As time passed.
The entire Ninja World seemed to have settled into a temporary calm.
After enduring the Second Ninja World War, the great nations all seemed to realize just how much the conflict had cost them.
So they tacitly chose to cease hostilities for a time, allowing their villages to recover.
Yet whether anything strange and unpredictable had happened beneath this overall calm remained unknown.
In the Land of Fire.
Konoha.
Nearly three years had passed, and the scars left by the war had long since faded from this thriving village.
The villagers' lives had returned to normal.
The streets were bustling with color, lined with all kinds of dazzling shops.
As the villagers spent more, more shops sprang up. Even some of the land originally used for homes was converted into stores to bring in greater profits.
Amid all this splendor, however, a modest little house stood tucked between the shops, completely out of place.
They said it had been bought by Teuchi, the owner of the thriving Ichiraku Ramen Shop. For some reason, he had simply left it standing there.
As the streets grew ever more prosperous, people passed by the house. Their initial surprise gradually gave way to acceptance.
Only a few of those who had once lived there knew that the house had belonged to someone.
Someone everyone was slowly forgetting...
Inside the Hokage Building.
Ninja came and went, constantly busy with all kinds of missions.
For a hidden village, recovery meant being ready to take on more missions from clients and earn the funds needed to keep the village running.
Everything depended on the ninja, its basic unit.
For that reason, Konoha's ninja population had reached unprecedented numbers over the past year.
Leaving aside the elite fighters, Konoha's Genin numbered more than those of