A few days later, after several long months away, Yubi finally returned to Sunagakure.
The moment he saw the village rising from the rocks and yellow sand, he felt a strange sense of unreality, as though he had stepped out of one world and back into another. Life and death had become so constant at the border that even the sight of home now seemed distant and vaguely dreamlike.
Sunagakure looked nothing like Konoha. Its buildings were shaped by the harsh land itself - stone, sand, arches, domes, and layered structures built to endure the wind. Very few wooden houses could be seen here. Most of the roofs were rounded, and the roads beneath his feet were rough dirt and uneven stone, practical rather than elegant.
In terms of prosperity, it could not compare to the Leaf. Still, the village spread across a considerable area, and in quieter years it would not have looked so bleak.
But this was wartime.
The Second Shinobi World War had drained the village nearly dry. Ninjas had been mobilized in wave after wave, and the casualty rate had been severe. That reality had spilled over into civilian life as well. The streets were sparse, the shops were quiet, and an air of fatigue hung over the village like a layer of dust that no wind could blow away.
As Yubi walked through the streets, glancing at the nearly empty storefronts on either side, he could not help sighing inwardly. "It's already gotten this bad... and they still want to keep fighting?"
The higher-ups could not possibly be blind to what this war had done. Sunagakure's military reserves had been heavily depleted. Trade had been damaged. The economy had clearly taken a brutal hit. And even so, the village still refused to let go of its conflict with Konoha.
To Yubi, that was not courage. It was stupidity.
Hanzo's situation in the Land of Rain was different. The man had no choice but to fight. He lived in a country surrounded by larger powers, and if he did not strike first, he would only become prey. Hanzo was gambling with everything to expand his room to breathe. He had little left to lose.
But Sunagakure was not the Land of Rain. It was one of the Five Great Ninja Villages. It had territory, prestige, and a foundation worth preserving. Charging forward recklessly under those circumstances was not boldness - it was the fastest road to hollowing out the entire village.
And Hanzo, for all his ruthlessness, was not a fool. Once he realized that continuing the fight offered no real path to victory, he withdrew cleanly. He knew when to stop.
Sunagakure, meanwhile, remained locked in a bitter struggle with Konoha.
If it kept going like this, the village's very roots would be damaged beyond repair.
Of course, Yubi understood all of this clearly, yet he also understood something even more important: at the moment, his understanding meant almost nothing. He was still only a genin. A low-ranking child. Even if he knew the future course of Sunagakure's decline, he had no power to change it yet.
As he continued down the road, a shopkeeper noticed him and brightened a little. "Yubi... you're back."
Yubi turned and saw the familiar bean cake shop. He and a few classmates had often come here after school back when they were still students at the academy.
"Yeah," he replied with a smile and a small nod.
That smile from the shopkeeper stood out sharply in his eyes. It was probably one of the few genuinely cheerful expressions he had seen since entering the village. The man was an ordinary civilian. No shinobi in his family. No one dragged directly into the meat grinder of war.
Most of the others Yubi had passed wore some version of the same weary, dim expression.
After that, he went to submit his mission report and receive his compensation.
The mission he had originally taken was supposed to be only a C-rank patrol assignment. But because Amegakure had suddenly launched a large-scale operation, the village upgraded its rank to B. As for the later raid missions he carried out with Arai and Sasori, those were judged to be A-rank.
Even though that second mission had been arranged personally by Arai, the village still officially acknowledged it.
Which meant that Yubi had now become the second genin in the village, after Sasori, to complete an A-rank mission at such a young age.
That was an impressive title.
The reward, on the other hand, was another story.
A normal C-rank mission in one of the great villages usually paid between thirty thousand and one hundred thousand ryo, depending on difficulty. That was the total amount. If one person completed it, they took all of it. If it was a team mission, the money was divided among the participants.
Yubi's original patrol mission had been shared by three people. Even after it was raised to B-rank, he received only one-third of the payout. In the end, his share was a mere twenty thousand ryo. Even tripled, it still would not have reached the minimum standard for a proper B-rank reward.
The later A-rank mission paid him forty thousand.
Altogether, from one B-rank mission and one A-rank mission, he earned sixty thousand ryo.
If one ignored the danger and the actual scale of the work, the payment had clearly been calculated at the absolute minimum, and even then it still fell short. The meaning was obvious enough. Sunagakure was running out of money.
Even so, sixty thousand ryo was still an enormous sum to Yubi personally.
He was a war orphan now. Both his parents had been shinobi who died for the village, and because of that, he received a monthly subsidy from Sunagakure. It was not much, but it was enough for him to survive.
For an ordinary child, a few hundred ryo was enough to spend freely along an entire commercial street. But the spending habits of shinobi were different. Ninja tools, medicine, training supplies, soldier pills, explosive tags, kunai - those things consumed money frighteningly fast.
The village issued basic supplies, yes, but that amount was never enough for actual battlefield survival. Any shinobi who wanted a better chance of staying alive had to prepare extra resources in private, and that meant paying for them personally.
In this world, war materials and ninja tools were genuine luxury goods.
Since his parents' deaths, Yubi had been saving bit by bit. After years of careful living, he had only just managed to scrape together a little over ten thousand ryo. Now a single mission had earned him far more than that. It was enough to make anyone understand how quickly the shinobi profession could generate money.
Of course, the faster a shinobi earned, the faster a shinobi also spent.
And for the truly powerful, tens of thousands of ryo was little more than pocket change. Only someone like Yubi, still new to the system, would see it as a huge windfall.
Once the mission report was complete, Yubi followed Arai toward the most conspicuous structure in the village - the towering sand-colored building where the Third Kazekage worked.
Sasori did not come with them. The moment he submitted his own report, he immediately took on another mission and left again, as if remaining in the village for even a moment longer would suffocate him.
It was obvious that he did not want to go home.
Yubi noticed it, but said nothing.
Soon, Arai led him through the guards and into the building. After crossing several corridors, they stopped outside the Kazekage's office and knocked.
"Come in."
The familiar voice sounded from inside.
Arai entered first. Yubi followed after him.
The moment he stepped into the office, Yubi realized this was not just a simple audience with the Third Kazekage. Besides the Kazekage himself, there were several other high-ranking figures present. Granny Chiyo was there. So was Ebizo. There were also two unfamiliar elders whose clothes and bearing made it obvious that they held significant authority within the village.
All of them wore the long robes favored in the Land of Wind, garments suited to keeping out heat, wind, and sand.
"Sasori... left again," Arai said after paying his respects, glancing toward Chiyo as he did.
A shadow passed through Chiyo's eyes at once.
Then one of the others looked at Yubi with obvious interest. "So this is the child you were talking about?"
Several gazes settled on him at once, measuring, curious, and sharp.
The Third Kazekage, who still carried that stern and serious expression, let the corners of his mouth lift slightly. "It's only been a few months, but you've changed quite a bit."
"Even if he did not act entirely alone, a child this young participating in an A-rank mission is still extraordinary," Chiyo added. "Arai's evaluation of him is very high. That alone says enough about the boy's talent."
Despite facing so many important people at once, Yubi showed no visible nervousness. He simply smiled politely in response to their praise.
He knew exactly why Arai had brought him here.
The Third Kazekage leaned back slightly and spoke without wasting time. "All right. Yubi, show us the ninjutsu you created. We want to see it for ourselves."
He paused, then continued in a tone that was still calm, but clearly serious. "And explain your thinking in detail. How you conceived it. What inspired it. Most importantly, how you use hand seals and chakra control to produce the effect."
"Creating a new ninjutsu is not a simple matter," he went on. "Having an idea is one thing. Turning that idea into a functioning technique - combining chakra flow, control, hand seals, and execution into a complete system - is something else entirely. To be honest, that is not something a genin should be able to do. Even for me, creating an A-rank technique in a short span of time would not be easy. When Arai sent his report, I found it difficult to believe."
Do you understand what that means? the unspoken part of his words seemed to ask.
Yubi's heart gave a small jump, but outwardly he remained calm. Grinning, he replied, "Actually, the process was a little difficult... but overall, I think it wasn't too bad."
As he said that, he reached into his waist pouch and took out a coil of fine wire.
Those words made the expressions of everyone in the room shift.
Not too bad?
Did this brat even understand what he was saying?
Creating a ninjutsu required an extremely deep understanding of ninjutsu as a whole - not one specific technique, but the fundamental principles behind the art itself. It required knowledge, accumulation, and repeated experience. The clearest example of that kind of mastery was Sarutobi Hiruzen of Konoha, the so-called Professor of Ninjutsu, a man famous for his command of countless techniques.
And yet the child standing before them was a medical ninja who had learned only academy basics and a few scattered things beyond them. Even if his parents had left him some guidance before they died, it should not have amounted to this.
After all, Yubi's parents had only been chunin.
When Yubi had learned the Healing Palm Technique during his internship at the hospital, the Third Kazekage and the others could still force themselves to accept it as the product of monstrous medical talent. But creating a new A-rank ninjutsu? That crossed into something else entirely.
It was monstrous in the truest sense.
And the worst part was that he was still not even ten years old.