"But… Your Highness… even so…"
"Lord Madara has already placed his faith in Hashirama Senju, accepted the Senju clan's terms of peace—and the Uchiha have accepted it as well."
Uchiha Makoto laid everything out in detail.
In short, the fighting between Uchiha and Senju had stopped. Handshakes had replaced blades. It was a done deal.
The more the daimyō of the Land of Fire heard, the worse he felt; his expression grew darker by the moment.
Makoto watched that expression.
The heat was right.
The cold stove had finally been warmed.
"But I will never sit and wait for death! I won't stand by and watch the Uchiha march into the pit!"
"Your Highness… since Hashirama Senju wants to rally the clans and found a shinobi village, then I can do the same. To tell the truth, I left the Uchiha for exactly this."
"But to rally clans and build a village… ah… I lack the funds!"
Makoto tipped his chin up, lifted his gaze forty-five degrees, eyes moist—then cut a sidelong glance at the daimyō.
His meaning could not have been plainer.
Come on.
Your Highness, transfer the money.
I know you're loaded.
Seeing Makoto's "true feelings"—a man who would die without regret for his clan, enough to bring tears—the daimyō finally smiled again.
He didn't fear Makoto making demands; he feared Makoto resigning himself.
Thanks to the "Hashirama threat" in his mind, the daimyō could not help but speculate…
If the Uchiha now shook hands with the Senju because of Hashirama, what if—later—the other shinobi clans also united under him, and a super-village of shinobi appeared? If Hashirama unified the shinobi world today, what would he want tomorrow?
Even the greenest student of power knows: every syndicate needs balance.
The daimyō knew it all too well.
"Hahaha—what difficulty is that?"
"I understand the Uchiha's predicament. If you, Makoto, wish to found a village, I can fund you in the name of the Land of Fire."
Hearing this, Makoto straightened his robes, smiled, and clasped the daimyō's hand. At last—he had his backer. His… angel investor.
"Your Highness, the Uchiha will not forget your aid today."
"I will support Your Highness—steadfastly, unswervingly, without fail."
His words struck the daimyō right in the heart; warmth flowed to his limbs.
This young man truly knew the way.
The daimyō gripped Makoto's hand in return. Nothing more needed saying.
Their alliance was sealed.
Makoto needed the daimyō's money.
The daimyō needed Makoto to ride ahead and keep the clans divided, preserving the look of the Warring States.
When the talk ended, the lord kept Makoto for a meal—no, a banquet.
Makoto gladly accepted. He hadn't really eaten all day; in the reception room he'd done nothing but drink tea. Fine tea, rich and lingering sweet—but tea alone doesn't fill a belly, and on the road he'd lived on soldier pills. Everyone knew how foul they tasted; flavor had never been part of the design.
…
Inside the palace.
At the lord's command, dishes arrived one after another, piling before Makoto.
Music rose, and lines of young girls in light dress stepped into the room to dance.
Makoto was a man of easy manners; faced with such a scene, he watched openly—not out of lust, but because a flower in full bloom should be appreciated. To refuse would be boorish.
One had to admit: the daimyō lived well. The food—specifically the food—was excellent.
The lord sat at the head, sipping his wine.
Wine dispels sorrow.
Especially on a rainy day, a cup in hand while gazing quietly at nature—body and mind both grow light.
"Makoto, if only everyone were as little trouble as you."
He spoke on a sigh. Few would understand that mood.
Being a daimyō in this world was no easy life.
In name he was the nation's head, holder of the highest authority, but a millennium of rigid hierarchy had driven the noble houses to huddle together, carving up his power as they pleased. By his generation, bureaucracy had become the air itself, choking and impossible to clear.
Now, aside from a handful of truly major affairs, most of his time went to games and hunts.
Daily governance in the Land of Fire fell to his ministers.
It wasn't that he didn't want to expand his own power—it was that he could not.
In his youth he had nursed grand ambitions: break the strangling cords of the bureaucracy, open the windows to fresh air, toss the empty formalities, and set this creaking machine humming again. He was sick of a shadow government; he wanted one of glass.
That very afternoon, his ministers sent over a white paper.
Its title: "Transparent Government."
With it came four or five hillocks of files—execution documents—awaiting his hand, stuffed with dense and baffling clauses.
"…As to the application of statutory language, irregularities and non-regularities among responsible departments fall to Administration…"
There were mountains of memorials built up over years, threaded with every kind of meeting imaginable. Even if he worked himself to death, he could not process it all.
Worn down by the paperwork, he asked about pushing a policy to cut civil-service headcount.
"Can this policy actually be implemented?"
His ministers spread their hands.
"Your Highness, if I must speak plainly, I can only say that, given present conditions, surveying the whole, comparing past and present, weighing departmental averages, and analyzing outcomes, one may conclude that all things considered, to summarize, Your Highness will likely find, however unwelcome, that the prospects are delicate—in this stage, that is the only expectation."
"Just say it. Can it be done, or not?"
"It both can—and cannot."
A light touch from bureaucracy, and the daimyō was already reeling.
In the end, he chose to lie flat.
Fortunately, in all those years of resignation, nothing had happened grave enough to shake his throne.
In this still-agrarian Land of Fire, setting shinobi aside, his ministers had only one task.
"Keep the cattle and horses half alive."
Only now, the times had changed.
The clans, once fixated solely on missions and hereditary feuds, seemed to be…