By the lake.
Boom!
The wooden post was blown to pieces by the roar of the bursting flames!
Splinters scattered everywhere with the fire, and Qing Xuan stood amid the blazing inferno.
The heat licked at his temples, scorching the tips of his hair.
Though he was surrounded by flames like a furnace, a feeling of pure exhilaration welled up inside him.
"Awesome!"
He cheered, not caring that the hem of his clothes had caught fire.
The wind howled, whipping past as the flames danced wildly.
At sunset.
Fugaku Uchiha stood some distance away, watching the figure cheering amid the wind and fire. A flicker of emotion passed through his eyes.
[Big brother! How was that? Ten years of roughing it in the wilderness! Now that I'm back, I've mastered the ultimate technique!]
"Idiot. You can't even tell a Substitution Technique from the real thing, and you missed with your Great Fireball Technique..."
That figure from years ago seemed to overlap with the one before him. Fugaku snorted and turned away, disappearing into the wind.
For an instant, a smile curled his lips. On the lake beneath the setting sun, his solitary, proud figure blurred into two different silhouettes...
"Hey! Tsunade! Is dinner ready yet?"
Outside the kitchen of Ryuu Uchiha's home, Qing Xuan's nagging was like a fuse setting off a bomb, making the already flustered Tsunade even more frantic.
"Quit yelling! I told you to call me Mother!"
She flung the spatula, and after a loud crash, the impatient calls outside abruptly stopped.
That awful little brat!
Ever since they'd returned from the Hokage Building yesterday, he'd refused to call her Mom. He kept calling her Tsunade, Tsunade, making her feel as if she were looking after Ryuu as a child.
It wasn't until the moon had climbed high that Qing Xuan's family finally sat down to a rather rough dinner. During the meal, Qing Xuan, Ling, and Haku cleaned up the damaged wall with the spatula stuck in it, planning to call someone to repair it the next day.
After Tsunade returned, Qing Xuan had moved out of his uncle's home and into the house where his father and Tsunade had once lived as a married couple.
It had to be said, the place was even bigger than the clan head's residence. The three-story house had plenty of rooms, along with a small garden courtyard planted with all kinds of trees.
This sort of luxury was rare even among the Uchiha, let alone in all of Konoha.
Apparently, the place had been rebuilt to match the original clan grounds, since the former house had been destroyed on the night of the Nine-Tails Attack...
Tsunade sat at the dining table, distractedly picking at the rice in her bowl with her chopsticks. No one knew what she was daydreaming about.
Qing Xuan hurriedly shoveled in a mouthful of rice, then glanced at her. "What? Did you already spend the money Elder Homen gave you yesterday?"
"Not that." Tsunade still seemed distracted. It wasn't until Qing Xuan put a charred chicken leg in her bowl that a little light returned to her eyes. "I've stayed in the village long enough..."
She sighed, seeming deeply conflicted.
Qing Xuan fell silent too. After a long pause, he asked, "When are you leaving?"
"I haven't decided yet..." Tsunade turned to look at Qing Xuan, a hint of a smile in her eyes. "I heard the village will be holding the Chunin Ninja Exams before long. I'll leave after I've watched them!"
Qing Xuan said nothing. "When you do leave, I'll see you off."
"Can't you come with your mother?" Tsunade protested. "Don't kids your age usually want to cling to their mothers all day long?"
"Itachi doesn't."
That got Tsunade going. She chattered in Qing Xuan's ear: "Itachi's personality is just like your uncle's—quiet and gloomy, barely says a word. He was exactly like your uncle back then, always wearing a stern face as if someone owed him money..."
Qing Xuan looked up in surprise. "But you do owe him money, don't you?"
Tsunade was speechless. After a long moment, she complained, "You're nothing like your father."
Qing Xuan didn't want to take the bait, but still couldn't help asking, "How am I not like him?"
"Your dad was so gentle! He was considerate, and he often sang to me! Even the Fourth Hokage wasn't as romantic as he was."
You're seriously comparing a straight-up guy to Dad?
Or was there no one in all of Konoha who understood romance?
"Come to think of it, you may have inherited your musical talent from Ryuu. That piece you played last time was pretty good, just too sad..."
Tsunade might have been a cool, hard-hitting queen to outsiders, but with her son she loved to chatter like an old mother, as if she were trying to pour out all the nonsense she hadn't said during the first half of her life.
Qing Xuan didn't mind. This was what having a home felt like!
"What did he sing for you?" Qing Xuan had finished eating by then, mostly because the food wasn't to his taste. If Mikoto had cooked, he could've eaten two more bowls!
He pushed his bowl aside and picked his teeth, curious to hear what that old man had sung to Tsunade.
"Oh, so many!" Tsunade counted on her fingers. "Winter Love Song, Spring Romance, Autumn I Love You, Summer of Love's Sorrow, The Four Seasons of Missing You..."
Qing Xuan searched through his mental music library, then froze.
What kind of nonsense was that?
Was that old man not from Earth? Why was he obsessed with the seasons? His creativity was seriously lacking.
The next day.
Training ground on the Hokage Rock.
There were two trees beside the clearing.
Several Anbu were in one tree, while several Uchiha were hidden in the other.
The two sides understood each other without a word, silently watching the three people below.
"I just don't get it. What's the old man up to? Why do I have to deal with you every single day?"
Facing the completely unmotivated Qing Xuan, Asuma finally couldn't take it anymore. What was the old man planning? Had he really dumped this guy on him for good?
"Don't sell yourself short, Asuma." Qing Xuan lay on the grass with one leg crossed over the other and his hands behind his head, gazing at the white clouds drifting across the sky. He was far more relaxed than Asuma.
"You're pretty good," he said, chewing on a blade of foxtail grass and mumbling around it. "But you only see the surface of a lot of things."
Being lectured by a kid so much younger than him made Asuma feel embarrassed. He wasn't convinced by what Qing Xuan had said, and immediately shot back, "Oh yeah? Then tell me what's beneath the surface."
Qing Xuan scoffed. The guy was such a child. "Do you think the Third Hokage sent you to teach me just because he didn't have time?"
"Isn't that the reason?"
"The Third Hokage wants us to establish a master-disciple relationship, idiot."
Asuma still didn't quite understand, but he sensed that Uchiha Qing Xuan meant something more.
Qing Xuan spelled it out a little more clearly. "The Third Hokage sees my talent and has acknowledged it, so he wants you to build a good relationship with me and slowly form a bond."
But Asuma still didn't get it. Qing Xuan had no choice but to make it explicit. "That way, whether I become Hokage or you do in the future, it'll be good for the village either way!"
He looked at Asuma as if he couldn't believe how dense he was. "In other words, the next Hokage will be chosen between the two of us. In fact, your chances are even better than mine."
"Rustle, rustle."
The tree on the left suddenly began to stir.
Then a leaf swayed down and landed at Asuma's feet as he stood there, dumbfounded.
"The next Hokage?"
Looking at how immature he was, Qing Xuan couldn't help shaking his head.
"Looks like I have the better odds..."
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