Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

"How was your walk, Mr Earl?" Komako called as I came in. She was in the other room and I could hear the water running, so she was probably doing dishes. A brilliant deduction that was well supported by the sound of water gushing from the kitchen seal.

"Really good," I called back. "Perfect weather, flowers are coming up. It made me feel good. Not great, but not bad or nothing. Hadn't realized I'd missed that."

Hang on...that was probably bad, right?

"Excellent!" she called, making me smile slightly. It had taken me four years to convince her that she didn't need to be kneeling seiza at the door when I came in. The fact that now she was shouting from the next room was an odd little delight.

The running water sound from the kitchen shut off and Komako came in with a smile on her face and a plate in her hands.

Komako was an older woman, maybe sixty or sixty five. She had a smiling dumpling of a face and a stout body that I knew packed a surprising amount of muscle under the padding. One time, on her day off, I'd happened to see her carrying a bundle of sticks bigger than herself through the streets. I'd run after her to ask what she was doing and if she needed help. She looked at me like she couldn't believe the question and told me that it was for the fire at her home, so she could cook and keep warm, and no, I couldn't help because she had it. I immediately went home and researched a heat-emitting seal with a pressure-activation trigger so that she and other civilians could use it.

"What's this?" I asked, gesturing to the plate.

"Is lasagna!" she said proudly. "You always say you miss lasagna, so I made you some. Is it right?"

I looked at the contents of the pan. Wide noodles, check. Moist, crumbly cheese that was the closest thing to ricotta that could be found in the markets of Leaf. No red sauce, because tomatoes didn't exist here. Vegetables, none of them anything that belonged in an Italian flavor palette. Strips of beef teriyaki in between the noodles. It was almost, but not completely, unlike lasagna and I didn't care.

"It's wonderful," I said, smiling and taking the plate. "Thank you, Komako."

"You are welcome! And look! Fork!" She held out a carved wooden bident the length of my hand.

I took the fork and stabbed it into the not-lasagna, managing to chop a bite out with the side of the device and get it into my mouth without too much splatter. Weird and unlasagna-like it may have been, but it was delicious.

"Thank you again," I said twenty seconds later, after shoveling the whole slice into my face. "That was amazing."

"You are welcome! Now, you take a quick bath and then meet your friends, yes?"

"That sounds like a good plan," I said, nodding firmly. "I've got it from here. You can take the rest of the day off."

"I have not beaten the rugs yet," she objected. "They are very dirty!"

"They're brand new," I told her, rolling my eyes. "Like, literally. I bought them last week." I waved my hands in a shooing gesture. "Go on. Go home. Go fuss over your kids instead of me."

"It is not fussing!" she said. "I am your housekeeper. What would people think if they came into your house and saw dirty rugs? They would think I was lazy! No one would hire me."

I pressed a thumb into my forehead for a moment. "Komako," I said patiently, "I know for a fact that you have more than five million ryō in the bank. Do you know why I know this?"

"Because you are a nosy man who sticks his big beaky nose into other people's business?"

A laugh burst out of me. This from the overly proper, constantly bowing, nigh-mute woman I had met just over four years ago?

"No, Komako. I know that you have this money because, first, I am the president of the bank and I do periodic audits of all accounts to ensure that the staff have been accurate, that there's been no embezzlement, and that we have sufficient reserves on hand to pay any withdrawals."

She sniffed. "See? Nosy."

"Second, I know this because I gave you one million of it when you first started working for me and the rest of it is the wages I've paid you since then. Of which, apparently, you have never spent a dime."

"What's a dime, Mister Earl?"

"A ryō, whatever." A spike of homesickness hit me and my stomach cramped up as I thought about all the work I hadn't been doing on the go-home seal. Val was going to catch me out on that at some point.

"Well of course I don't spend your money, Mister Earl. It is your money!"

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Komako. You needing money to live on is why I pay you. You know, wages? You use them to buy food?"

"Ohhh, psh," she said, waving dismissively. "You pay me with all your seals! I have running water! Me!" She pointed at her face. "In my enormous palace of an apartment, water comes out when I want it to, no need to go to the pump! Hot or cold, whichever I like. I keep my food in storage seals so it is always good. The neighborhood boys, they never get fresh with Eriko or pick on Hidemi."

Guilt made a cameo at the back of my mind. When I first heard about the 'neighborhood boys' (a euphemism for a gang of teen- and twenty-something young men) hassling Komako's family, I hadn't taken it well. I went down there to tell them to lay off, thinking that my notoriety would be enough, that I could stop the harassment simply by stating that I had extended the aegis of my protection over the victims.

As if that mattered.

I had found the gang leader and some of his 'boys' in the market, shaking down a fruit vendor. I had, stupidly, marched up to the leader with my soul filled with righteous fury and my mouth filled with righteous words as I told him to stand down. I forgot to leave him an out, a way to save face. He cursed at me, pulled a knife, and was immediately killed by six ANBU agents who melted out of the shadows. None of us had realized they were there; when I asked Hiruzen about it later he simply raised one grey eyebrow and said that yes, obviously I had a bodyguard following me at all times.

"Komako," I said, striving for patience. "It is your account. I set that account up specifically so that you would have money. I put the money in that account every week for you to use. It's your money."

"It's your money, Mister Earl."

"It's my money until I give it to you," I said, my teeth starting to grit. This wasn't the first time we'd had this conversation. "And then I give it to you, as wages, because you cook me lasagna and do my dishes and my laundry and all that. It's your money, Komako. You should be using it."

"Psh. It's your money, Mister Earl."

I pressed on my forehead again. "Okay, I get that bank accounts are unfamiliar. What about the money that I sent to your house? It was a literal bag of ryō. Nice, solid, familiar coins. The messenger told me that he put it in your hands and explicitly told you that it was your wages from me. Is that somehow my money too?"

"Oh, you mean that young man who was so confused that he went to the wrong house? I got him straightened out and had him bring your money here."

I took a breath and let it out slowly. We had done this dance before and I didn't have any new steps to try. If I gave her physical ryō, they got 'accidentally' left on the table when she went home. If I sent it to her house, she acted confused and sent it back. For whatever reason, she had decided to be my housekeeper without accepting coin in payment. She was okay with accepting seals and other in-kind payment from me (weird), so I had gotten a better apartment in a nicer neighborhood for her, her daughter, granddaughter, grandson-in-law, and two great-grandkids. I had fully upgraded the place with water-producing seals, an indoor shower, mild heating seals for warmth and intense ones for cooking, plus various other things necessary to bring it to something close to a twenty-first-century lifestyle.

"Fine," I said. "I'm going to grab that bath, then head out. You should head out, but I'm not going to twist your arm."

She looked down at her arms, then looked at mine. "Twiggy arms like that, Mister Earl? You had better not try!"

---

Author's Note: There was supposed to be another scene after this, one in which Val and Earl and Oli all have lunch to commemorate the sixth anniversary of Phil not showing up. I'm running short on time and energy so I'm going to post this now and call it good. It's a bit of a nothingburger but at least it's a thing.

I see that my April Fool's of 'closing' voting after @Velorien said it was open until Wednesday didn't work because people didn't keep voting. In retrospect, it was poorly executed; I should have made the 'voting is closed' declaration different somehow. Eh, whatevs. Next year I'll do something better.

Vote time! What to do now?

Voting ends on Wednesday, Mar 5, 2022 at 7:00 AM .