"My friend."
Uchiha Mai patted Kakuzu on the shoulder and said kindly, "Although I still can't rest easy looking at you, you were actually willing to break your own bottom line for me.
Maybe this was the legendary sincere friendship.
I have always believed that one-sided goodwill does not count as friendship. Only mutual goodwill is true camaraderie. You fucking moved me."
This was called moving toward each other.
Kakuzu was grief-stricken, yet he had no choice but to repeatedly nod along with Uchiha Mai. I fucking moved myself too.
"Come, my friend. Let's go to my office and have a nice long talk."
Uchiha Mai held Kakuzu's arm with one hand and pointed toward the Mizukage's Office with the other, smiling warmly.
In truth, a fifty percent discount had more or less been Uchiha Mai's expected price. Being able to hire an expert like Kakuzu with money was already no easy feat.
But he had not expected that merely threatening him with a blade would bring the price down to forty percent.
This was what friends were. This was what brothers were! Brotherhood stayed in the heart.
The two walked back to the Mizukage's Office with their arms around each other's shoulders, under the watchful eyes of the Kirigakure people.
Only after everything had settled did the Uchiha Clan's lackeys emerge again, shouting into the distance, "Government Affairs Department, come out and clean this up!"
The Government Affairs Department was the department where Kirigakure's upper echelons, including Elder Genji, worked. It was responsible for handling matters both large and small in Kirigakure and keeping the village running.
Now that all of Kirigakure's authority was concentrated in Uchiha Mai's hands and had yet to be delegated, the Government Affairs Department existed in name only.
Kirigakure was waiting to be rebuilt