He first glared at Mei Terumi, then turned to the Third Hokage. "A misunderstanding. This was all a misunderstanding."
The Third Hokage had no idea what was going on. Just as he was about to ask, Yagura leaned close to his ear and whispered something.
"You mean she's fallen for that brat Shingen?!"
"And Shingen himself has no idea?!"
Yagura nodded helplessly. "I noticed it before. Uchiha Shingen seems far denser than most people when it comes to this sort of thing."
"That can't be right—"
The hand holding the Third Hokage's pipe trembled slightly.
He simply couldn't reconcile the clueless Uchiha Shingen that Yagura described with the Uchiha Shingen who spent every day hanging around Jiraiya, brainstorming smut.
"Is this what they mean—"
"Only virgins can write pure love stories?!"
The Third Hokage muttered to himself, looking at Uchiha Shingen with an increasingly strange expression.
He even felt a faint sense of anticipation. Just what sort of pure love story would Uchiha Shingen and Jiraiya produce together?
As for why Mei Terumi had taken a liking to Uchiha Shingen, the Third Hokage wasn't surprised.
Boys and girls in the Shinobi World generally matured early. Plenty tasted forbidden fruit at thirteen or fourteen. By comparison, secret crushes were practically Ninja Academy fare.
Besides, to be fair—
Whatever was wrong with the Uchiha clansmen's heads, their looks were well above the Shinobi World's average. All they had to do was stand there, and they were the very picture of cool, handsome men.
Though Uchiha Shingen's way of doing things bore traces of the Nara Clan, he was a pure-blooded Uchiha.
His languid, world-weary office-worker air, paired with the features and physique he had inherited from the Uchiha, actually made him stand out all the more in a crowd.
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