Not every war was accompanied by explosions and bloodshed. Sometimes, the sound of war's bugle was nothing more than the flipping of a wooden sign at a market stall.
"It's gone up! It's gone up again!"
At Iwagakure's largest goods distribution center, a housewife glared at the sign outside the grain and cooking-oil shop. Her shrill voice even drowned out the noisy crowd. "A sack of flour was only three hundred ryō yesterday! How did it become five hundred today? You're robbing us!"
The owner of the grain shop was a thin, middle-aged man. He shrank behind the counter with a sorrowful look on his face, constantly fiddling with his abacus as if it were his last protective charm.
"Ma'am, how can you blame me for this?" The owner pointed at the empty shelves. "Every trade route passing through the Land of Fire has been cut off. We used to have more than a dozen caravans coming over from the Land of Grass every month. But now? Not even a fly can get through. I hear the whole place is crawling with lunatics carrying 'flamethrowers' who kill everyone they see."
"That's your men's business! It's the Tsuchikage's business!" The woman angrily slapped the counter. "We just want to eat! My husband is stationed at the border. Do you expect him to go to war on an empty stomach?"
"Keep your voice down!" The owner's face went deathly pale. He hurriedly pulled half a sack of dark, discolored grain from beneath the counter. "This is the last sack of old rice, and I had to haul it in from the Land of Iron at a high price. Do you want it? If not, there are dozens of people waiting behind you."
The woman stared at the old rice, which was even