Yorin looked completely confident, but Tsunade still couldn't help feeling uneasy.
Of course, even if she worried, she couldn't think of any real solution, so she could only… worry for nothing.
Which just made Yorin laugh as he pulled her into his arms, kneading here and there until her face went red and she finally quieted down.
"Everything's gonna be fine. Relax," he said.
Only then did Tsunade, cheeks flushed, let him use her as a soft, warm body pillow. After a bit of this and that, she finally rolled her eyes at him in a teasing way and pushed him away.
…
And things really did go pretty much the way Uchiha Yorin had said.
After the Sky Ninja were wiped out, the entire year of Konoha Year 53 passed in peace and stability—
Though that "peace and stability" definitely didn't apply to the unlucky nobles.
Those were the ones Akatsuki had singled out—the ones who, even after round after round of warnings and "small accidents," still insisted on doing whatever they wanted like deranged lunatics. Their worldview was completely calcified. They simply did not believe anyone in this world would dare lay a finger on nobles. On the flip side, nobles tormenting, abusing, and raping commoners was just "the way of things."
People like that absolutely had to die—and die hard. Not killing them wasn't enough to calm the rage of the people. Not killing them wasn't enough to stiffen anyone's spine.
…
Yorin had once read that, before the French Revolution, French nobles liked to play a game they called "the game of the brave."
By law, commoners were forbidden to turn their backs to nobles; doing so was considered an insult.
So the nobles would surround a commoner in a ring. No matter which way that person turned, they would end up turning their back on at least one noble. And then, in full accordance with the law, the nobles were free to "punish" him.
Typically, that meant stabbing him in the back. The terrified commoner would spin around to apologize, exposing his back to another noble, and that noble would happily stab him again.
One stab after another, until the poor bastard collapsed in his own blood.
Later, people—ignorant or malicious—would harp on how cruel the commoners were to nobles during the Revolution. But for hundreds, even thousands of years before that, noble-on-commoner slaughter had never stopped. It was just so slow, so constant, that people numbed out and wrote it off as "normal life," and once numb, they stopped feeling any pain from it.
In the shinobi world, in this chaotic, rotten world, the unfairness, slaughter, and cruelty inflicted on common people by nobles easily matched, if not exceeded, anything from Earth.
And there was one thing shinobi found hard to admit but couldn't avoid: in all that killing, shinobi weren't just accomplices; a lot of the time, they were the instigators.
In war after war, the destruction and death caused by shinobi was no less than that caused by nobles. If you actually think about it, it might even be more.
So the hatred and distrust ordinary people felt toward shinobi was completely understandable.
Yorin had done a lot in recent years.
Now, aside from Konoha, there were more and more villages, factions, and even nations whose elites ate thanks to Uchiha and Konoha's capital.
And naturally, the number of people willing to speak up for Yorin and stand on his side had grown as well. As time went on, Konoha's prestige continued to rise.
When the time came to reveal everything, the reputation Akatsuki had built would stack on top of Yorin's name as well.
Put together like that, Konoha's old infamy was basically washed clean. Just thinking about it made his head hurt—what a ridiculous world.
"Maybe when the Ōtsutsuki invaders finally Waaagh their way here, the shinobi's reputation will really turn around," Yorin thought.
"It shouldn't be too long now," he added to himself.
"No matter what, if shinobi throw themselves into the fight to protect the world, everyone's opinion of them is bound to rise."
Same principle here.
Yorin believed that day was already close, not far away at all.
And it wasn't just because Black Zetsu had been popping up at his elbow every day whining:
"The Ōtsutsuki clan is coming! I can feel their presence! We have to move faster—I'm not lying, and I'm not fearmongering, everything I'm saying is true!!"
Yorin only ever answered with, "Yeah, yeah, got it, got it."
He chose to believe half of what that bastard said. And no matter how much he believed, outwardly, Yorin had to act completely unfazed, slowly walking each step of his plan, step by step.
In the second half of Konoha Year 53, Konoha, Uchiha, and all their allies spent their time quietly reinforcing their foundations, building up power, preparing for the coming storm.
Under that "storm's-about-to-break" atmosphere, nobles and daimyo across the world mostly drowned their anxiety in debauchery.
Apocalypse, the fall of the noble class, the legendary "great catastrophe"—maybe those were real. But as far as they were concerned, as long as it didn't happen while they were still alive, it was fine.
Louis XIV—or maybe it was Louis XV, depending on the book—supposedly said a famous line. According to who you ask, there are two versions:
One is what everyone knows: "After me, the flood."
The other is: "After I die, the flood will come."
Just shifting the words a bit completely changes the meaning.
But which one did the French king actually say? Or are we just putting our own opinions into the mouths of the dead?
Either way, for the current crop of nobles, they're living out the first version.
As long as they can enjoy themselves while they're alive, everything else can go to hell later. As for the debts they've piled up, the public funds they've "borrowed," the state coffers they've spent ahead of time—let the next generation handle it.
There's a certain type of person who digs a crater for their descendants while smiling and saying they "believe in the wisdom of future generations."
If they weren't so high up and safely dead, a lot of people would line up to beat them.
…
"Whatever, whatever."
"The music's still playing, the horses are still running. What, you think those shinobi are going to launch a coup or something?"
"Akatsuki? Isn't Konoha dealing with them?"
"What do you mean 'Akatsuki's assassinations are too fast for Konoha to protect every noble'? What the hell is that supposed to imply?"
It was exactly what it sounded like—that Konoha could only fully protect nobles who had a good relationship with shinobi, or who were willing to pay serious mission fees.
Those were usually the nobles who treated Konoha well and weren't particularly vile people.
There were also the ones who'd fallen from grace as old nobility, then reinvented themselves as industrialists and financial elites. Their interests no longer aligned with the old feudal class; they were closer to Konoha and other new forces.
Because of that, Konoha happily guarded them without asking much in return. Even if they didn't pay extra, the sheer scale of their joint ventures with Uchiha meant any "mission pay" was pocket change.
We're talking tens of millions of ryō per contract. Compared to the profits flowing out of factories and trade routes, mission fees were nothing.
Of course, big merchants still insisted on paying more, loudly saying Konoha had to take their money, or it would feel like an insult. In the wild, unregulated jungle of this early-stage capitalism, anyone who could successfully transition from fallen noble to wealthy industrialist had real skills.
Maybe their business acumen wasn't always perfect, but their understanding of human relationships was top-tier.
Even so, there were always one or two idiots who managed to get assassinated by Akatsuki despite Konoha's best effort.
Those were the completely irredeemable ones—the type who'd arm private troops with machine guns and mow down striking workers. For that kind, no amount of money or benefit would convince Yorin to protect them.
There were lines he would not cross.
…
People aren't all idiots. After a while, some started to suspect there was something off about the Konoha–Akatsuki dynamic.
Like: seriously, are these two playing a double act on us?
If not, then why did they sync so perfectly?
If you were hostile to Konoha and refused to cooperate, Akatsuki would kill you. If you were friendly and cooperated, you were basically safe.
And even in those rare "failures" where someone under Konoha's guard died, it always made for a perfect "see, we tried" example for the news.
The long-awaited "two-tigers-fighting" that the Fire daimyo had hoped for never materialized. Maybe someday in the future, Yorin and "Rinyo" really would go for each other's throats and destroy everything they'd built—but that would be later.
Given how these nobles lived, it was an open question whether they'd even be alive by then.
"So what are we supposed to do? What the hell are we supposed to do?"
It wasn't just the Fire daimyo muttering this; every daimyo in every country was gnawing on the same fear.
And under that collective anxiety, the last days of Konoha Year 53 slipped quietly away, and Konoha Year 54 arrived.
~~~
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