"What kind of monster?"
Karn feigned a look of incomprehension, though inwardly he guessed that Kushina must be about to become the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki around this time; thinking of this, Karn felt a twinge of sadness, realizing it might not be so easy to see this little girl again in the future.
Hearing Karn's question, Kushina did not know how to describe the Nine-Tails either, and in the end she could only use her limited vocabulary along with her constantly waving hands to say, "It's just a very, very terrifying monster... A little while from now, I might turn into a monster like that."
"Kushina, the most terrifying thing to me is when someone doesn't pay after a transaction."
Karn patted Kushina's head and said to her, not quite by way of comfort, "Thanks for the reminder, I finally remembered. Do you remember when I treated you to play on the game console last time? You happened to eat a dozen boxes of desserts without paying the bill."
"Ah? Is, is that so?"
Prompted by Karn, Kushina immediately recalled what happened that day, instantly putting on a look of knowing nothing while stiffly turning her head to gaze at the guest room.
"Boss, di, did you remember wrong?"
"You're really not cut out for lying, Kushina. That guilty look already shows you've remembered."
A standard merchant's smile appeared on Karn's face as he produced an abacus from goodness knows where, clacking the beads while saying to Kushina, "A high-end truffle-filled chocolate costs three hundred ryo, and I remember there were over a dozen boxes that day. Let's just calculate it as nineteen boxes-nineteen boxes of high-end truffle-filled chocolate, making a total of..."
Hearing Karn's words, Kushina anxiously blurted out, "There were only thirteen boxes in total, and I didn't eat