Shameless

That evening, all the brothers joined Yanbai for dinner.

Yanbai stared speechlessly at the extra dried fish among the dishes on the low table.

Honestly, ever since coming to this world, all he had wanted was to sneak out and get himself something better to eat.

The food here was so meager, and it tasted terrible!

There were eggs, fish, and vegetables, admittedly.

Yanbai was already receiving the very best meals the Senju Clan had to offer.

Ordinary people might have nothing but pickles and rice, while Yanbai at least had both meat and vegetables.

But even so, this was it!

It might have been ungrateful to say so, but... he just had no appetite...

Yanbai carefully passed the dried fish in his bowl to Hashirama Senju, who sat beside him. Since there was an extra fish today, he took the opportunity to give one to his youngest older brother, Senju Kawarama.

Seeing this, Tobirama Senju couldn't help asking, "You never have an appetite. Is it because of that side effect?"

"Maybe. I don't know..." Yanbai said flatly. "I don't feel like eating."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know before..." Tobirama Senju said quietly. "Did you go onto the battlefield to heal those strangers so you could gather intelligence?"

"Mm." Yanbai gave a vague answer. He had great faith in people's ability to fill in the blanks themselves.

"Then why do you heal those animals?" Tobirama Senju asked hesitantly.

"For fun," Yanbai answered with a perfectly straight face. "Animals lead harsher lives than humans, but their lives are also simple and heartwarming. They can soothe my wounded heart."

Tobirama Senju: "..."

Was that really it?

Having eaten only plain rice and eggs for dinner, he was bound to be ravenous.

Yanbai woke from a dream of hunger.

In the middle of the night, Yanbai slipped into the chicken coop again.

Tobirama Senju was responsible for keeping an eye on Yanbai, so the moment Yanbai slipped out of the house, he noticed.

Tobirama Senju followed silently behind Yanbai, but he didn't follow him into the coop.

The bird droppings last time had left Tobirama Senju traumatized. He planned to listen through the wall, and then...

"Cluck, cluck, cluck..."

An old hen let out a pained cry.

"Come on, Harusame! Push! You're almost there!"

That was Yanbai's voice, as melodious as a nightingale.

Tobirama Senju: "????"

"Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck-" The hen kept calling.

Yanbai continued cheering from beside him. "Puuush-"

With a pop, something round rolled into the straw.

"There! Well done, Harusame!" Yanbai said happily.

Tobirama Senju: "..."

Tobirama Senju began questioning everything. Had Yanbai really come to the chicken coop in the middle of the night instead of sleeping to help a hen "give birth"?

And that wasn't all. Yanbai's voice continued drifting out.

"Look how dirty your nest is. I'll tidy it up for you. Here..." Yanbai seemed to have done something. "Don't stab me just yet, Harusame. I've brought you a present."

Hearing that, Tobirama Senju narrowed his eyes.

Then Yanbai continued, "Look! These are cabbage worms I caught under the eaves. Twenty of them altogether. I strung them into a worm necklace. See? They're still moving. The freshest worms you could ask for! Don't worry, they're all safe, nontoxic food..."

Tobirama Senju, eavesdropping outside: "..."

So Yanbai had been darting all over the courtyard before bed to make a worm necklace for a hen?

Was this what Yanbai meant by soothing himself?

Yanbai snickered mischievously. "Let me put it on you. Oh my, Harusame, you're so elegant! With this necklace, you're chicken nobility, the princess of the coop. And if you get hungry, you can eat the worms."

At that moment, Tobirama Senju desperately wanted to walk away, but he held himself back.

Tobirama Senju strongly suspected that Yanbai was fooling him just as he fooled the hen.

Unfortunately, he had no proof.

"All right, I should go make a midnight snack. Harusame, say... you don't mind if I borrow two eggs, do you?" Yanbai's tone remained exactly the same.

The hen went, "Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck."

Listening to that cadence, Tobirama Senju somehow heard, "No problem. Take them."

A necklace of twenty plump worms for two eggs was a pretty good deal.

"I'm off, then. Good night..." Yanbai said goodbye to the hen.

"Cluck, cluck..."

Yanbai emerged from the coop with an egg in each hand and a smile on his face, only to come face-to-face with Tobirama Senju, who stood in the moonlight in his pajamas, arms folded, watching him with a cool expression.

"Second Brother, I got one for you too. You must be starving as well. Come on, let's have a midnight snack..."

Yanbai enthusiastically hooked his arm through Tobirama Senju's and pulled him toward the edge of the Clan Grounds.

Tobirama Senju sighed. Once again, he had no idea what to say.

And so, Tobirama Senju followed Yanbai.

In the dead of night, the aroma of egg fried rice wafted over the Senju Clan Grounds. Some clan members were roused from sleep by the delicious scent, but they couldn't figure out where it was coming from.

It smelled so good...

After that incident, Yanbai wasn't confined to the house.

Butsuma Senju didn't do much to rein Yanbai in either.

Yanbai was inclined to think this was the calm before the storm.

To keep Hashirama Senju's secret meetings with Madara Uchiha from being discovered, Yanbai drew most of the attention on the Clan Grounds onto himself.

Every day, Yanbai wandered around the animal pens, either singing puppies and kittens to sleep or going into the chicken coop to help hens lay their eggs. He even took cats to the stream on the Clan Grounds to catch fish and release the little ones.

Life seemed peaceful.

Meanwhile, Hashirama Senju met Madara Uchiha by the river again.

After exchanging a few pleasantries, the two naturally moved on to more serious matters.

"We're shinobi. We never know when we might die."

Madara Uchiha picked up a stone from the ground and skipped it across the water as he spoke. "If there's any way to make sure neither of us dies, it would have to be facing our enemies honestly, hiding nothing from each other, and then becoming sworn brothers... but that's impossible. People's hearts are unpredictable. No one can see into someone else's heart..."

Before Madara had finished speaking, his stone had already reached the opposite bank.

Unlike in his original fate, however, Hashirama Senju didn't wait for Madara Uchiha to finish. Instead, he let out a wry laugh that rather spoiled the mood.

"Pfft-"

That laugh irritated Madara Uchiha. "What's wrong with what I said? You think it's funny?"

"No, it's not funny." Hashirama Senju quickly wiped the smile off his face. "I just thought of my little sister."

At the mention of Hashirama's sister, a flicker passed through Madara Uchiha's eyes. Ever since meeting that silver-haired child, all of Madara Uchiha's lingering injuries had healed. Not only that, but his physical condition seemed to have improved as well.

Madara Uchiha listened without letting anything show, afraid that Hashirama Senju might stop talking.

"Madara, my little sister proposed the same idea, only he put it differently from you." As Hashirama Senju spoke, he couldn't help making another expression torn between laughter and tears.

"What... did he say?" Madara Uchiha narrowed his eyes.

"He said we should first become stronger than anyone else, then lead the entire clan to surrender to the enemy. If the enemy refuses our surrender, we beat them until they accept it." Hashirama Senju didn't know whether to laugh or cry as he continued:

"He also said that once we're prisoners, they have to feed and house us. If the food and lodgings aren't good enough, we beat them up again... They'd be forced to accept our surrender and forced to support us. We wouldn't want to fight, and they wouldn't be able to kill us."

"Then, after ten or twenty years, we'd all be so intertwined that there'd be no point fighting. We'd be one family."

Madara Uchiha: "..."

How shameless...

How the hell was that surrender? Wasn't that just robbery under the flag of surrender?