"Damn, why did they have to tie it so tight…" I muttered, struggling to shove the thing in and pull it back out again. "Oh, yeah, that's the stuff."
A few minutes later, I was finally satisfied, so I set my pencil aside and went to take a shower before heading out. If only my arm under the cast didn't itch so much, I could almost say I'd had a great week.
Well, "great" is a stretch. I barely did anything - mostly just lounged around at home, reading books and practicing chakra control and kanji writing with the help of my clones.
Because of the cast, I really didn't feel like leaving the house. With it on, I felt pretty vulnerable. Sure, even if my arm was fine, not much would change, considering my own strength, but still - it's one thing to be weak, and another to be half as strong as usual. There were upsides, though: rest, and Kushina's cooking, which I had the honor of enjoying every day.
I didn't even notice it at first, but ever since I arrived in Konoha, I'd been under a constant, low-level stress. You wouldn't know it from looking at me - I acted pretty relaxed - but every night, as I lay in bed, I'd think about how someone could drop by at any moment and drag me off to the local some secret police dungeon. Every time someone knocked on my door, I'd mentally brace myself for the worst.
I can't say I don't feel that way anymore, but… I've started to take it a bit easier.
Oh, and besides the upsides, there's one downside: nobody brings me hot tea in bed anymore. And all because, as usual, I left a plate of food and a little thank-you note with a drawn heart.
Maybe she's embarrassed now, or maybe she decided that after the portrait, her debt to me is paid.
Today, for the first time in a week, I decided to go somewhere besides my own restaurant. First stop: the print shop. They greeted me with tea and cookies, sat me down, and the old man and his son filled me in on how things were going.
There's no real buzz around my book yet, but if you believe the old man and his son, the books are selling steadily. The three stores we have deals with are happy and asking for more.
Honestly, that's probably for the best. If demand suddenly spiked, all I could do is shrug - even with the current pace, they're barely keeping up, and that's after fixing the second printing press.
All in all, since the first shipment, we've sold 400 books. If you count the people who bought it and then told their friends, that means about 1-3% of the village knows about it now. Doesn't sound like much, but I've already made 143,000 ryo - probably what a chunin would earn for a solo B-rank mission.
If you think about it, to make good money safely, you need to become a jonin and just do B-rank missions. I'm sure someone like Kakashi could knock those out in batches, but I bet Konoha's system tries to keep that from happening. Otherwise, jonin would work for less than a week and then slack off the rest of the month, leaving the chunin with nothing. But whatever - you can get strong without a headband, and for now, I'm not hurting for cash.
After the print shop, I headed to the hospital to pay for my treatment and stay.
I thought the village would cover my medical bills, since it was a shinobi who broke the law and put me in the hospital. But nope - neither the village nor the shinobi thought it necessary to pay the 8,000 ryo for my treatment.
Then again, there's no real court system here, so it makes sense. If you break the village's laws and get caught, and you're a nobody, it's simple: after you're detained and brought to the station, a member of the Uchiha clan interrogates you - no torture, of course, since the Sharingan can catch a lie. Once you confess, depending on how bad your crime was, you either pay a fine or get a vacation in the local jail. The location of the jail, by the way, is classified.
If you're innocent, the police start digging: who accused you, did they have a motive, and so on - a full investigation.
But that's just for regular civilians. If you're a shinobi, a minor official, a businessman, or a merchant, you'll be questioned by the investigation department. If that doesn't work, you'll meet the polite folks from the torture division. Once you spill everything you know - down to your third cousin's name - if it's a minor offense, the head of the department will give you a sentence.
If it's serious, the case goes to the Hokage, and once your name lands on his desk, you could end up in jail for a long time, or go straight to the Shinigami. Shinobi have more options: you might get sent to a special shinobi prison (for missing-nin), which is somewhere outside the village, or you could end up in the Blood Prison - Hozuki Castle, in the Hidden Grass Village. [ image ]

But that's usually for shinobi who broke major laws in another country, creating political leverage against their own village. Basically, it's a prison for international criminals.
If the offender belongs to a clan, their fate is decided by the clan council. Most of the time, if the troublemaker has the potential to become a strong chunin, the clan head will work out a deal so the punishment is served at home - basically, house arrest. Yeah, it pays to know the right people. I've learned a lot. So, most likely, Hiruzen just swept the whole thing under the rug.
Not that it's surprising - Asuma is a loyal shinobi of Konoha, strong, and family. If the Hokage has to choose between me and a loyal, powerful chunin, he'll pick the latter. So… there's no point in butting heads with jonin. They'll just gently remind me I'm out of line. It's an unpleasant situation, but back where I'm from, this kind of thing happened all the time. I've dealt with it before, but here, I have way more options and ways out.
Since I was already counting my money, I decided to spend a couple of hours at my own restaurant. In the staff area of my "McDonald's," I had a small office with two safes. One held reports, documents, and all the restaurant's profits.
The profits from the last few days were in the second safe. Ayumi had access to it. At the end of each workday, she'd spend ten minutes writing down the number of orders and the amount of ingredients used, then put the money in the safe. Every three or four days, I'd go through the reports, do the math, and then move all the money and paperwork to my more secure safe. I could probably make things easier by hiring an accountant, but for now, this works for me. [image]

The best part is, the girls and Ayumi do their jobs honestly - nobody tries to dip their hands where they shouldn't. If they did, I'd see it in the reports and the cash.
An hour later, I left my office feeling satisfied.
In half a month, McDonald's brought in 320,000 ryo, which is pretty solid for a new restaurant. Of course, that's not net profit - I'll figure that out after I calculate all the expenses: gas, water, electricity, food, and salaries.
Still, I can already tell I'll break even in about six months, which is a huge success for any entrepreneur.
For the average citizen of Konoha, I'm making a ton of money, but I'm still a long way from being a tycoon or big-time businessman.
I'd love to just live comfortably with what I have and not stress too much, but in this world, you only feel safe if you have power. Besides power, in any developed society, only authority and money can give you some security - though to a lesser extent…
I've got barely any power, no authority, so my only real option for now is to make as much money as possible.
But you can't get far on a fat wallet and a heavy safe in the bank - Gato and Mavrodi proved that. So, you could say that after two months in Konoha, I haven't achieved all that much, but I've still got time - the canon hasn't started yet, if it even exists. My most important allies in this world are my knowledge and time.
I decided to end the evening on a sweet note. Thanks to the nurses, I found out there's a really good pastry shop near the hospital that sells the best chocolate cakes in all of Konoha.
No matter how hard I try to make something chocolatey, it always comes out dry or lacking real chocolate flavor. Pastry chefs are basically wizards to me. If you mess up even one step, you get something totally different from what you wanted, and even if you follow the recipe, there's no guarantee it'll taste good.
One of the nurses, as she put it, "gave it to me even though she'd been saving it for herself" to let me try it, and since I liked it so much, I decided to check the place out today.
The moment I walked into the little bakery with its glass display cases, my eyes went wide. I wanted to buy everything, but I knew there was no way I'd eat it all in one day, and leaving it in the fridge for a few days… my conscience wouldn't let me. Most of the flavor would be gone in a couple of days, and my fridge is already packed.
In the end, I left the shop with two bags stuffed with boxes of sweets, pastries, and cupcakes. I bought more than I'd planned, but while I was shopping, I remembered that I have neighbors who wouldn't mind sharing some soft, sweet chocolate cake - and it'd be a good way to thank them for looking out for me.
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