"Big Brother Takahashi Yū, we're here. This is Sister Ayano's house."
Chōza Akimichi pointed at a courtyard filled with flowers.
"Thanks, Akimichi kid. Want to come have a feast with us?"
Takahashi Yū patted Chōza Akimichi on the shoulder, inviting the adorable little chubby boy.
Chōza Akimichi's mouth hung half open as he weighed a feast against his friends. "I'd better not, Big Brother Takahashi Yū. I still have to go meet my friends."
Chōza said it with some difficulty.
His funny expression made Takahashi Yū laugh. Chōza wasn't as mature as the other two at this age. He still had a little boy's temperament.
But this was how a normal child ought to be. Children in the Shinobi World matured too quickly; they could be said to face mortal danger from an early age.
"All right, off you go. I'll treat you to a meal later!" Takahashi Yū said with a smile, stroking Chōza's red hair.
Chōza Akimichi left, glancing back every few steps. The feast was quite a temptation. If he hadn't promised Inoichi Yamanaka, he would have joined the gathering even if Shikaku scolded him for it. He found Takahashi Yū very approachable.
Takahashi Yū waved as he watched Chōza leave. Then his expression changed, and he started pounding on Ayano's gate.
"Pig Girl! Pig Girl! Think you're all grown up now, huh? Like hell I believe you didn't sense me! You won't come out to greet me, so I have to knock?"
With a series of bangs, Takahashi Yū hammered the wooden gate outside the courtyard until it threatened to fall apart.
Her face red, Yamanaka Ayano hurriedly opened the gate and pulled Takahashi Yū inside.
"Captain, what are you doing? This is so embarrassing! Calling someone Pig Girl in our clan compound will get everyone angry!" Takahashi Yū's booming voice had made Yamanaka Ayano blush with embarrassment.
"Why are you acting like some bashful little maiden? Pig Girl, I don't even recognize you anymore." Takahashi Yū shook his head. Why had all his teammates undergone a "personality change" as soon as they returned to the village?
He still remembered how Yamanaka Ayano loved to lie sprawled on the ground to rest. She had been more of a man than the men.
Yamanaka Ayano's expression changed. Two veins bulged on her forehead, and she punched Takahashi Yū hard in the arm.
After touching him with a punch whose force Takahashi Yū couldn't feel at all, she returned to her bashful demeanor.
"Captain~ Don't I need to get married? Everyone else my age has either taken a wife or married a husband. That damned war held up a beauty like me!" Yamanaka Ayano kept switching between anger and bashfulness.
Takahashi Yū looked shocked. He remembered that most girls in the Shinobi World married at sixteen or seventeen. Ayano had already been twenty when she left the village for war.
Had she turned into this sort of lunatic already? Didn't the Yamanaka Clan specialize in studying the mind?
Oh! A doctor couldn't heal herself, was that it?
Watching Takahashi Yū stare wide-eyed, mouth open and expression blank, Yamanaka Ayano clenched her fists tighter and tighter.
In the end, she swallowed her anger and spoke in a voice so affectedly sweet it could kill:
"Captain, what brings you to see little old me? Don't you know that visiting a girl's home like this can easily give people the wrong idea?"
The voice gave Takahashi Yū goosebumps all over. He hurriedly brushed Ayano's hand off and headed for the gate.
"Yūma's become head of the Gekko clan. We're celebrating tonight. Go find Yūma, then find the Byakugan kid and Takeshi. I'm going to find the Uchiha F3 now. Meet at Yūma's house!"
Takahashi Yū had already vanished from the flower-filled courtyard, leaving only his voice growing fainter in the distance.
He also left behind a resentful-looking Yamanaka Ayano.
"Gekko Yūma seems to be married already. What a shame." Yamanaka Ayano leaned against the doorframe with lifeless eyes, like a bitter wife waiting for her husband to return.
Her younger cousin Yoshino Yamanaka had gotten engaged to Shikaku Nara two days earlier. At the engagement banquet, many people had looked at her, the "aging leftover woman," making her extremely uncomfortable.
Of course, that was Ayano's interpretation. In reality, as she watched her cousin, five or six years her junior, get engaged at the banquet, traces of fluctuation had unconsciously seeped from her body.
She had made everyone at the banquet terribly nervous. They had thought she opposed the match, deepening the precocious thirteen-year-old brat Shikaku's fear of marriage another notch. Only Nara Yūma had sighed, wisely seeing through it all.
Yūma and Ayano now held remarkably high standing. Even the Uchiha were deeply wary of Takahashi Yū, let alone the Nara, renowned for their intelligence.
Takahashi Yū fled toward the Uchiha Clan Compound and caught his breath beneath its imposing entrance. Ayano's affectedly sweet voice had filled his head as he sprinted, giving him a stitch in his side.
Just then, a patrol from the Konoha Military Police Force emerged through the compound entrance and spotted the tall figure leaning against a gatepost.
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.
Several figures flickered into place before Takahashi Yū.
They spoke in unison. "Lord Takahashi Yū!!!"
I looked away for a moment, and suddenly I had fanboys?
The ninja in Konoha Military Police Force uniforms before him all had eyes shining with admiration.
What was going on? Where were my cold, aloof Uchiha?
Weren't they supposed to be expressionless and clannish?
Takahashi Yū looked bewildered. Was this really the fucking Infinite Tsukuyomi world?
"Lord Takahashi Yū, have you come to see the esteemed members of the Undying Squad?" asked an Uchiha who seemed to be a squad leader.
What Takahashi Yū didn't know was that this had all started with Uchiha Shunji, his enthusiastic volunteer promoter. This Uchiha was nothing like an Uchiha at all. All three members of the Uchiha F3 had awakened three tomoe during the war.
For an Uchiha, three tomoe meant Jonin!
Three tomoe also meant being allowed to attend the Uchiha clan meetings, which were roughly equivalent to "how to run for Hokage meetings" or "rebellion meetings."
But once Uchiha Shunji joined them, everything changed. The Uchiha Clan Meetings became "Undying Squad bragging meetings" and "meetings on the possibility of Takahashi Yū single-handedly suppressing the Uchiha"!
What was more, Shunji would tell everyone he met, "How did you know I got Captain Takahashi Yū's kekkei genkai?"
He spent all day dragging the clan's youngsters over to boast about his heroic exploits on the battlefield.
He also frequently demonstrated to those youngsters just what a Dual Kekkei Genkai Shinobi was!
[Murderous Intent Fluctuation] amplified one's own Killing Intent, allowing it to be projected outward and given physical form. The Wave Seed's effect was more than ten times weaker than the original, but the effect remained.
It inflicted mental damage on people!
And how could the young Uchiha ever have experienced the viciousness born of mountains of corpses and seas of blood on the battlefield?
Those with better talent shuddered under the impact of a mere wisp of Shunji's murderous intent and awakened their eyes on the spot.
The Uchiha went wild. But the intelligence on Takahashi Yū forced them to calm down, and they imposed the strictest gag order on the news. The fact that Murderous Intent Fluctuation could stimulate Uchiha clan members into awakening their eyes could only be whispered about within the clan.
Even Uchiha Delia and Uchiha Kenichi, another member of the F3, were pestered endlessly by their clansmen every day.
[Reduced Wave Seed] consumed chakra. As an outgoing Uchiha, Shunji was drained of every last drop each day.
In his words, when someone had already begged him, how could he refuse to give them a blast?
So it was understandable that the Konoha Military Police Force members before him were looking at him as though he were their own father.
Just a scare from Lord Shunji could awaken tomoe. If Lord Takahashi Yū gave me a scare, I wouldn't dare imagine what I might awaken!
Takahashi Yū rubbed his hair. Their attitude was strange, but wandering through the enormous Uchiha Clan Compound was something he would rather avoid.
"Right, I'm here to see Shunji and the others. Could you let them know for me? I don't know where they live," Takahashi Yū said to the abnormally enthusiastic Uchiha before him.
"We guarantee we'll complete the mission!" The police force members all but saluted.
"All right, I'll wait here, then?" Their fervent tone made Takahashi Yū begin to doubt himself.
Could my surname be Uchiha too?
Ever since leaving Hot Springs Street, Takahashi Yū had felt nothing but the world's disparities. He couldn't help rubbing his head. There seemed to be something a little wrong with this Shinobi World!
Before you continue