The next day.
Early that morning, the heads of Konoha's major ninja clans arrived at the Hokage's office to discuss wrapping up the war and collect subsidies for the members of their clans who had fought.
Hiruzen Sarutobi pushed open the door and walked in.
Seeing the noisy meeting room, he tapped the table to signal everyone to quiet down.
"Hm?"
Hiruzen frowned slightly. The seat belonging to the Uchiha was empty.
The others followed his gaze, and they, too, were shocked.
Holy shit, surely the Uchiha Clan wasn't about to...
Knock, knock, knock...
"Ahem, sorry, everyone. I overslept! Well, I'm still growing, so you understand, right?"
Just as Hiruzen was about to speak.
Seiichi appeared at the meeting room's entrance.
He knocked on the door to draw everyone's attention.
Then he walked in as he spoke.
He had brought only Yuri with him.
He sat in the Uchiha's seat, while Yuri stood behind him with a notebook, ready to take meeting minutes for him.
"Where's Fugaku?"
Hiruzen frowned slightly. For some reason, he suddenly had a bad feeling.
"My father isn't feeling well. Besides, I'm the Uchiha Clan's young clan leader. Anything the clan leader has the final say on, I have the final say on too. Don't worry, there's no problem with me being here."
Seiichi smiled at Hiruzen, then took a bag of piping-hot meat buns from inside his bulging jacket and started eating as though no one else were there.
As it turned out, he had only eaten two buns.
Seiichi finally couldn't stand Choza Akimichi's unwavering stare at his buns.
He pulled another bag of buns from inside his jacket and handed it to him.
"There aren't any more meat ones. These are chive and egg," Seiichi leaned over and whispered.
"Stop looking. I only brought two bags."
Seeing Choza still staring at the spot where he had kept the buns.
Seiichi simply unzipped his jacket.
"Hehehe... It's fine, it's fine. I love all the food your clan makes. I'm not picky!"
Choza's reaction was rather funny too.
He answered Seiichi while taking buns from the bag and eating them, never sparing Seiichi so much as a glance the entire time. His eyes stayed fixed on the buns.
"Hah, hot, hot, hot... Your clan's buns really are delicious."
Choza ate his buns and gave Seiichi a thumbs-up, offering heartfelt praise for the food produced by the Uchiha Clan.
Seiichi smiled back without letting it delay him stuffing the bun in his hand into his mouth.
Almost everyone present pretended not to notice the little exchange between the two.
Hiruzen could do nothing about it either.
Even if he spoke up, Seiichi wouldn't listen.
He also knew perfectly well what the members of the Akimichi Clan were like.
Forget it. This is exhausting. Let them be!
After that, Hiruzen announced the official start of the postwar meeting.
After a few brief remarks, Hiruzen called up two people who had distinguished themselves during the war.
Minato Namikaze and his student, Kakashi Hatake.
Minato gave a speech as their representative.
After covering the hardships of war and the efforts of those who had fought, he moved on to the motivation that had kept them going.
You guessed it. The so-called "Will of Fire"!
Seiichi had been quite interested in the earlier material, but he couldn't muster any interest at all in flashy nonsense like the "Will of Fire" that followed.
That stuff could only fool people in the Shinobi World, where the average level of education was elementary-school dropout.
In Seiichi's previous life, a pyramid scheme leader who couldn't recruit anyone with this sort of pitch would only last a day!
The theory would be put together in the morning, the man would be locked up by noon, and his... whatever would be burned that night.
"All right, that concludes my speech. Thank you, everyone!"
Minato's words pulled Seiichi's long-wandering thoughts back.
What the hell? It was already over?!
"All right, we've now finished going over all the postwar work. As for the subsidies for each clan, once we've finished sorting things out here, we'll notify your clans to come collect them. Does anyone have any other questions?"
"If not, this meeting is adjourn-"
"Wait, I have something to say!"
Before Hiruzen could finish, Seiichi raised his hand to indicate that he had a question.
Everyone present froze at Seiichi's gesture, and Hiruzen's brows furrowed deeply.
Actually, there was something Seiichi was quite puzzled about himself.
Why hadn't Hiruzen stepped down yet?
Even if he couldn't step down for the time being because the Fourth Hokage hadn't been chosen.
Why hadn't anyone so much as mentioned selecting the Fourth Hokage at this meeting?
According to the original story, Hiruzen and the others had made enormous concessions to successfully negotiate peace with Iwagakure, all to extricate themselves from the quagmire of the Third Shinobi World War as soon as possible.
Hiruzen had consequently faced enormous pressure instigated by Danzo.
Later, under all sorts of pressure, he had even been forced to choose to resign voluntarily to take responsibility for the ninja who had died.
Then Konoha had entered the era of two Hokage.
After that came the brief happiness and the end of an illustrious life for Konoha's first commoner-born Hokage, the Fourth Hokage, Minato Namikaze.
But what was going on now?
For the first time, events had developed somewhat beyond Seiichi's expectations.
But there was no time for that now. Since he had raised his hand, everyone was looking at him.
Deal with this first.
He would need to go back and think the rest through carefully.
"Seiichi Uchiha, what else do you have to say?"
Because of that initial bad feeling, Hiruzen had spent the entire meeting on edge, terrified that Seiichi would pull some stunt.
He had finally made it to the end of the meeting, but before he could breathe a sigh of relief, Seiichi's raised hand sent that bad feeling straight to its peak!
"Ahem, it's nothing major. It's just that I'm planning to reclaim our Uchiha Clan's Sharingan that have ended up in outsiders' hands!"
Seiichi stood and spoke unhurriedly.
"If you want to reclaim your Uchiha Sharingan, why are you telling us? Do you need us to take action for your clan?"
Almost everyone present, Hiruzen included, failed to catch on. They even looked toward Hyuga Hiashi.
Hiruzen even breathed a sigh of relief. This had nothing to do with him.
As Konoha's ocular jutsu clans, both the Uchiha and the Hyuga placed enormous importance on their own Kekkei Genkai.
It was one thing if they didn't know, but if they did, there was no way they would simply allow their Kekkei Genkai to remain in outsiders' hands.
That included the Hyuga Clan. One of the Main Family's Byakugan had fallen into Kirigakure's hands, but they simply couldn't retrieve it themselves, and it was difficult to ask the village for help with such a private matter.
Of course, the Hyuga Clan hadn't given up. Instead, they had posted an astronomical bounty on the black market, hoping to successfully recover that Byakugan.
Of course, there wasn't much hope. In fact, their hopes could be described as exceedingly slim.
This was an age-old, age-old rule, and everyone present knew it.
But what did the Uchiha Clan mean by bringing it up here?
Even the Hyuga Clan, which had always been inferior to them, hadn't asked the village to intervene. Would the "proud" Uchiha ask the village to act on their behalf?
Besides, they hadn't heard of any powerful ninja village openly possessing their Sharingan, had they?
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