Chapter 313: Whose Pig Got Lost
Konoha Year 54, January 1st.
Land of Whirlpools, Ichiraku Ramen branch.
"Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat..."
From the kitchen, the continuous sound of chopping vegetables rang out. Kimimaro stood before the cutting board, his right hand moving as a blur, mincing the meat finer than fine.
Outside the kitchen, Masahiko, Sara, and Haku sat around a table. They were... making dumplings.
Speaking of which, Masahiko originally intended to spend the New Year with his daughter. But then he remembered that Kimimaro and Haku were both far from home with no relatives in the Land of Whirlpools, so he brought the two children along too; more people meant a livelier atmosphere.
As for Karin, she wanted to come, but Masahiko didn't allow it, telling her to stay with her parents.
Eating ramen on the New Year didn't seem quite appropriate. After a quick check of the ingredients in the ramen shop, Masahiko suggested making dumplings.
After roughly describing how to wrap dumplings to Sara, who dealt with flour all day and completely grasped the concept immediately, she then taught Haku and Kimimaro. And then... Haku successfully picked it up, while Kimimaro was punished by being sent to chop the filling.
Crack!
A different sound suddenly came from the kitchen. Masahiko shook his head helplessly and formed hand seals: "Wood Release: Cutting Board Jutsu!"
A wooden cutting board took shape before Masahiko's eyes. Picking it up, he walked into the kitchen and replaced the shattered cutting board under Kimimaro's deeply ashamed gaze... This was already the sixth one.
Of course, this couldn't be entirely blamed on Kimimaro; the kitchen knife in his hand had a much grander origin... It was a divine artifact named the 40-Meter Machete.
Integrating training into daily life, it would be hard for Kimimaro not to improve.
Glancing at the minced meat on the shattered cutting board, Masahiko hooked his pinky finger, and the minced meat flew into a prepared basin, which he then carried out.
"Kimimaro, continue. This time, chop mutton!"
"Yes! God!"
Outside the kitchen, Sara frowned. "Father, we don't need this much, do we? What we have now is enough for us to eat for a week."
On another table nearby, five to six hundred dumplings were already densely arranged.
Sara and Haku's ninja skills weren't considered high, but their hand speed was still much faster than ordinary people. Coupled with Masahiko's help, they had made this many in less than two hours.
"If we can't finish them, we'll give some away. Kushina and the others haven't eaten this before either."
Sara smiled bitterly. "Even then, we won't finish them."
"It's fine. You're forgetting a big eater." Masahiko smiled somewhat mysteriously.
Sara was startled, then smiled. "Ah, if you hadn't mentioned it, I would have almost forgotten about Little White."
Haku put on an 'attractive boy question mark face' and looked up at Masahiko and Sara.
Masahiko almost laughed out loud. "Sara, I told you to call it Fat Cat, not Little White. Now that Haku (Note: Haku means White) is here, you really can't call it that anymore."
Sara also realized and spoke to Haku: "Little White is a cat my father and I used to keep, a white cat, so it shares your name... Ah, no, that's not what I meant."
Haku smiled. "It's fine, Big Sister Sara. A white cat..."
Masahiko had originally planned to let everyone eat their fill before calling that fat cat, but seeing Haku so interested in it, he directly bit his finger: Summoning Jutsu!
For some reason, the Summoning Jutsu was delayed for over ten seconds before an unidentified white spherical object appeared before the three of them. Haku hesitated for a long time before tentatively asking, "Is this... a cat?"
"Meow~ Why interrupt this cat's feast?"
Masahiko's face darkened: "Whose pig got lost? Go away, where is my fat cat?"
...
Time rewound to two minutes ago.
Konoha Village, Tenten's house.
Unlike when Masahiko visited two months ago, the overall decoration of Tenten's house had completely changed.
It wasn't that the fat cat had eaten them into poverty, but that Tenten's family had struck it rich.
Ever since adopting the fat cat, business at Tenten's family blacksmith shop had gotten better and better... They had even become one of the 'designated merchants' supplying the war frontlines. In two months, the family's assets had quadrupled.
Of course, all of this was arranged by Hiruzen. Elder Masahiko's pet was boarded at Tenten's house, and this pet was an exceptionally big eater; they couldn't possibly let it go hungry... As Hokage, he could still decide where to buy weapons.
Tenten's family didn't know the reason, but the fat cat could roughly guess. So after it said, 'Meow~ Your family should thank this cat for getting rich', it was worshipped as a fortune cat, and now it had eaten itself into this state.
The food was normally good enough, not to mention during the New Year festival. Tenten's father spent heavily to hire two chefs specifically to cook for the fat cat.
"Chubby kitty, eat this first." Tenten's nickname for it hadn't changed. She walked towards it carrying a plate of fish.
The fat cat licked its lips. Just as it opened its large mouth, it felt the pulling force of the Summoning Jutsu.
"Meow?"
The fish was right in front of its eyes. For a foodie, looking at food but not being able to eat it was the greatest punishment. It stubbornly resisted Masahiko's summoning power for over ten seconds, finally managing to take a bite.
"Chubby kitty, what's wrong?" Tenten looked bewildered. The fat cat, who usually wished it could swallow everything in one bite, only took a small bite, and it looked as if it took a great deal of effort.
"Is the chef Father hired really bad at cooking?"
"Meow!" The fat cat let out a miserable scream. "This cat will definitely be back!"
"Chubby kitty?..."
...
And then came the scene currently unfolding before Masahiko's eyes.
"I don't have a cat as degenerate as you." Masahiko looked heartbroken, pinching the fat cat's scruff and lifting it up.
"You must weigh nearly a hundred catties by now, right? Hurry up and change your size back!"
"Meow~" The fat cat's feline face still showed some reluctance, then like a deflating balloon, it slowly shrank back to its original thirty-catty appearance.
Since becoming the Two-Tails cat jinchuriki, it was no longer a complete cat.
Its current body was formed half of flesh and half of chakra. It could freely control its size to shrink... but heaven knows why it insisted on being a fatty all the time.
"This cat worked so hard to eat its way to that weight!"
"What do you need to be so heavy for?" Masahiko didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He pointed at Haku. "Come here, there's a little 'Big Sister' here who likes you."
The fat cat sniffed, its feline face showing human-like disdain. "Can you no longer tell boys from girls?"
Then it wiggled its chubby body, jumped into Sara's arms, and purred contentedly as it was petted.
Masahiko sighed. He couldn't shake the feeling that after two months unseen, the fat cat had become a useless cat.
"Speaking of which, fat cat, how are you getting along with Tenten?"
"Meow~ She carries this cat on her back to school every day. She's made a lot of progress," the fat cat answered irrelevantly.
Masahiko was startled. "Carries you on her back? She could carry you when you looked like that earlier? By the way, you aren't willingly degenerating just to act as a training weight, are you?"
The fat cat's face was full of guilt. "Meow~ Of course she could carry me. This cat already said she's made a lot of progress."
It was also feeling helpless. Tenten had accidentally drank its blood; if she didn't train more, her body probably wouldn't be able to handle such powerful nourishment.
Masahiko smiled and cast a sidelong glance at it, knowing there must be something he didn't know going on.
"Just keep acting up, little ancestor. Your servant will boil some dumplings for you to eat..."
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