Early morning.
A rare ray of sunlight pierced through the long-lingering mist above Kirigakure and fell upon the shinobi village hidden deep within the mountains.
Kazumi Kaguya, who had been tormented all night by her six-month-old son, yawned and walked sleepily into the kitchen.
She prepared to choose some ingredients she liked from the food stocked at home and make a hearty breakfast to reward herself.
While she relied on muscle memory to chop ingredients with a steady thunk, thunk, thunk, thunk, thinking about what she should do after breakfast, a voice that absolutely should not have appeared at this time came from outside the kitchen.
"Huh, Sister Kazumi, you're already making breakfast? Can you make me a portion too? Same as yours is fine. I'm not picky."
"Rei… Kaguya?"
Kazumi Kaguya turned her head in utter confusion.
She looked at her younger brother, Rei Kaguya, who was greeting her from outside the kitchen. Then she looked at today's calendar.
After thinking seriously for a while, she stormed over to Rei Kaguya, who had calmly sat down at the dining table waiting for breakfast, and loudly asked,
"Why are you here!? Didn't you say you were leaving the village to carry out a mission?"
"Uwaa, can you lower your voice a little, Sister Kazumi?"
Rei Kaguya had prepared in advance and covered his ears. Only after Kazumi Kaguya's mouth stopped opening and closing did he lower his hands and roll his eyes.
"What do you mean, why am I home? The mission is over. If I'm not home, where should I be?"
"Hah!? It's only been a little over three days since you left for your mission, right!? You completed it that quickly?"
"What else? I already returned last night and reported to Lord Third. The new mission still needs some time for people to gather relevant intelligence, so I came home to sleep…
"What? Do you hate me freeloading your breakfast that much, Sister Kazumi?"
"So it really was a mission with no difficulty?"
Kazumi Kaguya's mood instantly became depressed and downcast.
"I thought that when you said you were going out to do a simple little mission that day, you were just casually brushing me off. In the end, it really was just some little mission that could be completed in three days, round trip?"
"…Mm. It really was only a little mission with a tiny bit of influence."
Rei Kaguya poured himself a cup of hot tea. While taking small sips, he calmly answered Kazumi Kaguya's question.
"You… Sigh, forget it. I can't convince you anyway. As long as you don't think you're wasting your own time, that's fine."
After staring at this genius younger brother, who had been used by their parents to lecture her since childhood, for quite some time, Kazumi Kaguya seemed to accept her fate and swallowed back everything she wanted to say.
Shaking her head, she returned to the kitchen and continued preparing breakfast for the two of them while sighing.
Toward his sister's unconcealed disappointment and expression of frustration at his failure to meet expectations, Rei Kaguya expressed that his emotions were extremely stable.
After all, she was his sister who had watched him grow up, and her own talent in the shinobi profession was mediocre. It was only natural that she would place the ninja dreams she had failed to fulfill on this extraordinarily talented younger brother of hers.
When it was inconvenient to reveal the details of his mission to her, he might as well let her nag a little.
Who told his schedule to be so unbelievable that no one would believe he had just returned from a large-scale war mission?
…
After finishing a rich and delicious breakfast, Rei Kaguya did not give his sister another chance to grab him and "educate" him.
After leaving home, he went straight to Kirigakure's central district.
Because he had the biscuit recipe that could quickly restore injuries and chakra, Rei Kaguya naturally wanted to figure out as soon as possible just how large the market for the ordinary version of the biscuits was.
After spending the entire morning conducting research, Rei Kaguya arrived at a rather shocking conclusion.
If a profit of three hundred percent could make capitalists sell the rope meant to hang themselves, then the profits from selling biscuits should be enough to make him willingly, even cheerfully, become the biggest and brightest ornament hanging from Kirigakure's streetlamp.
The profit inside was simply too great.
So great that even a long-standing Kekkei Genkai clan like the Kaguya clan was not qualified to monopolize this business.
After all, in the current era, even in Konoha, where medical ninjutsu was the most advanced, the only medical-nin who could perform battlefield emergency treatment on dying wounded under enemy attacks and preserve their lives was Tsunade of the Sannin.
As for other medical-nin, forget performing emergency treatment under attack. If they could protect themselves, avoid being captured as hostages by the enemy, arrive in time after the battle ended, and treat their injured comrades, they already counted as outstanding among medical-nin.
A supply item like the biscuits, convenient to carry and use while also possessing a rather powerful battlefield life-preserving effect and recovery effect, could be described as equivalent to carrying a one-time-use, weakened, mini youthful version of Tsunade.
There was not much wrong with that.
Who could refuse a delicious biscuit that could temporarily lock down their nearly empty health bar and also give them a chance to counter-kill from a desperate situation?
Rei Kaguya, who had originally planned to use the opportunity of Kirigakure declaring war on Konoha to promote his product and earn a proper fortune from war, silently gave up on that idea after finishing his market research.
Better to wait until he became Mizukage before considering the expansion and promotion of the biscuit industry.
Otherwise, just the issue of supply shares and order priority among Kirigakure's major clans would be enough to trigger a small internal conflict in Kirigakure.
After Rei Kaguya finished his market research and casually found a shop selling three-colored dango to sit down and rest, he heard another very familiar voice say almost the same thing Kazumi Kaguya had said earlier.
"Rei… Kaguya!? Why are you here?"
"Is every person who knows me going to ask that after seeing me today?"
Rei Kaguya sighed.
Holding a warm dango in his hand, he stood up and turned toward Mei Terumi, who happened to pass by in casual clothes and was pointing at him with a stunned expression.
He gestured with his mouth and said,
"I know you're curious, but we'd better change places to talk… As for the reason, you should understand."
"All right."
The graceful brown-haired girl looked at Rei Kaguya, whose expression showed nothing unusual and whose body bore no visible injuries, then slowly nodded.
As the person who had delivered the mission scroll to Rei Kaguya, Mei Terumi did not know the specific contents of the mission.
However, judging by the facts that the mission had been personally issued by the Third Mizukage, and that he had specifically named Rei Kaguya, the monster, to carry it out, there was no way it could have been a simple commission that needed less than three days to complete.
But now, Rei Kaguya, who should have been outside carrying out a mission, was sitting comfortably in a village shop eating food as if he had never received that mission at all.
She knew she should obey the rules of shinobi and not investigate detailed intelligence and secrets regarding missions that had nothing to do with her.
But the emotion known as curiosity kept scratching at her heart every moment, urging her to ask Rei Kaguya about the things she should not know.