Meanwhile, back at the shop, Ryusei steadied himself after a few seconds.

The anger faded, leaving only pity, and the recognition that his little scheme had failed.

“It seems I underestimated some people of this world,” he thought.

“In the original story, they looked so simple, even gullible. But in reality, who could afford to be that kind of person in a place like this? This isn’t some fantasy anymore. This is a real world, with real consequences. A good reminder.”

The truth was, he had barely considered the possibility they’d refuse him.

In the source he remembered, Kushina was a loyal, hotheaded fool, and Minato an idealistic genius too blinded by his own dreams. How could people like that be hard to manipulate?

Take Kushina. She came from the Uzumaki, a clan supposedly just minding their own business with sealing arts and living long lives.

Yet the other four great nations had joined hands to crush them. Why?

Because Konoha had probably dragged them into the spotlight, likely using the Uzumaki’s sealing techniques for their wars and making them into “allies.”

And when the retaliation came, what did Konoha do for its ally? Nothing. They wore their emblem on the flak jackets, but when the village burned, and it ‘got real’, no help arrived.

Even worse, Kushina herself never questioned it.

She stayed loyal to the very village that let her clan die, never even asking permission before they shoved the Nine Tails into her.

And she still carried that same blind devotion to her grave.

And Minato? No less foolish.

When Obito unleashed the Nine-Tails, who ended up giving their life?

The young Hokage, in his prime, with infinite potential ahead of him.

Not Hiruzen, the old man with one foot already in the grave, who somehow still managed to seize command of the defense like the position had never left him, so he couldn’t claim ignorance of the situation.

And when the dust settled, he slid right back into that comfortable Hokage’s chair, at first only ‘temporarily’, to ‘stabilize the situation’, yet stayed there for more than a decade, as if nothing had happened, once the heat from his failing previous war had cooled over time. 

Looking back, Minato might never even have held any real authority, as the so-called Hokage, at all, and was just a puppet front while Hiruzen kept the reins.

The hypocrisy was obvious. Hiruzen also knew the Reaper Death Seal.

Unlike Minato, his time had already been spent.

Yet he stood by and let the younger man sacrifice everything, then reclaimed the hat for himself.

Smoothly done, perhaps. But honest? Never.

The perfect example of the so-called “Will of Fire.”

The irony only cut deeper when Ryusei thought of Naruto.

A boy despised and treated like filth his whole life, yet still smiling, still chasing the approval of those who spat on him, solely because of that Asura reincarnation, or something else, but definitely something, since such a behavior defied literally all common sense entirely.

A soul too forgiving, too absurdly pure, to ever break. Almost comical.

The only reason he didn’t turn into a rampaging killer was because of that same reincarnation.

And all of it traced back to Minato’s foolishness.

He sealed himself away, leaving his son to be a weapon for the village, trading both his own life and Naruto’s future for Konoha’s comfort – just so they could continue having their ‘nuclear weapon’.

However, what actually made them look like the biggest fools in Ryusei’s eyes wasn’t all of that. It actually had to do with the beginning of them becoming a “thing”.

It was the fact that neither of them ever questioned the circumstances of their own so-called “fairy tale” meeting.

Seriously, how on earth could Kumo shinobi stroll into Konoha and casually steal their most important ‘nuclear vessel’, like they were out for groceries? Logistically, it made no sense.

No Hyuga scouts noticed, patrols stopped them, no barrier triggered, no Uchiha police raised a brow, no Anbu first-responders sent.

Both when they went inside, but also actually left the village with the frigging Jinchūriki?

And if they’d been some Elite Jonin, maybe, maybe, it would’ve all been more believable.

But fodder that even a genin, Minato, wiped out without breaking a sweat? No joke? Please.

The whole thing screamed setup. Their “hero rescues the damsel in distress” moment was obviously staged by Hiruzen and Danzo (?) from beginning to end.

And why? Because it tied both of them down exactly where the Hokage’s faction wanted them. Sure, keeping Minato and Kushina loyal to the village was one benefit, because they had each other now tied, but the real prize was binding them directly to Hiruzen’s faction.

Think about it. The Nine-Tails Jinchūriki plus the “once-in-a-generation genius.” Package deal. From that point on, if Minato wanted to romance Kushina, he’d have to obey like a trained dog. She wasn’t just “Kushina” – she was technically Konoha’s living weapon, no free will, no freedom to move, date, or even breathe without quiet approval from above.

And Kushina, by tying herself to Minato, got locked just as tightly into Hiruzen’s camp. The jinchūriki chained through affection to the Hokage’s golden boy, who was himself the shining future of the Third’s line, a grand-disciple raised to continue the “Will of Fire.”

It was efficient. It was cruel. And the fools never even realized their entire lives had been engineered for them.

In truth, that kind of engineering and monitoring probably started from a very young age for them. Take Kushina, for example.

She came from Uzushiogakure all alone, a foreign girl dropped into Konoha, and immediately “volunteered” to be the next Nine-Tails monster container.

Who was waiting to fill the holes in her heart, to brainwash her under the guise of “comfort,” in that situation, all while exploiting shared blood and ancestry?

None other than Mito Uzumaki, the First Hokage’s wife.

A woman who had long since abandoned her own clan and village, molding herself entirely into her husband’s shadow, ignoring their genocide, now leading Kushina onto the same path.

Not hard to imagine how she twisted Kushina from the start, convincing her that Konoha, the same village that swindled her clan into sending her over as the next jinchūriki, right before standing by while Uzushiogakure was erased from the map, was somehow her new “home,” her “family.” Classic brainwashing.

Then came the Academy. That’s where they engineered the Minato relationship into her life. From there, it was a done deal. Kushina would never betray, never even question the Leaf.

And Minato? His story wasn’t much different. People claimed Jiraiya “met” him while he was still in the Academy.

But really, how does a supposed civilian kid just stumble into the gaze of such an elite shinobi on top of the village pyramid, and one of the 3 Hokage’s only disciples?

The Academy barely even teaches ninjutsu; what was Minato supposed to “impress” him with, in that short amount of time, perfect eraser tosses?

More likely, someone had already been watching him, reporting to Hiruzen.

The Hokage saw promise, nudged Jiraiya over time, and suddenly the boy was branded as his “fated” disciple.

A neat trick to lock down a talent early for his own faction.

Then, upon graduation, Minato was given his squad, under Jiraiya, officially, alongside two disposable teammates, probably thrown in just for paperwork’s sake.

And now that Ryusei had lived through the Senju experience himself, he couldn’t help wondering.

Maybe Hiruzen had been monitoring every so-called “civilian” who carried traces of Senju blood after the clan was forced into mass assimilation, quietly watching to see which ones would stand out. And Minato just happened to be the brightest result of that hunt.

It made perfect sense. Those kids weren’t normal civilians at all; they were super-civilians, shinobi born with better blood and higher ceilings from the start.

If Ryusei had been in Hiruzen’s seat, he would’ve done the same.

Track them early, tie the most promising ones to your side, and you preserve your grip on power for decades.

And it worked. Hiruzen managed to remain the real Hokage even after stepping down, his hand on the strings the entire time.

Then, once Minato died, Hiruzen simply walked back in, presented as “the only choice left,” his shadow Hokage act complete.

If it had been him in their place, Ryusei felt he would’ve questioned something at some point if he’d been spoon-fed lies since childhood.

No, even the original owner would’ve noticed something eventually.

Sure, as a kid, you swallow what they tell you and don’t question people’s true nature.

But then you grow up. You get older, you pile on experiences, you meet all kinds of people.

And it still never crosses your mind to reevaluate any of it? If you were a bit sharper, at least, that is.

***

“So no,” Ryusei decided. “I never took Minato and Kushina seriously. I even pitied them a bit. Not in scheming, not in foresight, not in anything that really mattered besides strength.”

Yet now, Ryusei had to grudgingly raise his evaluation of the pair, but only slightly.

The credit wasn’t Minato’s anyway. It was Kushina who caught him, and that was no great intellectual feat.

It came down to her sensory ability.

Somehow, despite all his efforts to mask his state externally, despite even layering his own sensory perception and concealment tricks over himself, she still picked up on it.

“She’s a better sensor than me, plain and simple,” Ryusei admitted inwardly.

“She’s older by about eight years, and she’s clearly poured far more focus into sharpening that ability than I have. That’s why she saw through me a bit. She might even be the best sensor in the entire village right now.”

It wasn’t Minato’s supposed brilliance that exposed him. Kushina herself, in terms of raw intellect, wasn’t even ahead of him, judging from everything he had seen; his pure, fluid intelligence easily surpassed hers.

But instincts were another matter. Hers, at least, seemed sharper than Minato’s as well.

“Anyway, I already counted you as future enemies a long time ago… Too stupid for me to try and bring on my side…”, Ryusei thought with a grin.

“You’ll both end up dead in a few years anyway, cut down by your own student. Another shining display of Minato’s brilliance in human relations. Don’t expect me to shed a tear.”

“And tell me, are you really the only ones who can handle fuinjutsu? Don’t you, Minato, dream more than anything of becoming Hokage? Then let me back Orochimaru instead, let me propel him up. This time, you won’t even get the chance to be Hiruzen’s puppet, a fake Hokage who barely got to wear the hat. Orochimaru, my fuinjutsu helper, will take it instead, a real one.”

Minato would have died that night whether he was Hokage or not.

Obito’s attack on the village was inevitable and deeply personal, and Kushina’s childbirth gave him the perfect moment to unleash the Nine Tails, while the seal weakened, the most devastating way to strike.

As Kushina’s husband and Naruto’s father, Minato had no choice but to confront Obito and the beast, even if it cost him his life, even if he was not the Hokage.

If Obito also carried a grudge against him for failing to save Rin, that only made Minato’s title as Hokage even less relevant.

His death was sealed by circumstance, not by office.

For Ryusei, this meant not only letting Minato fall as he did in the original timeline, without interfering, while using the chaos to advance his own aims, but also shattering Minato’s one brief dream, removing even those fleeting years he wore the Hokage’s robes in name.

Additionally, if Ryusei already saw them as enemies, then how shameless was it to ask their favor just now?

The answer was simple.

There’s no such thing as shame when survival and ambition are on the line.

A clever man once said, keep your friends close, but enemies closer.

And what greater satisfaction could there be for a narrow-eyed villain than to let his enemies cheerfully help him rise, never suspecting, lurking beside, until one day everything they built is taken from them by his own hand?

Orochimaru, though, was a far trickier customer than those two wide-eyed rookies.

Ryusei still didn’t know if the man would act as expected, or if his own chips would even be enough to earn him a seat at the table.

Time would answer that.

But, there were also other things besides fuinjutsu he wanted, also areas where they might even work together, if Orochimaru recognized his worth.

But Ryusei wasn’t about to hang his neck on that tree just yet. He just saw how that went.

The shop door creaked as the owner returned from the back, his arms full of scrolls, papers, and small ink jars. He placed them on the counter carefully, arranging each one as though presenting a treasure.

“I chose the ones I thought would suit you best,” he said, his voice softer now. He paused, then sighed. “About before… forgive Kushina. She isn’t a bad girl. I’ve known her since she was a child, watched her grow up. Her heart’s in the right place, but she’s… impulsive. Always has been.”

Ryusei gave a light laugh and waved it off, his narrow-eyed smile calm. “Please, you don’t need to apologize. I never took offense. Kushina-san just speaks her mind, that’s all. That’s not something worth blaming, is it?”

The old man studied him for a moment, guilt flickering in his eyes. The boy’s gentle tone and handsome, composed face only deepened the feeling. “You’re kinder than most would be,” he muttered. “Makes me feel worse for how she treated you.”

He turned away briefly, rummaging again in the storage shelves, before shuffling back with a thinner, more worn bundle of papers. “Here,” he said, setting it down carefully. “Some personal notes of mine. Basic, but it might help someone new to the art. And… if you ever have questions or doubts, come by. If I have time, I’ll help.”

Ryusei’s eyes lit up in practiced excitement, his smile growing warmer. “Truly? Thank you, sir. I’ve been fascinated with fuinjutsu for a long time, so this means a lot to me. I’ll make good use of it.”

“That passion will serve you well,” the old man replied, visibly relieved.

With that, they parted ways. The shopkeeper still felt a twinge of guilt as he watched the boy leave, while Ryusei walked out with polite bows and the look of someone grateful beyond measure, mask perfectly intact.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep