
Ah, bliss.
The moment I set foot back in Konoha, I didn't even think about going home or hunting down something to eat - even though my stomach had been growling since lunchtime. No, I made a beeline straight for the public hot springs.
No matter how tightly sealed that rented carriage was, with its hired driver, the dust still managed to sneak in everywhere, carried by the wind. The weather had been wild these past few days, and inside the carriage it was stifling. If you cracked open the window - barely wider than two notebooks side by side - you'd get a breath of air, but also a mouthful of dust.
But keeping the window shut for hours was its own kind of torture, especially when it came to keeping your body temperature in check. Honestly, if I'd had a spare horse, I wouldn't have minded giving my back and hips a workout, but what's the point in complaining now? All the hard parts were behind me.
Those forty-five days in Tanzaku had been seriously productive. The McDonald's branch was up and running, and just as I'd hoped, it was already drawing in the lower and middle classes. The shopping center - my would-be gold mine - was fully designed and about eighty percent finished. All that was left was to stock the stores, find suppliers and outlets, hire staff, and handle the rest of the little details.
However that was Saiko and Ayumi's headache now - I'd left them behind in Tanzaku. I'd handled all the most important stuff, and I figured those two could take care of the rest. And if they couldn't… well, nobody's irreplaceable.
Sure, it was a bit risky to trust such a big project to someone else. Ideally, I'd oversee every little thing myself, but honestly, I was tired. Really tired. And I missed Aika.
I never liked straining my brain for too long, and in Tanzaku, even when I was supposedly relaxing, my thoughts kept drifting back to the shopping center's endless little issues. You'd be sitting there, enjoying a stew of wild greens and slow-cooked boar, and in your head you're still thinking about how to set up a minimart to fill the entire first floor. Not that it was rocket science - you didn't have to be a genius to order shelves and arrange deliveries.
The real problem was, how would the cashiers sell all those products? In the little shops - and there were tons of them in Tanzaku, Konoha, and probably everywhere else - it was easy, since each item only had one or two brands. Sometimes three or more, but that was mostly for dairy. But for my store, which took up the whole first floor, I needed at least three different brands for every product, just to keep the shelves from looking half-empty.
And honestly, that wasn't such a big deal. Sure, it was nothing like the 21st century, where you could find thirty kinds of chips, but Tanzaku was the economic capital of the Land of Fire, so you could find products from other countries too. The real issue was, with that much variety, the cashiers just wouldn't be able to remember all the prices. And as you might guess, there were no barcodes here, and no scanners either.
I racked my brain for a while, and the only solution I came up with was to give each cashier a booklet listing all the products, with a short description and the price. I made the first booklet myself - well, my clone did - and added the prices later, after another clone went around to check prices at different stores.
I decided to set my prices five to ten percent lower than the competition, depending on the item. When I finished the first booklet, I started thinking.
For all the "cashiers" - I planned to hire two for even days and two for odd days - I'd need four booklets, plus extras in case any got lost. And in the future, if prices changed, then what? Hire someone to update them by hand? Sure, you could find someone to do it, but what if only three prices changed?
Cross out the old price and write in the new one? That night, as I was mulling it over, a funny idea hit me. Wouldn't it be cool if you could make one master booklet, and whenever you changed a price there, it would update on all the others? Like an admin booklet that controls the data (product names and prices) for all the others.
And on a special scroll, you could create a database that the admin client would interact with, sending data, and the user clients (the regular booklets) would receive that data from the scroll. Basically, one scroll would act as both the database and the server.
Once I started thinking about it that way, it all seemed obvious. I mean, fuinjutsu is fuinjutsu. Why overthink it? Back in college, I'd had the "pleasure" of working with assembly language. Now that was a nightmare. But fuinjutsu, in terms of logic, was basically a procedural language, almost on par with the great and classic C. So, a step above assembly.
The only problem was, I didn't have any documentation listing all the functions you could use in fuinjutsu - and honestly, I doubted such a thing even existed. Maybe the Uzumaki had something like that, scattered across different books and scrolls. But in the book Kushina gave me, there was a method for storing data in up to three cells, divided into three states: positive (chakra present), negative (no chakra), and neutral (no chakra, but the cell used to have chakra - meaning it's empty now, but chakra has passed through it before).
Using this simple database of size three, you could create a subset of the same size. Then you'd have not three, but nine cells! So I tried making a subset of a subset of a subset, and it worked! I don't know how many times you could repeat that trick, but I managed to get 729 free cells by making a subset of a subset of a subset of my three-cell set.
And that many free cells was more than enough to write down all the products twice over.
So, on a single scroll, I ended up with a small database. Now the question was how to link that database to the client. There were no ports, no IP addresses, none of that OSI transport layer stuff. Then I remembered - explosive tags can be activated remotely somehow. Of course - chakra.
That could be the channel between the database and the main booklet. Using kanji, I drew a line to the edges of the first scroll, which would be the main booklet, and on the edges of the other scroll, the database, I wrote the receiving channels. I connected the two scrolls, sent chakra through, and voilà. I could transfer data between the two scrolls - but only if I pressed them right up against each other.
Heh, only now do I realize why that felt so familiar. Back in school, before mobile internet and Bluetooth, kids used to trade files with IR ports, pressing their old Sony Ericssons together. Luckily, I lived in the Bluetooth era, when you could send not just ringtones and pictures, but whole video clips and flash games.
So yeah, I spent the whole night building this thing, but by morning I realized I should've thought it through three times before diving in. I mean, I got it working. On one scroll, you write the price, press it to the database scroll, send chakra, and the price - or rather, the data in the cell - gets transferred and saved. Take a booklet made of chakra paper, with the back covered in kanji, hold it up to the database scroll, and voilà - the empty spots where the prices should be fill in with numbers pulled from the database.
Sounds complicated and clunky? Absolutely. That's why I never actually put the idea into practice. Where would I find cashiers who could even use basic chakra control? I sure wasn't going to do it myself. And hiring some dummy to periodically connect the booklets and send chakra to update the data… in the end, I decided to stick with simple booklets.
Let the store manager find someone to handle it, writing everything in by hand. Still, I have to admit, that late-night project did deepen my understanding of fuinjutsu, which was a nice bonus.
"Oh, this water is perfect."
I couldn't help but sigh with satisfaction. All my personal stuff fit into three storage scrolls, which I could safely leave in a reserved locker in the changing room. Nobody would steal them, and even if they did, there was only about twenty thousand ryo inside - not a huge loss if it disappeared for good.
The rest of my money, of course, was in my bank account. At this point, I had no choice but to trust my capital to a third party - the bank.
As luck would have it, today was a split-bathing day, and I had zero interest in staring at men, no matter what shape they were in, so I spent an hour soaking in the hot water with my eyes closed.
The second reason I didn't stay in Tanzaku another month was the start of the medical-nin course admissions. If I remembered right, applications would open at the start of next week and run for five days - so in two days, I could apply. The course was free, and I bet there'd be a flood of people wanting to become medical-nin, since they made really good money by local standards.
Of course, by the end of the course, only two or three people would actually become medical-nin, but that didn't bother anyone - everyone thought they were special and would be the lucky one.
The only thing that bugged me was that the course lasted just three months. I mean, sure, if you pass, you only become a junior medical-nin, who can barely heal scratches and only as an assistant while you get experience, but still, three months is way too short! In that time, you'd be lucky to get through three or four medical books, which is less than half of what a med student covers in a year.
Does chakra healing really not require deep knowledge of human anatomy? Is that it? *I really should've asked Hayana more about this during our massage sessions, instead of just trying to make her laugh with jokes and stories.* By the way, I'll need to get back to my training and visits to Hayana's office.
Now that I don't have to worry about money - with just one McDonald's I could live well, and with two, plus the shopping center that my assistants should have sorted out by the end of the month, my pockets are about to get a lot heavier. No need to rush anymore. If something happens to Konoha, it's no big deal - most of my assets are in Tanzaku, so it's time to focus on my own development.
****
Aika was scratching at the hotel floor with fierce determination, convinced there was something interesting hiding between the floorboards. No matter how hard she tried, her claws didn't even leave a mark.
*This female, with the bags of meat under her neck, has a really sturdy den* Aika thought, but her fox instincts were stronger than reason.
"Aika, there's nothing there. Stop scratching - I've already had to redo the floor's fuin seals twice this week."
Kushina was either complaining or laughing as she watched the fox's intense efforts.
*No, I'm sure there's something there. Otherwise, you wouldn't be working so hard to protect this ground* Aika thought, but after a few more minutes, she suddenly stopped and lifted her snout. Her dark nose and whiskers twitched a few times.
*That scent… master!*
Aika bolted for the front door, yipping with joy. In the past month, she'd grown a bit and put on a few kilos, and her bark had gotten a little sharper.
*No mistake - that's master's scent*
Aika scratched at the door, desperate to leave this female's den and leap into her master's arms.
Akira had never tried to train Aika, but with her smarts, he didn't need to. She was clever enough to know her master only wanted the best for her. For Aika, he was the first being - besides her mother and brother - who cared for her. Living with him, Aika realized she could eat as much as she wanted, sleep as much as she wanted, and for her, nothing was more precious.
Plus, her master's pets were the best, especially behind the ears and under the chin. The scent was getting stronger - Aika knew her master was coming.
"Aika, what are you doing? Want to go for a walk?"
Kushina got up lazily from the living room couch, heading for the door, but stopped when she heard a knock.
Judging by Aika's behavior, it wasn't hard for Kushina to guess who was at the door, so she quickly ran to her room to check if she looked presentable.
The door opened, and before Akira could say a word, Aika leapt into his arms - or tried to, anyway. She didn't quite have the strength, but Akira caught her and lifted her up.
"Yip-yip!"
Aika barked, gently nibbling his hands and licking them.
*Master, I missed you. I don't like your female's food. She won't let me sleep in the softest spot. She rubs my belly, and I don't like that*
Aika kept complaining, yipping and purring with happiness.
"Haha, I missed you too, beautiful."
Holding Aika like a child, Akira smiled and scratched her under the chin.
*Hm, that scent… is this female with the balls having another heat?*
Aika shot a quick glance at Kushina, who was smiling at them.