Main world, Konoha Year 16, late winter.
On the border of the Land of Hot Water, in a small village that no one had even bothered to mark on the map.
It had no name, only a few dozen dilapidated thatched huts scattered through a snow-covered valley. For generations, the villagers had lived by cutting firewood and making charcoal, isolated from the world.
Poverty, ignorance, and disease weighed on the people here like three great mountains, leaving them barely able to breathe.
And in the most dilapidated hut at the very edge of this village lived a woman whom no one in the village dared approach.
Her name was Shi Zhenxiang.
No one knew her surname, nor did anyone care. She had supposedly chosen the name "Shi Zhenxiang" herself. Since "Shi" sounded like the word for "shit," the villagers found the name disgusting and became even less willing to associate with her.
Her face-
How should one put it?
If ugliness had levels, then Shi Zhenxiang's face was probably its ultimate form.
A palm-sized black birthmark covered her left cheek, with coarse hair growing from it. Her right cheek was covered in densely packed smallpox scars, as though countless insects had gnawed on it. Her nose skewed to one side, and her thick, turned-out lips exposed uneven yellow teeth. Worst of all were her eyes-one large, one small, the large one bulging outward and the small one sunken inward. When she looked at someone, it was as though she were examining them at two different focal lengths, making their skin crawl.
The village children would run away crying when they saw her. The adults would spit, curse her as "bad luck," and take a detour.
She was twenty-one this year and unmarried-no, rather, no one dared marry her.
A matchmaker