Unable to make sense of these thick volumes, Shuji did not put on airs and went to find someone here who might understand them.
"Oh?" A trace of surprise entered Tsunade's voice. She narrowed her eyes slightly and sized up the boy before her. "So there are things even you don't understand? Now you finally seem like a fourteen-year-old."
Shuji's gaze fell on the thick volume she had casually pointed at.
"This is Chujie Port's ledger."
"What do you think the old man cared so much about this place for? Without this, how would we allocate D-rank mission quotas to the port's trading companies and guilds?"
She picked up the half-empty bottle beside her, gave it a shake, and set it down again. "Those endless low-rank missions in the village couldn't exactly have fallen from the sky, could they?"
"There's no shortage of people posting high-rank missions, but for things like pulling weeds, finding cats, or babysitting, they don't necessarily need ninja."
She seemed to have found the mood to talk and leaned back slightly. "When my granduncle was Hokage, he negotiated with the various households in the Land of Fire, including Daimyo Palace."
"Every month, they provided Konoha with a fixed number of D-rank commissions. If they truly couldn't think of anything to commission, they paid for someone from the village to post one instead."
"There are so many genin from civilian backgrounds in the village. Without this steady stream of small missions, where would they find the time and money to train their bodies and practice ninjutsu?"
"What could they do with that meager genin allowance alone?"
The young captain listened in silence, taking in these rules governing Konoha's lower levels, matters he had never given much thought to before.
He gave a slight nod, accepting her guidance,