Senju Tsunade

Just as Yuya was packing his things into his backpack, another set of footsteps came pattering over.

But they were much lighter than Senju Hashirama's.

They were clearly a child's footsteps.

Yuya ignored them and kept stuffing things into his bag.

"Bang! Yuya nii-chan! Bangbangbang!" A little girl with her hair tied up in two spiky pigtails pointed at him and called out.

Yuya stared at the little girl in front of him, speechless.

"Tsunade, your big brother's packing right now. I'll play with you later, okay? Be good."

Senju Tsunade, the future Fifth Hokage. But right now...

She was just a two-year-old brat.

She couldn't even speak clearly yet, though she knew how to call people by name. She could say "Grandpa," "Grandma," and "Big Brother" for him.

That much at least deserved some praise.

Tsunade stood barefoot in the doorway, paying no attention to Yuya's words—and she really couldn't understand them anyway. She kept reaching for him, though this time she didn't say anything.

Yuya sighed, finished packing his backpack, then went over and picked up little Tsunade. She happily reached out to touch his face.

Yuya was speechless. Of course, he knew what little Tsunade wanted.

With another sigh, he hoisted Tsunade onto his shoulders and ran around the house as she called out "Nii-chan" again and again.

At dusk, Tsunade's mother came to pick her up and bowed to Yuya in apology.

Exhausted, Yuya could only wave her off. He didn't even have the strength to see her out.

Later, at dinnertime, Uzumaki Mito, now in her thirties and at the most captivating age of her life, sat beside Yuya at a low table on the tatami. The meal wasn't lavish; there were only three dishes—one meat dish, one vegetable dish, and a soup.

Uzumaki Mito was not only beautiful, but a wonderful cook, too.

But Yuya was unmoved by his beautiful master's wife. In fact, he sat fearfully at the far end of the table.

If Uzumaki Mito didn't pick up her chopsticks, Yuya certainly wouldn't dare touch his food.

The two of them sat there in silence.

Unlike Uzumaki Mito, who sat with her back straight, Yuya slouched, his head bowed as it bobbed while he dozed.

"If you're tired, you can eat first and go to bed afterward," Uzumaki Mito said softly.

Yuya felt as though he'd been granted a pardon. He immediately reached out and began shoveling food into his mouth.

Uzumaki Mito sat upright with her eyes closed, as if she couldn't hear Yuya eating.

After a while, she spoke softly. "Did Hashirama come to see you today?"

Yuya froze. He glanced guiltily at his master's wife and saw that she was still sitting in the same position, her eyes closed.

Yuya swallowed his food and replied respectfully, "What would you like to ask about Master, ma'am?"

Uzumaki Mito simply repeated the question. "Did your master come to see you today?"

Sweat gradually beaded on Yuya's forehead. He hesitated, wondering whether he should lie and help his master keep it from his wife.

After thinking it over, he bowed his head respectfully. "Reporting to you, ma'am! Master did come to see me today!"

Uzumaki Mito didn't move. She simply continued, "Good. You didn't try to lie to me. That's commendable."

Yuya broke into an even heavier cold sweat. In his heart, he was already mourning his master.

"What did he want?" Uzumaki Mito asked.

Yuya gritted his teeth and answered crisply, "Master wanted me to use my ability to help him evade his creditors! I firmly refused! But then Master threatened and bribed me. He said he wouldn't give me any food if I refused, and that if I agreed, he'd give me tomorrow off so I wouldn't have to go to school and face my uncle...

I had no choice but to agree."

Uzumaki Mito finally opened her eyes and gazed calmly at Yuya. "Is that true?"

Yuya thumped his chest. "Every word!"

Uzumaki Mito snorted. "You gave in that easily?"

Yuya coughed and put on a wronged expression. "I wanted to eat. He said he wouldn't feed me if I refused. I'm still afraid of going hungry..."

Uzumaki Mito gave a scornful, exasperated laugh, then waved dismissively. "Go ahead and eat. When you're done, get out of here."

"Sure thing~"

Yuya wolfed down the rest of his meal in a few bites, slipped out of the dining room, took off his clothes, and went to the bathroom to bathe.

As he sat in the tub, Yuya hummed the Hokage theme song, "Hero's Comeback," and played with a rubber ducky, looking utterly content.

Then a scream rang out, nearly making him drown in the tub.

More screams followed, one after another.

Clutching his rubber ducky, Yuya trembled. His master's wife really was...

Well, a woman of strong passions.

After his bath, he crawled into bed, silently mourned Senju Hashirama for three seconds, then drifted off to sleep.

The next day, Yuya went to the basin west of the village. His ability let him draw gold up from underground, though it wouldn't work if it was too deep. For now, he could only reach down one kilometer, but that range would increase considerably as he grew stronger.

Still, he probably wouldn't be able to reach the mantle.

Yuya took out a scroll and bit his finger, drawing blood. He sealed more than two hundred kilograms of gold inside it.

It still wasn't enough. If only he could find a vein of ore.

Even a small one should contain dozens of tons.

A large one would be even better. With thousands of tons of gold, a lot of problems would simply disappear.

No wonder Senju Hashirama had once lamented to Yuya, "If it weren't for you, I wouldn't have had to sell those Tailed Beasts."

Konoha had been founded more than ten years ago. Though it had reached an agreement with the Land of Fire, the country's assistance wasn't enough for Senju Hashirama to turn Konoha into a prosperous village where people didn't have to struggle to make a living.

What was more, being a ninja was a bottomless pit when it came to money.

Put it this way: a ninja without money could train desperately to improve their strength, like Rock Lee.

A ninja with money had other options. They could pay the best Chunin or even Jonin to train them. That counted as a mission, too, and the reward was generous enough that there would always be ninjas willing to take it.

Having someone teach you and desperately training on your own were two completely different things.

And that was before you even counted all the ninja tools, scrolls, and other equipment ninjas needed. All of it cost money.

That was why it wasn't hard to understand how Tenten had become a rich woman. She sold ninja tools, after all, and pretty much every ninja was a potential customer.

If Yuya had been born fifteen years earlier, Senju Hashirama wouldn't have needed to sell the Tailed Beasts to raise Konoha's start-up funds.

That Five Kage Summit back then had really been a marketplace.

Senju Hashirama had claimed the Tailed Beasts were too dangerous and had to be sealed away. That was certainly one reason, but it was just a pretext.

If they were really dangerous, why not kill them? Would the God of Shinobi not have been capable of that?

He sealed them, then sold them to other villages. It was all just an excuse.

But he still needed that excuse, so he could sell the Tailed Beasts with a clear conscience.

The Land of Lightning, flush with money, had even wanted to buy them all.

In the end, Hashirama said he could only buy two at most.

So the Land of Lightning bought the most expensive one, the Eight-Tails, in the first round, then picked up the Two-Tails after no one else wanted it in the second.

As for the One-Tail...

To be fair, the Kazekage had said something like, "We don't need to buy these things. The One-Tail, Shukaku, is within our Land of Wind, and we'll capture it ourselves. Just don't get in our way." But if you thought about it, the truth was obvious.

The guy was broke. He couldn't afford a Tailed Beast.

If he could afford one, wouldn't he have to buy it, just like the Land of Lightning?

These things were like nuclear deterrents. If you made me angry, I could send a Tailed Beast to rampage through your village. Let's see how much damage you could take.

So there was no need to think too highly of that Five Kage Summit.

Wasn't it just a conference to divide up the spoils? Senju Hashirama did the work, and the others paid. As for the First Kazekage...

He had no money.

Let's make it midnight. [Solo play is great, solo play is wonderful~ Solo play makes me happy, solo play brings me joy.] I know the protagonist's ability to turn things into gold is disabled by Seastone, or water—either way, it doesn't exist in the Naruto world, so I've changed it to revert gold to its original form whenever it gets wet. It doesn't really affect anything, since I never planned to have the protagonist use his ability to scam people in the first place. There's no need.