This world was a boundless hell

Kazuko was an exceptional woman with considerable courage and insight. She was the leader of these displaced refugees, and the first to suggest seeking shelter with the Uchiha.

Despite her aged, gaunt appearance, she was not actually very old-only thirty. Yet in those thirty short years, Kazuko had endured suffering that most people could scarcely bear.

Born in a remote village in the Land of Fire, she had once lived a peaceful farming life with her husband and children. But one spring, two opposing groups of shinobi came to her village. It was her first encounter with shinobi, her first glimpse of dazzling ninjutsu, and the first time she saw people die horrific deaths-her husband among them.

That same year, after the shinobi left, terrible natural disasters followed one after another. The rice seedlings in the fields never grew. But when autumn came, the nobles' tax collector arrived all the same. The taxes she owed were not reduced in the slightest because of her misfortune, and so she lost her fields and home as well.

Left homeless, Kazuko and her family wandered throughout the Land of Fire. The suffering and losses they endured along the way were difficult for outsiders to imagine-of the happy family Kazuko had once had, only she remained, still clinging to life.

"Oh... I'm sorry for your loss."

Caught off guard by Kazuko's harrowing past, Shingetsu's expression went blank for a moment. She did not even know how to comfort this woman whose life had been so tragic.

Shingetsu had long known that civilians in the Shinobi World lived as though balancing on a tightrope, one misstep away from falling into a bottomless abyss. Yet confronted with such a bloody tragedy, she was still shocked into silence.

"All those sorrows are in the past now."

Kazuko forced the corners of her lips into a smile, but grief colored the face that endless suffering had carved full of wrinkles. Bitter pain shimmered in her sorrowful eyes. Anyone could tell she did not mean what she said.

"We still have to keep looking ahead."

Almost every civilian gathered here had a strikingly similar tragic past-caught up in war, losing their homes and loved ones, wandering the vast Land of Fire, and living wretched lives plagued by hunger and cold.

Suffering made people lament, but too much accumulated misery only left them numb.

"Ms. Kazuko, why did you think of coming to Konoha?"

Recalling the beginning of the month, Shingetsu had thought the promise of farmland would draw plenty of applicants. But she had badly underestimated the ill repute of shinobi and the Uchiha.

During that time, never mind applicants-not a single outsider had even been willing to approach the Uchiha Clan Compound.

She had wondered why no one wanted to come, but now she understood. A plan that seemed harmless enough to her looked to civilians like a pie stuffed with poison. No one knew whether eating it would rot their guts or actually fill their stomachs.

The first person to try something unknown was brave; the first person willing to seek refuge with the Uchiha was braver still. Kazuko's courage and resolve commanded admiration, but they also raised doubts in Shingetsu's mind.

She was a victim who had lost her husband and home because of shinobi! By all rights, Kazuko should have hated them to the bone. Yet she had chosen to put that hatred aside and seek shelter with her enemies. It was truly difficult to understand.

"To survive."

Kazuko answered Shingetsu calmly. She raised her head, her gaze following the clouds on the horizon back toward the home a thousand miles away that had been burned to ashes. Remembering the grief and pain of her journey after being forced to leave, she felt a hollow ache.

"Lady Shingetsu, I imagine you've never left Konoha."

Shingetsu nodded. At only five years old, she had naturally never left Konoha. Even if she wanted to see the outside world, Madara Uchiha would not allow her beyond the reach of his power.

"There aren't actually many refugees like me in the Daimyō's Capital. Most either can't escape or die along the way. The Land of Fire is crawling with bandits and rogue shinobi. For people like us, even fleeing is difficult."

Kazuko's voice remained calm, as though she were discussing something ordinary and unremarkable. Yet her words were chilling.

"Commoners aren't allowed to leave their native land. But once we lose our fields, the only choice besides fleeing is to become a noble's household slave. And those slaves aren't people. They're livestock, like cattle and horses. If we don't want to become livestock, we have to run."

"We dodge bandits and rogue shinobi along the way, begging on empty stomachs. Only the lucky ones avoid starving or freezing to death, and only the luckiest reach the Daimyō's Capital."

Kazuko turned toward her, her eyes as still as stagnant water, holding nothing but a cold, deathly silence.

"But even reaching the Daimyō's Capital only means falling into another hell. Have you ever seen someone simply walking down the road get run over by a noble's carriage because they were in the way? Have you seen samurai stand in the street and kill passing pedestrians one after another to test their blades?"

Only the tip of the iceberg of Kazuko's tragic past had been revealed, yet Shingetsu's stomach churned, and she almost vomited. The nobles' brutality far exceeded anything she had imagined!

"So that's why you came to seek shelter with shinobi?"

"Shinobi kill to complete their missions. Nobles might kill merely for amusement."

Kazuko nodded silently, watching the distress and shock on Shingetsu's face. When she spoke again, her voice had become unbearably hoarse, and endless sorrow welled in her eyes.

"Whether we come to Konoha or seek shelter with you, my lady, we have only one goal-to stay alive for as long as we can."

Talking about things the others could neither understand nor join in on, Shingetsu and Kazuko drifted away from the main group without realizing it, wandering aimlessly along the neatly laid-out fields.

From time to time, Kazuko stopped and crouched beside the fields, reverently lifting a handful of earth and letting the black soil slip between her fingers.

Whenever she did, she opened her palm and pressed her cheek to this supreme deity.

"Lady Shingetsu, there's something I'd like to ask. Why did you think of clearing farmland?"

Kazuko looked up, studying Shingetsu, who was the same age as the little daughter in her memories. She was now certain that the idea had come from the young girl before her.

But why?

"This isn't something shinobi would do."

Shinobi were merely tools the nobles used to kill, existing only to destroy and devastate. Over a thousand years of warring chaos had proven that truth countless times. Yet now they wanted to establish farmland. It was absurd, unbelievable. When had shinobi ever done anything like this?

Hearing Kazuko's question, Shingetsu fell into confusion herself. Before this, she had never considered why she wanted to do it.

"Why... yes, why exactly?"

Staring at the seemingly endless farmland, questions bubbled up in Shingetsu's heart like boiling water, refusing to stop. She could not help asking herself why she wanted to do these things.

Was it because I'm dissatisfied with my current standard of living, so I instinctively want to improve it?

Or because I want the civilians' support, so I need to earn their trust?

Or was it...

Because I was once born in that prosperous country and know what true peace looks like, so I want everyone around me to have the same happiness I had back then?

After thinking for ages without finding an answer, Shingetsu simply followed Kazuko's example and sat down in the field. Rubbing her head, she racked her brains for a long while before murmuring as though in a dream:

"Whatever we want to do, we have to make sure people have enough to eat first."

"...What? What kind of answer is that? Pfft, hahaha!"

After a long silence, Kazuko burst out laughing. Shingetsu's words seemed to have amused her so much that she could not stop, laughing until tears streamed down her face.

"You really are a strange one."

Kazuko laughed for ages, then held her stomach and took a long time to catch her breath before finally recovering. Watching her, Shingetsu thought in embarrassment that what she had said was hardly that funny.

"Is it really that funny?"

"Only a child like you could have such an innocent ideal."

A small gap suddenly opened in the gloomy, despondent clouds that had always hung over Kazuko. Fierce, dazzling sunlight poured through it, breaking through all the darkness in an instant and illuminating her gentle, peaceful smile.

"But I truly would like to see what that future looks like."

Basking in sunlight they had not felt in so long, Shingetsu and Kazuko enjoyed this brief moment of harmony together. Such moments were always fleeting, though. Reality's gravity constantly tugged at the soul, but perhaps that was precisely what made ideals so alluring.

"Lady Shingetsu, when harvest time comes, what percentage will you take as interest?"

Having gathered herself, Kazuko cut straight to the question that concerned the refugees most. Shingetsu did not hesitate either. This question had troubled her for so long that she had spent several days thinking about it even in her sleep.

"Thirty percent!"

As someone who had received nine years of compulsory education in her previous life, Shingetsu naturally knew that interest and taxation were enormously difficult issues, important enough to determine the survival of a business or even a nation!

She did not dare take it lightly. On one hand, she certainly needed to increase the civilians' income. On the other, the Uchiha had invested a substantial sum and needed a corresponding return.

Too much was unacceptable, but too little would not do either. The difficult task of balancing both sides' returns had nearly worked Shingetsu to death.

What misery!

I'm a five-year-old kid, and I'm stuck doing work meant for capitalists, emperors, daimyō, and Hokage! But on second thought, Shingetsu realized that Hashirama Senju and the Hokage who followed him apparently did not have to deal with this headache. Konoha's funding actually came from taking a cut of mission fees and receiving financial support from the daimyō-and the latter was the real bulk of it.

No wonder the Shinobi World had a world war every decade or two. How could that little money support so many shinobi?

"Thirty percent! Not a fraction less!"

Shingetsu gritted her teeth and fiercely declared the figure she considered relatively reasonable.

She had read through the agreement the daimyō had signed with Hashirama Senju and Madara Uchiha. Konoha was entirely self-governed by shinobi. The daimyō and nobles could not levy taxes there; as a show of sincerity, they had transferred that authority to the shinobi.

That meant she had every right to establish a new land tax on this territory belonging to the Uchiha.

Shingetsu knew perfectly well that she could imitate the insatiably greedy nobles and landlords of the Land of Fire, using crushing land taxes to seize the farmers' entire harvest.

That would certainly bring in a great deal of bloodstained money at once. Unlike those nobles, the Uchiha would not even have to spend every day worrying about civilians rebelling.

But Shingetsu absolutely did not want that. She needed neither bloodstained money nor slaves stripped of all freedom.

Thirty percent would keep the Uchiha from losing money while allowing the civilians to retain most of their harvest. It was certainly not a light tax, but it still fell within what Shingetsu could accept.

"Thirty... percent..."

Kazuko's eyes widened in disbelief. First she murmured it, then repeated it more loudly. Soon, this normally composed woman suddenly dropped all her reserve and grabbed Shingetsu, seeking to confirm the figure again and again.

"Are you certain? Is it really thirty percent?!"

"It's thirty percent! In exchange for renting you the fields, we take thirty percent of your harvest."

Thinking Kazuko found it too high, Shingetsu immediately hardened her expression, wondering how to persuade this intelligent woman. But a moment later, she was dumbfounded. Kazuko's eyes had reddened, and tears were streaming down her face.

"Am I dreaming? Only thirty percent tax! Lady Shingetsu, you're far too kind!"

Now Shingetsu was completely stunned. She did not understand. This was a full thirty percent in taxes-almost a third of their harvest. Was that supposed to be little?

Only then did she realize she seemed to have overlooked something very important-these past few days, she had focused entirely on recalling history textbooks and farming novels, forgetting to investigate the daimyō's tax system.

Just how thoroughly is the daimyō bleeding them dry?

"Um, Ms. Kazuko, what percentage does the daimyō take in taxes?"

"Don't you know? In the Land of Fire, it's always been sixty percent for the authorities and forty percent for the people. That's never changed."

Kazuko wiped away her tears and gave Shingetsu a surprised look. She had not expected her to be ignorant of that.

After all, her first impression of Shingetsu had been of someone meticulous in her work and boundlessly imaginative in her ideas. She could not understand how Shingetsu had overlooked such basic, crucial information.

"What, s-sixty percent? Sixty percent in taxes? Sixty percent! My god, has the daimyō gone mad?"

Foolish, ignorant Uchiha Shingetsu had once again confronted feudal society's inhuman exploitation of the lower classes, taking nearly ten thousand points of mental damage and gaining a whole new understanding of how beastly the daimyō and nobles were.

A full sixty percent in taxes! No wonder nobody, shinobi or civilian, gets enough to eat even in the richest country, the Land of Fire! All the money and grain went to the nobles!

How can people survive under rulers like that? Shingetsu was baffled. With the daimyō and nobles behaving this way, why hasn't anyone rebelled?

Oh, right. How could I forget? The nobles can hire shinobi.

Suddenly, Shingetsu jolted in realization. She pressed a hand to her forehead and gave a bitter laugh, understanding what gave the daimyō and nobles the confidence to commit evil so brazenly.

Against shinobi, it did not matter how many civilians rose in rebellion. If one Great Fireball was not enough, they could throw another. After two fireballs, everyone would be dead. How could a rebellion ever get off the ground?