ninja to deal with it, so they turned to the Child King, Aburame Tetsumaru.

A transmigrator's preferred way of survival was naturally caution, and Aburame Tetsumaru wanted to play it safe in everything. But the influence of a three-year-old's body was simply too strong. Tetsumaru discovered that his supposed taming of his body had been an illusion. At critical moments, he could not control himself at all.

He had struggled. He had tried. He had failed.

Eight months ago, his four-year-old cousin Aburame Shio had provoked him in the Nest House. Aburame Tetsumaru had tried to think about who Shio's father was, who his grandfather was, and what the worst consequences of fighting might be.

But before his brain could process all that mess, he had already headbutted the nose of his cousin, who was half a head taller than him, flat. Then he punched his eye sockets over a dozen times, forcibly creating a crying panda.

Most terrifyingly, he had already been sitting on his chubby cousin's stomach, smugly asking, "Do you surrender? Do you surrender?"

Every question came with a slap, until the older boy did not even dare cry aloud.

When his adult will regained control, he found himself being intensely watched by his relatives. The embarrassment, confusion, and helplessness of facing social death were simply absurd.

Two days later, Shio's older brother, five-year-old Aburame Shijie, came to teach the villain who had bullied his younger brother a lesson. He suffered Tetsumaru's triple attack of sand in the face, a kick to the groin, and a jab to the eyes, and ended up in the hospital.

A day later, in front of both sets of parents, Tetsumaru beat Aburame Shio for the second time, knocking out one of his front teeth with his forehead. Naturally, aside from once again feeling uncontrollable embarrassment, he enjoyed a bamboo-shoot-and-pork beating from his father that night, along with two chicken drumsticks as an extra meal.

He truly had to thank the ninja's educational outlook for being so different from Blue Star's. Otherwise, who knew where he would have been sent for correction.

Six months ago, he beat up a boy from the Inuzuka Clan. He did not remember the name.

Four months ago, he threw dirt into the eyes of Uchiha Feng, then jabbed him in the eyes. Facing a ring of adult Red Eyes watching him, he actually shouted, "I'll give you a pair of Sharingan!"

Over the next twenty-odd days, Aburame Tetsumaru gave more than a dozen Uchiha boys red eyes, while getting beaten badly several times himself.

No matter how he swore beforehand or regretted it afterward, he simply could not control his competitiveness and love of showing off. After doing this often enough, the Child King title settled firmly onto his head.

In the end, he could only accept his fate.

Through all that fighting, Aburame Tetsumaru became the acknowledged Child King. A king had obligations. When his little brothers were bullied by a fish, Aburame Tetsumaru had to step up and deal with it.

The way to deal with such a huge fish was to catch it, then eat it. This natural thought from a transmigrator born in the great foodie empire left a whole crowd of little brothers dumbfounded, then delighted.

After three days of observation, Aburame Tetsumaru set the hook. It went very smoothly.

Apparently, the fish had lived too comfortably. The hooks the boys had used before could do nothing to it, so it had developed a complete lack of fear toward humans. That was why it attacked people on its own initiative and bit the hook without even testing it.

Aburame Tetsumaru smiled. "My hook isn't an ordinary hook."

He yanked the thin cord wrapped around the rope tied to the frog, snapping open a slipknot at its end. The special fishhook restrained by the knot sprang from a straight line into a cross shape. All four points pierced the giant fish's mouth, locking it completely in place.

The fish struggled desperately in pain, but before setting the hook, Aburame Tetsumaru had tied the middle of the rope to the tip of a tree. It was a flexible tree, much like a fishing rod.

He had also tied the rope's tail to the trunk of a huge tree as final insurance. It took five children holding hands to encircle that tree.

The fish could drag down several boys, but could it drag down a flexible tree? If it could pull down that tree, or even the huge tree serving as the final safeguard, Aburame Tetsumaru swore he would lead his little brothers around it from then on.

Watching the fish wrestle with the tree, Aburame Tetsumaru led the boys away for the moment. People in the Shinobi World had abnormal stamina and endurance, while animals had even more. This would take a while.

The boys raided bird nests, searched tree hollows, scooped up fish and caught insects, dug up wild yam roots, and finally gathered beside a creek.

They buried bird eggs and wild yams in the ground, lit a bonfire over them, roasted fish and birds over the flames, and even roasted insects. All of this was because the children lacked fat and oil in their diets.

After the war ended, Konoha entered a baby boom. However, the standoff among the Five Great Ninja Villages had not eased, and small-scale conflicts only grew fiercer.

Military conflict could stimulate the economy at first, but it soon ravaged it, causing shortages and rising prices. The effects of inflation first hit orphans, then children from low-income families, and now even ninja families. Children throughout Konoha were generally beginning to go hungry.

Thus, the boys gave food to younger children and girls, then formed groups to gather food themselves. Although these so-called wild areas all had owners, no ninja clan would complain at a time like this.

Konoha was like this, so the other ninja villages were surely worse.

Yet the conflicts could not stop. They even had to prepare for war, and the Ninja Academy had to expand enrollment.

Four years ago, when the war was approaching its final stage, it had also reached its peak and most brutal period.

At that time, Konoha's Ninja Academy students became an important source of reinforcements. Though their quality and combat power were somewhat lacking, especially compared with newly trained Suna Ninja and Kiri Ninja, and early graduates could easily be beaten two-on-one.

But while Kiri Ninja or Sunagakure could replenish one capable Genin, Konoha could replenish ten useless rookies.

During the final stage of the war, Konoha relied on its abundant manpower to suppress three villages alone and achieve final victory.

After the truce, every ninja village with any ambition established Ninja Academies to train civilian ninja on a massive scale.

This year, civilian ninja from the Five Great Ninja Villages began graduating. The number of ninja surged rapidly, but the total number of missions had not changed, so the villages could only pay to support them themselves.

Combined with the bottomless pit of the arms race, every ninja village's economy gradually became strained.

The boys ate all kinds of meat and wild yams, slightly soothing their stomachs, then watched Aburame Tetsumaru catch the fish with boundless anticipation.

With the right method, the fishing process seemed very smooth. The result of the struggle between fish and tree was that the tree won.

Exhausted to the point of collapse, the huge fish weakly splashed the water and struggled feebly. The boys dragged it into the shallows.

Aburame Tetsumaru entered the shallows with four older boys. Each carried three sharpened bamboo spears.

From four or five meters away, Aburame Tetsumaru raised his bamboo spear and shouted, "Ready, throw!"

Two hit.

"Again! Raise your spears, ready, throw!"

"One more time, ready, throw!"

Aburame Tetsumaru carefully observed the fish. Once he confirmed the strikes had completely robbed it of its ability to resist, he turned and ordered the boys on shore, "All right, everyone, pull hard and drag it up."

The fish was already dead when they dragged it ashore, though its body still twitched under neural reflexes. The boys surrounded the fish and Aburame Tetsumaru, cheering and jumping as though they had won a battle.

Child King's throne secured +1.

Aburame Tetsumaru could not help sighing toward the sky. Just now in the water, his movements had seemed, perhaps, probably... to imitate Vladimir's imposing wave of the hand.

Sigh. Hurry up and grow up. A child's body is truly terrifying.

The fish was enormous. Excited boys took turns lying beside it to compare heights, only to find they were not even half as long.

A fish this large could not be cooked or roasted whole and had to be cut apart. Aburame Tetsumaru first removed the hook from its mouth, only to discover that the poor frog was unexpectedly still alive.

A miracle. Let it go, let it go. They did not need that half ounce of meat today.

The hook was made from two Senbon tied into a cross with ox tendon. After taking it apart, he returned them to the two boys. They had taken them from home, and would have to receive more fish to make up for the inevitable bamboo-shoot-and-pork beating.

They gutted the fish, then threw the organs into a fishing pit dug in advance. Tomorrow would bring a new harvest.

Next, they dug out the gills, scraped off palm-sized scales, washed away the blood by the river, and carried the fish back to shore. The boys led by Aburame Tetsumaru collapsed from exhaustion.

A second group of older boys took over and dismembered the fish under Tetsumaru's direction.

The younger boys could not idle either. They washed each piece of fish again, placed it on clean leaves to drain, and let it air-dry in the shade.

After working for more than an hour, the dozen or so boys finally finished. They were all exhausted.

When it was time to divide the harvest, the boys washed mud and fishy smells from themselves in the river under Aburame Tetsumaru's direction, then returned and sat in a circle.

At this point, several children who had not taken part in catching the fish carried over boiled water. Following Aburame Tetsumaru's instructions, they had borrowed an iron pot and boiled water, just in time to quench everyone's thirst.

Aburame Tetsumaru could not accept raw water with its fishy smell. In his view, boiled water was safest.

Boiled water was especially important for poor children because they could not afford to get sick. Thus, whenever he organized an activity, he always arranged for someone to boil water.

"All right, listen up, everyone."

Aburame Tetsumaru stood and loudly drew every boy's attention.

"We'll distribute the fish now. There will be two rounds. The first is a participation reward—everyone gets one share."

"The second is a merit reward, divided according to how much each person contributed."

"Do you agree?"

"Agree!" The boys answered, some loudly and some softly.

Aburame Tetsumaru was dissatisfied. Waving both hands, he said, "Hey, hey, speak louder! And clap too!"

"Agreed!! Hahahahaha!"

The boys became excited, laughing and clapping at the same time.

"Very good. The most important thing about the participation reward is that everyone gets the same. There are twenty-two of us today. Does anyone know how to divide it equally into twenty-two portions?"

The boys all offered suggestions at once. Some said they should weigh every piece on a scale, while others suggested measuring with a ruler. Of course, most had no ideas. That was not strange; children of three to five had little experience. Someone like Aburame Tetsumaru was the strange one.

Only after all the suggestions had been made did Aburame Tetsumaru step forward to summarize. "It's hard to divide because it's one fish. Even if we weigh it so every portion is the same, everyone will still feel that meat from different parts isn't equal, right?"

"That's right, so no matter how I think about it, it won't work."

"Exactly."

"Boss Tetsumaru, do you have a way?"

Aburame Tetsumaru went to the fish meat and first took out some according to his own plan, about one quarter of it, including the fish head, tail, and bones.

"First, I'll divide it into two piles. The larger pile will be divided equally, and the smaller pile will be divided in the second round." Aburame Tetsumaru got to work, picking through the fish and separating it into two piles.

"Eiji, Baiki, you two are the most meticulous. You two will divide the larger pile into twenty-two portions together."

"Got it." The two older boys felt especially valued when their boss called on them first.

"Remember, once you finish dividing it, I'll have everyone else pick first. Aside from me, you two will take the last shares."

This was the ultimate method of fairness. It was common in organizations and could minimize complaints when benefits were distributed. Most importantly, it ensured no one felt that the leader had made a mistake.

However, in Tetsumaru's memories of his previous life, it had more often been used in reverse: the leader took the first share, the person responsible for distribution took the second, and countless problems followed.

Those who understood: ⊙０⊙, Boss is amazing.

Those who did not understand: ▽, What is Boss talking about? It sounds amazing.

They noisily cut up the fish and collected their shares in order. Aburame Tetsumaru took the last portion, which was clearly smaller and more scattered.

Several boys felt embarrassed and wanted to trade with him, but he refused.

"Whether it was truly divided evenly or not, does anyone have any objections to this equal distribution?"

The boys thought about it and suddenly realized that although they were not entirely satisfied with their own portions, no one felt it was unfair.

Next, Aburame Tetsumaru divided meat again according to merit. Those who entered the water to spear the fish got a share, those who provided Senbon, thin rope, and other tools got a share, while those who helped pull, cut up the fish, and boil water got smaller shares.

This time, Aburame Tetsumaru directly assigned the portions as the leader, and no one objected.

Finally, Aburame Tetsumaru gave the unwanted bones to the Inuzuka child. He took the fish head and tail himself, along with the unwanted scales.

Once everything had been divided, it was nearly dark. Aburame Tetsumaru announced that they were dismissed, and the boys went home carrying their abundant fish harvests.

When Aburame Tetsumaru returned home, he split open the huge fish head and carefully cleaned it. There was tofu at home, so he made fish head and tofu soup.

The fish head was too large for the pot to hold more than half, so he hung the other half over the stove to smoke.

He heated oil in the pot, fried the fish head until it turned golden brown, then added water, fed the firewood, and stewed it fiercely over high heat. Soon, a fragrant aroma emerged.

Aburame Tetsumaru sniffed it and added various seasonings. It was a little regrettable that there were no chili peppers at home. Chopped chili fish head would have been the tastiest option. Such a huge fish head was wasted without it.

Once the fish soup turned white and yellow fish oil had rendered out, Tetsumaru cut the washed tofu into pieces and added it. He lowered the heat and simmered it slowly, while also setting rice to cook.

That way, they could eat as soon as his mother returned home. The waiting time was just right for observing his precious ants.

These were Sugar Ants he had picked up around the clan grounds. He did not know which senior clansman had brought this rare variety back from the Land of Grass.

The greatest trait of Sugar Ants from the Land of Grass was that they could produce sugar. Unfortunately, after being introduced to the Land of Fire, they stopped producing sugar and were discarded like trash.

The area around the Aburame Family settlement was full of various insects that had been released in similar fashion. As a clan of insect users, the clansmen collected and studied all kinds of insects by the tens of thousands.

He just did not know whether they had ever caused any biological invasions. The ninja did not care about such matters anyway.

Aburame Tetsumaru had eaten Ant Sugar, which merchants brought from the Land of Grass. Sugar Ants were a type of ant with large abdomens and could be eaten raw.

If you gently bit open an ant's abdomen, sugar liquid would flow out. It was very sticky, much sweeter than hard candy, slightly less sweet than honey, and lacked honey's fragrance.

At the time, Aburame Tetsumaru had wondered where this Ant Sugar came from.

The source of sugar had to be plants. Only plants could produce it, such as beets, sweet grass roots, nectar, or sugarcane.

Sweet foods like honey were the product of bees collecting nectar and pollen, then mixing and fermenting them. All its sugar came from transformed plant nectar and pollen.

Industrial sugar production in his previous life had begun with sucrose. Its mature stage was making sugar by breaking down corn starch, which also began with plants.

So where did those big-bellied ants collect their sugar?

Aburame Tetsumaru's purpose in studying Sugar Ants was simple: making money.

There was no helping it. After awakening, Aburame Tetsumaru had spent a year observing and had concluded that Konoha's supposedly prestigious ninja profession was essentially mercenary work. The ninja village's organization also had strong feudal characteristics. Even most Jonin had little social standing. One decisive sign was that ninjas risked their lives while having to provide their own equipment and bear their own risks.

They had to cover all mission expenses out of pocket first. If they succeeded and received the mission reward, fine. If they failed, they got nothing at all, and if they were injured, there was not even compensation.

It was common for ninjas to complete a mission only to end up losing money.

Even if a ninja died on a mission, it had nothing to do with the employer. The village would provide a small bereavement payment, but it was not even a fraction of the mission reward.

Even when they were drafted to the front lines during wartime, the village only provided food for free. They had to pay for all other supplies themselves.

Whenever ninjas carried out combat, patrol, or garrison missions, it was all handled according to the ninja mission system and counted toward their mission records. Otherwise, how did Yondaime, who died in battle at twenty-four, rack up nearly nine hundred mission records?

Not only did it count toward their mission records, they were paid on the spot. Then the ninjas had to use that money to buy medicine, weapons, and other consumable supplies from logistics.

When Aburame Tetsumaru learned of this system from the family's ninjas, he was utterly dumbfounded. It completely overturned his understanding. He truly did not know what genius had designed it—war had been contracted out household by household.

In truth, Aburame Tetsumaru simply lacked experience. In the era he had lived in, state power had been unprecedentedly strong, capable of fully covering military expenditures in exchange for stricter discipline and greater combat effectiveness.

Go back two hundred years, and the armies of modern nations on Earth had all used this kind of mercenary model. Blue Star's mercenaries were also far better off than ninjas. Employers had to pay a deposit upfront, equipment damaged in battle was compensated for, and death, injury, or disability all came with compensation.

Although mercenaries were often stiffed by their employers, especially when defeat drove those employers into bankruptcy, forcing mercenaries to take up arms and demand their pay, everyone acknowledged the rule that compensation should still be given even if a mission failed.

Under such an extremely exploitative system, Konoha's upper ranks lived very comfortably. They did not need to risk their lives on missions, yet they could still take a share of every ninja's mission rewards.

Lower-ranking ninjas had a much harder time. Only famous Jonin could earn enough money through missions. Once Chunin or Genin suffered serious injuries, bankruptcy came easily. If they died, their entire family would fall into a struggle for survival.

Aburame Tetsumaru was destined to become a ninja, and he would need plenty of money in the future. He had to prepare for a rainy day.

What? Not become a ninja?

Your surname was Aburame. Not becoming a ninja was just wishful thinking.

What was more, even in Konoha, civilians' lives had even fewer guarantees. In the future, Orochimaru would go mad with human experimentation. How many Konoha civilians would be used as test subjects? Who in all of Konoha cared? At most, it would merely make the Hokage angry.

Only after he had stuffed ninjas into containers did Sandaime finally act and drive him away.

If he did not become a ninja, then being a member of the Aburame Family would be a liability. Certain influential figures would welcome him with open arms and send him straight to a laboratory and an operating table.