Shuji did not answer immediately. Instead, he found a secluded park, sat down on a swing, and gently swayed with his toes touching the ground.
Itachi followed quietly and sat on a bench a few steps away.
At first, Shuji had no real sense of what status he possessed. The Old Residence, the elders, the clan's former glory and current decline—things like that existed everywhere in his previous life. His own family had been like that when he was a corporate drone. It was not quite a clan, but not quite not a clan either; there had still been people managing its affairs.
The Senju situation was even more complicated. The clan head had voluntarily split the Branch House apart, dividing up both movable and immovable assets on the condition that they change their surnames. Those who refused were left with an Old Residence and a share of the remaining property.
If the Senju brothers had lived long enough, the Senju clan would have dispersed completely.
The problem was that neither brother outlived Senju Toka. After their deaths, those Senju who had changed their surnames no longer had a Hokage above them, and inevitably felt uneasy. They began connecting with one another around the remaining clan elders in the Old Residence.
Shuji had only begun to vaguely realize this after the letter of recommendation and Fugaku Uchiha's probing in the Uchiha District.
And Tsunade's attitude, her words, and the Shikkotsu Forest summoning contract she had given him made Shuji completely certain of one thing: in other people's eyes, he might, perhaps, represent the Senju of today.
Could he do that? He had never even dealt with those people. Grandma Toka's attitude had also leaned toward keeping him away from such matters.
But was he truly unable to?
Not exactly. Since