Wetland Bridge

But none of this had much to do with Yuya. He wasn't the Hokage, so why worry about all that?

He'd worked himself to the bone helping the First and Second develop Konoha, only to end up with nothing to show for it. Yuya wouldn't stand for that.

He'd always been the sort of person who wouldn't lift a finger without something to gain.

Just like this time. Even though he knew he'd have to hand over the dozens of kilograms of gold, so he wouldn't get into trouble if anyone investigated later,

Yuya still had to get something out of it.

He hadn't expected the Second to teach him the Flying Thunder God technique.

As for that technique, it was extremely difficult, but incredibly powerful.

Even so, after thinking it over, Yuya figured he should be able to get some other benefits out of this, too.

So he went to Tobirama and told him he wanted to learn the Clone Technique.

Naturally, his real target was the Second's Shadow Clone.

But you couldn't expect to get everything in one bite. He'd take it one step at a time.

It was just...

There might not be much time.

Come to think of it, there was something Yuya had never quite understood.

How exactly had Senju Hashirama died?

Was it illness?

The guy went off to the gambling dens every day, full of energy and throwing money around. He didn't look like someone who was sick and on the verge of death.

If Yuya weren't a transmigrator, and you told him that the lively, energetic Senju Hashirama was dying, he'd spit salty soda right in your face.

But honestly, this was a manga, after all. Kishimoto was just a manga artist. What the hell did he know about Naruto?!

This was the real world of Naruto.

Because I'm right here.

Yuya thought this with boundless confidence, then lowered his head and continued writing his suggestions for Kagami Uchiha on the Ninja Scroll.

Gathering everyone together was only the first step. The second step was getting to work. They didn't need a ceremony to start. With most people struggling to get enough to eat, it was more practical to spend the money on firecrackers on a pot of bone soup to hand out.

So what Yuya cared most about was how efficiently these ordinary people worked once construction began.

He told Kagami Uchiha to divide them into ten teams. Each team's leader would keep track of the work they completed, then report the results to Kagami Uchiha.

Their wages would then be paid according to the quality and efficiency of their work, with payment settled daily.

Yuya had learned that lesson back in his previous life, when he'd hauled bricks at a construction site.

Hire people just to supervise them? That would probably make things even less efficient.

So instead, he'd lay things out plainly: this was how much they'd earn for a day's work, but if their work didn't meet the standards, their pay would be docked.

Of course, the deductions wouldn't be too harsh.

But with rice costing a hundred ryo per pound, ordinary people certainly wouldn't want to lose even ten ryo from a day's wages.

Yuya didn't believe in people, but he believed in incentives.

As long as these ordinary people could see and touch the benefits right in front of them, their motivation would last until the bridge was complete.

That was the second step: using incentives to get them to work hard.

In fact, once they'd taken these two steps, building the bridge itself wouldn't be much of a problem.

The rest was about the impact of this collective effort.

For example, maintaining stability in the village. Yuya truly didn't think handing tens of millions of ryo to a few jonin was better than paying hundreds of ordinary people wages for several months.

Forget everything else. Just consider the value they'd create. Ordinary people would spend their wages on everyday necessities.

Rice shops, vegetable vendors, clothing stores where people could buy new clothes—and maybe some would splurge on a meal at a restaurant. All told, far more than a few hundred people would be involved.

More than a thousand people could benefit from it.

Sure, the money in circulation was still the same amount, but how much happier would people be after it made the rounds?

And Konoha could collect taxes along the way, too.

After the money circulated a few times, some of it would make its way back.

But if you gave the money to a few jonin...

What would they do with it?

Spend some at the Barbecue Restaurant? Buy Kunai and Shuriken?

Those were certainly big-ticket purchases, but the more important thing was that they didn't create happiness.

Ninja tool shops existed to serve ninja, so they weren't exactly short on money (the story had been making it pretty obvious that Tenten was a little rich girl). The Barbecue Restaurant was a luxury, too, at least at this stage.

Compared to giving the money to a few jonin, Yuya felt it was more important to improve the lives of ordinary people.

He wasn't interested in becoming Hokage, and he had no desire to wear himself out for Konoha. But if he could help ordinary people, he wouldn't turn them away.

Life was hard for ordinary people in the Naruto world, where they never knew whether they'd see another day.

The entire Naruto manga focused on Naruto Uzumaki. The tens of thousands of ordinary residents of Konoha were barely mentioned at all.

Yet whether it was the Nine-Tails Incident or the later attack during the Chunin Ninja Exams, ordinary civilians were the ones who suffered the most injuries.

Yuya paused and sighed. Ordinary people already had such a hard time surviving, and on top of that, Konoha exploited them. Every year, these hardworking farmers had to hand over at least half their harvest to Konoha as "reserve provisions" for the ninja.

Even so, that counted as benevolence toward them.

Since they were allowed to keep half, they couldn't eat their fill at every meal, but at least they could survive.

The only problem was that Konoha wasn't safe, either...

Yuya lay back on the tatami with his hands behind his head, then shook it.

Why worry about all that? I'm not the Hokage. Why work myself to death over it?

What Yuya didn't know was that Kagami Uchiha had followed every suggestion he'd sent through the scroll without the slightest deviation.

Yuya understood his own situation perfectly. He was just a little kid, and nobody in Konoha was likely to take him seriously. Whether his opinions and suggestions would even be considered was questionable, let alone put into practice.

But Kagami Uchiha was a sly one. He didn't have the arrogant attitude of the rest of the Uchiha Clan, who thought they were better than everyone else and everyone else was worthless. It never even occurred to him to make decisions on his own.

And Tobirama, the Second, had deliberately concealed Yuya's true identity.

So Yuya assumed his suggestions would probably amount to nothing more than talk. He'd never expected Kagami Uchiha to follow every last recommendation from him, the "consultant."

Kagami Uchiha even personally helped out during the bridge's construction. Sometimes he'd pitch in with the work, yet he didn't take a single ryo. If any of the workers got into an argument, he'd step in to mediate.

He was a ninja, so the others naturally gave him respect.

As a result...

Things went surprisingly smoothly.

They went so smoothly that a week later, even Senju Hashirama and Senju Tobirama had taken notice.

There was no mystery to it. The families of the workers, who spent every day hauling bricks, cutting stone, and fitting the bridge together, were visibly better off.

Tsk, why was the currency in Naruto called ryo? Whenever I wrote "ryo," it made me think of the old Chinese unit of tael. A hundred yen per pound of rice is normal in Japan, but in ancient China, if you dared to set prices like that, there'd be a revolt on the very day the price came out. Oh well, I'll probably get used to it as I keep writing. LOL