"Man, this feels good," I said, collapsing onto the bed. I'd really missed this kind of comfort. After just two hours on the road, my ass was so numb I could barely feel it, and sleeping wasn't exactly a treat either.
"Alright, I've eaten, I've showered, I've seen a bit of Konoha, time to sleep. Tomorrow I need to... ughhh," I couldn't hold back a yawn, "get myself some proper clothes." [ image ]

I woke up in the morning feeling fresh as a daisy. Ever since I activated my chakra source, I'd been feeling more energetic, like someone swapped out my old AA batteries for a car battery. I had no idea how much stronger I'd gotten, since I never really tested myself before the activation, and I wasn't even sure if it affected my physical strength at all - but honestly, that didn't matter right now.
I stashed away almost all my winnings from Tsunade, left the hotel, and nodded back to the receptionist's greeting. First thing, I found a little stall and swapped out my bamboo slippers - the ones I'd swiped from the lounge in Tanzaku - for a pair of wooden sandals, Jiraiya-style, which added a couple extra centimeters to my already six-foot-one frame. The slippers went straight into the nearest trash can, no mercy.
Not far from there, in a clothing shop, I picked out a new outfit with the help of a very eager salesgirl. Well, "outfit" - here, the formal wear is called a kimono. It cost me a pretty penny - twenty-eight thousand ryo - but I looked so good in it that even the salesgirl seemed to lose touch with reality for a second. The kimono was black on the outside and red on the inside. Apparently, all-black kimonos are for funerals only.
After that, I stopped by the local barbershop. The hairdresser spent ten minutes convincing me not to cut my hair, but to tie it up neatly instead. My old self - the one that thought long hair was for girls or weirdos - fought hard against her sense of style, but in the end, she won. I had to accept that from now on, I'd be spending half an hour every day taking care of my hair. If I ever start painting my nails, someone please stop me.
"Mmm, young man, you wouldn't happen to be looking for a bride, would you? My daughter is very nice and..." I made a quick escape before she could talk me into anything. I'd already seen how persuasive she could be - if I wasn't careful, I'd be married off before I knew it. Better to play it safe and just go for a walk, admiring the city - sorry, the village - while the village admired me.
"Sorry, guys, I might've overdone it," I tried to send a mental apology to the husbands glaring at me as they desperately tried to turn their wives' heads away. At this rate, the locals would kick me out themselves. And honestly, I couldn't blame them. I wouldn't want to live in the same village as a guy who could get your wife pregnant just by looking at her. I bet cheating is punished way more harshly here than back in my home country.
I spent the morning wandering around, exploring the city. I never found Ichiraku Ramen, but I did get to try the famous dango - little balls of rice flour, boiled and skewered, covered in a salty-sour sauce. Weird, but surprisingly filling.
"Oh, right, I could open my own McDonald's here. No competition, guaranteed success!" Only, if I do it, I'll have to go big, or someone will just steal my idea.
The rest of the day, I was looking for an apartment or house to rent, all the while thinking about how to start my restaurant business. Unfortunately, there were no real estate agents in Konoha, and I had a feeling there wouldn't be any for a long time. From talking to the locals, I learned that people rarely rent out or sell their homes. Most newcomers have to build their own from scratch, and if someone does rent, you only find out through word of mouth.
I didn't have any connections, but I did have a face that gave me a hundred-point bonus with any woman. And as everyone knows, nobody is more in the know about other people's business than grandmas - and grandmas are women too.
Finding them and getting them to talk about available housing was easy. The hard part was politely turning down their offers to marry their granddaughters, daughters, nieces, and so on. In the end, I got a list of addresses on a piece of paper (one grandma always carried a notebook and pencil for some reason) and headed to the first place. No luck - nobody home, I wasted half an hour searching and asking around. The layout of the village was simple: two main streets crossing in the center, and the areas branching off were just called districts - northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest. Even knowing which direction to go, I didn't know the street names, and nobody was handing out a Google maps, so I had to keep asking passersby for directions.
The second address was better - the owner was home, but he was only offering a room, and I wanted more space.
The third time, I hit the jackpot.
A married couple was moving in with the wife's parents and wanted to sell their old apartment. The husband quickly ushered me in, leaving his wife at home with the kids.
"So, two rooms, furniture, gas, water, and electricity. For a single guy, that's more than enough," he said, giving me a quick tour.
"Yeah, it's a nice place. You've clearly taken care of it. So, what's your final price?"
"Eight hundred forty thousand ryo. Sorry, I can't go any lower - we've got another kid on the way." Apparently, real estate here was cheap.
"Hmm, how much do you think a whole house would cost?"
"A whole house? Depends, but I'd say at least one million four hundred fifty thousand. But here's my advice - if you ever decide, build your own. It'll be way cheaper, and all the empty houses left after the Nine-Tails attack have long since been taken. You'd be searching for a year, easy."
"I like this apartment. Even if I find something better, it won't be by much. How do we do the paperwork?"
We got everything done that same day, at the city administration building - which meant the Hokage's office. I didn't see Hiruzen himself, since his office was on the second-to-top floor, but hey, I basically visited the Hokage. Normally, it would've taken at least a week, but the official handling the paperwork made it clear how greedy he was.
So, I got my own place, and I'm pretty sure the official's wife got a few new dresses, since I also paid for "express property registration" and "express village registration."
When we got back to the guy's house so he could give me a spare set of keys, his wife offered to help me clean up. "You bought the place, it'll feel better to move in when it's clean. And what kind of people would we be if we let you move into a dusty house?" I wasn't sure how pure her intentions were, but I didn't need an enemy in the form of her husband. Making enemies was a bad idea for me right now - I was still new in this village, and bad rumors would only hurt me.
While I was doing a deep clean, I had a genius idea - which, after some thought, I decided to drop. I really wanted to summon a few clones to help, but knowing where I was, I didn't want to draw any extra suspicion. In this village, suspicion is bad for your health - both physical and mental. So I did it the old-fashioned way: rag, bucket, and cleaning supplies. Thank God, at least there's plenty of that stuff here.
Honestly, the whole tech situation in the Naruto world is weird. They have fridges, electric kettles, even radios, but everyone still walks or rides horses, even though they've apparently invented trains. And there's no sign of firearms. I mean, a AK-47 would take out even the toughest jonin, but maybe that's why they never invented guns - dangerous science gets shut down at the root. Then again, that doesn't really make sense... ah, whatever, or "Kami knows," as they say here. I'm not about to start building theories.
Well, I've had enough excitement for one day. Tomorrow I need to go buy groceries - it just feels wrong to leave the fridge empty. [ image ]

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Thank you so much for the power stones! I really appreciate the support!