Main World.
Year 14 of Konoha, winter.
The secluded little courtyard on the edge of the Toyotomi Clan Grounds.
Winter sunlight filtered stingily through the sparse clouds, casting faint patches of light on the icy flagstones without bringing much warmth.
The air was dry and cold, each breath releasing a puff of white mist. Sakura Haruno sat beneath the eaves, wrapped in a slightly oversized old padded coat-a kindhearted woman from the Toyotomi House had given it to her after seeing how thinly she was dressed.
She held the Konoha Forehead Protector engraved with the Toyotomi clan crest, unconsciously rubbing its cold metal surface. Her unfocused eyes stared blankly at the bare tree in the courtyard, stripped of all its leaves.
Several more days had passed since that suffocating confrontation in the Hokage Office. Over those days, she had barely survived amid doubt, fear, cold, and an immense shock to her understanding, like a plant transplanted into unfamiliar soil.
Toyotomi Yinglang seemed to have "forgotten" about his maid. He had assigned her no specific work, merely allowing her to move and observe within a limited area.
But "observing" was itself a form of continual mental torture. She saw the ambition glittering in the Toyotomi clansmen's eyes when they spoke of the Martial Arts Hall, heard their undisguised contempt for other clans-especially the Uchiha-and felt the rough, aggressive cohesion within this clan, so different from Konoha's prevailing atmosphere.
She also saw the details of this world's Konoha-the plainly dressed commoner children at the Ninja Academy, the private military training kept strictly separate by each clan, and the undercurrent in the air, seemingly calm but actually taut.
The "Will of Fire"... "Konoha's soil"...
Toyotomi Yinglang's cold words wound through her mind like poisonous vines, growing day and night.
She tried to refute