226 CH_7.8 (226)

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Fukiko woke up early in the morning, still feeling exhausted from the last day's work, having slept for barely six hours. She was a single mother of pre-teen twins and the sole care provider for her elderly father, who couldn't do anything other than barely walk himself around the house.

She hurried through a brief cold shower, which was always not enough and rushed to make a meal for her kids after they returned from school. The family didn't always have the money for a breakfast meal, which was why Fukiko was glad that the school provided a meal during the day. With the food shortages, she was worried that the school would stop providing meals, but luckily, the city had pulled together enough to ensure that the school continued to provide the regular mid-day meal.

"Kids! Get up quickly!" Fukiko yelled from the kitchen. "Hurry up, or we'll be late!"

She stopped moving and listened closely. A few moments of silence later, she heard the sound of quarrelling between the twins. Fukiko nodded and resumed her work.

"Fukiko…"

As she set up the table, Fukiko's aged father walked into the small open kitchen. He had more wrinkles on his face than a witch and a crooked back that had bothered him more than usual.

"Dad, did you sleep properly? I heard you shift a lot last night," said Fukiko as they put down two glasses of milk on the table. She turned away and yelled for the twins. "Come to the table before I have to come to you!"

"It was a bit cold, dear," said Fukiko's dad.

"Oh, should I take out the thicker blankets?" Fukiko put on a pot to boil some water for her father, but the stove lighter suddenly stopped working. She tried twice, but there was no spark to light the gas.

Fukiko's dad hummed as he nodded. He looked up at his only daughter. "Fukiko, what do you think about Miyamoto's offer?"

"Not now, Dad!" said Fukiko as she tried the lighter, but there was no flame on the hob.

Her father had been trying to set her up with Miyamoto, who owned an electrical company with three employees working for him. He had a large house and a good, steady income, but Fukiko didn't want to marry a man who was twenty years older than her.

"He's a good man, dear. He'll take good care of you and the kids."

"No, he won't," she whispered, so only she heard the words.

In truth, it wasn't his age that made Fukiko wary of him. Miyamoto was once married and even had children that lived with his ex-wife at her childhood home when he kicked them out. She had asked around, and the man wanted nothing to do with his children, cutting all ties with them.

Fukiko understood that her father was trying to look out for her, but she didn't have the time and energy for matchmaking. Certainly not with a man who might leave her like he did his ex-wife. With the way life was in Yu, she couldn't take that risk.

"You should at least meet him."

Fukiko's hand twitched as she felt an intense irritation overcome her.

"I don't want to marry him! Why do you keep bringing it up!?" she raised her voice and smacked the stove lighter on the countertop.

At the last moment, she heard footsteps and turned to see her twins standing at the kitchen door. They looked at the lighter in her hand with alarm. Fukiko took a deep breath and hurriedly turned her back to them, not wanting them to see her like that.

"Eat quickly, both of you," she said.

She took a deep breath, pressed the clicker on the lighter for it to finally produce a spark, and lit the fire in the stove hob.

As the water boiled, she took the trash out for collection. On her walk to the collection corner, she saw new blue posters much like the red ones. She didn't have any time to read whatever the shinobi had decided to put up for them and walked past them with a sigh.

She didn't care about what they had to say. Ever since those shinobi had come into the city, her and her family's life had become miserable. Even if she did, she had no time.

———

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"Listen to your teachers, and don't create any problems. Especially you, Arata—no fighting. Things are hard enough without me being forced to come in because of your temper."

"It's not just me, you know." Her son heaved a sigh and turned his moxy-filled glare at the looming building behind him. "But I'll try."

"That's all I'm asking," she replied.

Kyo, the more level-headed of the two, rolled her eyes when he wasn't looking.

Fukiko kissed her twins and nudged them into the school building. The first bell was still three-quarters of an hour away, and there were barely any people in the school except for the cleaning staff.

She stood there waving until the twins were in the building before breaking into a cycle of running, jogging, and brisk walking. She couldn't bring the twins to school on time because she'd be late for work. Thankfully, the school gates opened half an hour before the actual required time.

Half an hour was just long enough for her to barely make it on time.

By the time she reached her place of work—a milling factory—she was out of breath and sweating from her pits. She checked the clock by the staff entrance and saw that she was a minute late, and groaned with her eyes closed.

Her supervisor was an old miser who took any opportunity possible to pay them less than their work deserved. So much that if any worker was late, by even a minute, their pay for half the day was cut. Fukiko couldn't afford to lose a single ryo of her pay—they were struggling as is on her regular salary. She closed her eyes, sure that any minute now, she would hear his horrible, scratchy yelling—but it didn't happen, she looked up in shock.

Almost hesitantly, she shuffled into the factory, where everyone was standing around in a circle.

Fukiko hoped they had gotten the fortunate news that their supervisor was dead, but when she sneaked over to the group, pretending she'd always been there, she saw the old bastard hale and healthy in the middle of the circle.

It made her question what was so disturbing that even their supervisor stopped being such an asshole.

"What's going on?" she whispered to one of the older ladies.

"There's a new poster."

"Oh," Fukiko's curiosity drained out of her. She couldn't care less. "What does it say this time? Calling the Daimyo an illegitimate ruler?"

The posters always blamed the Hot Water Daimyo and the Hidden Steam for the city's miserable condition. Fukiko didn't know if it was true or not, but one thing was for sure: the posters had brought a lot of hate toward the Daimyo and the Hidden Steam shinobi in the people.

There was a government building in the centre of the city built in honour of their Daimyo. It was the most beautiful, clean, and respected building in the city, treated as if it were the Daimyo himself.But last month, that same building had been defaced with profanity and all manner of curses towards their ruler.

Nobody had bothered to clean it up.

"The poster says that the Hidden Frost shinobi and the rich folk are buying food from the farmers and diverting it to the Land of Frost instead of us… They weren't around yesterday and now these posters are everywhere."

Fukiko was surprised and wasn't at the same time. She was surprised that the posters weren't put up by the Hidden Frost shinobi, but the contents of said poster didn't surprise her.

"I'm not really surprised," said Fukiko, shrugging. "This place never looks like it has a shortage of business. Maybe Mr. Bessho is part of the group who's selling the flour to the Land of Frost." She didn't want to sound ungrateful, so she didn't say it out loud, but the Bessho Mill hadn't fired a single worker no matter what they did.

It being war-time and all, they couldn't afford to look for new workers right now.

"Shut up!" The fat supervisor twisted his meaty neck towards Fukiko with a look of warning in his beady eyes. "Think before you speak! Mr. Bessho wouldn't be part of anything like this… We aren't even sure if this is true…." But as the supervisor spoke, his confidence sank, and by the end, he didn't seem to be very sure about his words.

According to what the red posters said, a majority of farmers had turned their business away from Yu, and only a fraction still sold to the city. There were rumours that the claims weren't true, but with the continuous food shortage, people believed their country had cut them out. However, for people like Fukiko, who saw the milling business thriving as usual, the claims made by these new blue posters allowed her doubts to click into place and she felt an overwhelming anger bubble up inside her.

The cost of living had shot up in the city. Her milling job used to be just enough for their family—even if they didn't live extravagantly, they lived comfortably. She spent enough time with her twins, she was able to look after her ageing father appropriately, and even though she didn't get much time to herself, she was content with how their lives were—but that all changed—with the prices of everything going up, she had to pick more hours at the factory which cut into her time with her family.

Her twins had to get up an hour earlier so that she could drop them off at school. She couldn't pick them up in the evenings and had to rely on a neighbour who would bring them back home. She could no longer help them with homework. Her father had started to hide his growing health problems from her to not make her worry. Even when she confronted him, he stubbornly refused to admit it.

And even after all that, the increased hours didn't do anything. They were barely getting by week after week and she had already dug into half of her hard-earned savings. In a few more months, they would truly be living paycheck to paycheck.

"And why are we making such a big deal of this?" asked Fukiko. "It doesn't matter about who's doing the screwing, our lives are still miserable. I don't see this poster changing anything."

"Not according to this."

Fukiko followed her finger and at the very bottom,, after everything else, was a single line printed in bold.

[Good days are near]

And below that was a symbol of two hands snapping a chain link in half.

Fukiko stared at the words, fighting against the smothered hope fighting its way to life within her.

———

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A middle-aged man dressed in a bedroom robe over his underwear sipped a glass of freshly squeezed pineapple juice on ice. He sat on the luxurious balcony of his lavish estate. Two maids stood out of sight in the distance, waiting to complete his every request.

In the city of Yu, where the common populace was struggling for food, the man had no want for food and drink, reaching out for the opulent breakfast on the table beside him.

The only thing out of place from the affluent picture was the sheathed sword in a worn-down scabbard leaning against the man's outdoor lounge chair.

"What is it?" said the man.

A breeze ruffled the man's brown locks. The maids flinched in surprise when a man dressed in a black robe and a porcelain fox mask appeared before the man.

"Lord Kon," the masked figure greeted.

"Any problems?" asked Kon.

"The city police force found these this morning." The masked fox handed the blue poster to Kon.

Kon lazily glanced at the poster in the man's hand without taking it from him. But the next second, Kon sat up straight with sharp focus and took the poster in his own hands to read it thoroughly.

"This morning, you say?" asked Kon.

"Yes, sir. According to the police, the posters are everywhere. In the residential districts, the busiest commercial blocks, near diners, shopping centres, and even plastered over the posters we've put up."

Kon stood up from his chair and walked to the railings at the balcony's edge. He wasn't surprised to see resistance to the various plans and designs they had in motion around the city to turn Yu against the Land of Hot Waters.

"All around the city?"

"Affirmative, sir."

"Get these posters down, find the printer who made them, and arrest some of the resistance members to find the source of these posters. There's been resistance, but never like this." Kon turned to the masked fox. "I want some answers by the end of the day."

 The masked fox bowed before disappearing into thin air and Kon stared out at the estate.

Kon was a ROOT shinobi. Someone in high-up in the Hidden Frost hired ROOT as war consultants to help them in the ongoing Frost-Steam war, and Kon was among the team leaders sent to the Hidden Frost.

His assignment was to help the Hidden Frost takeover the City of Yu, and then convert the city over to the Land of Frost's side. His secondary objective, like everyone from ROOT involved in the Frost-Steam war, was to collect information about the alliance between the Hidden Frost and the Hidden Cloud.

Their leader, Danzo believed that the Hidden Cloud was supporting the Hidden Frost to push the Hot Waters - Frost border closer to the Land of Fire—and then using their new alliance with the Hidden Frost to move the Hidden Cloud's influence more closer to the Land of Fire than it had even been. ROOT's objective was to get the information about the Cloud-Frost alliance so they could prepare against a threat to the Hidden Lead future.

Kon didn't want to be in Yu. He had a great position back home, handling ROOT's drug trade that funded many of ROOT's initiatives. He was in charge of the money—and that gave him power in the organisation.

However, when one of their farms was raided by the Leaf Military Police Force, and he retaliated by ordering an assassination of the person responsible for the raid, it all went wrong—the assassination failed and all he ended up costing ROOT four trainees who were an year away from becoming official agents—it was a significant blow to the organisation given that the trainees were lost in a failed assassination of a lowly genin.

He was punished and re-assigned to the Frost-Steam war. He wasn't even sent to the Hidden Frost, the real information trove, and was stuck on the frontlines.

Kon hated the person responsible for his downfall. Genin Takuma of the Narcotics Taskforce under the Department of Organized Crime of the Leaf Military Police Force. That child had ruined his life. He swore that if one day he got the opportunity, he would have his revenge.

But then the situation changed, the Hidden Leaf betrayed and turned on ROOT. The organisation was forced to go underground in hiding. The Hokage himself hunted their leader, Danzo, who had worked his entire life for the betterment of the village. It was a great disaster for ROOT. The organisation had lost the support of the Hidden Leaf—their home and funding. They had to relocate and reorganise quickly while the Hidden Leaf's ANBU were on the hunt for them.

However, there was a silver lining—at least for Kon. Fortunately, he wasn't in the Land of Fire while all of that happened. He was in Yu, working on his assignment—which was suddenly extremely important as helping the Hidden Frost win the war became a high priority as ROOT was now an independent mercenary organisation, and they needed a win to start their new chapter.

Kon was now in an enviable position.

Truth be told, he was happy the posters were put up. The resistance effort so far had been petulant and nothing overt. This time, he could use whoever put up the posters as an example. 

He didn't even need to find the true culprits, which was why he ordered Fox to arrest known resistance members. He would punish them—regardless of their actual guilt—and reward the city folk who had fallen in line with the Hidden Frost—it would show the common populace what they needed to do to gain rewards.

Kon smiled. If enough complied, perhaps he'd lower the food prices. His pet dog curled against his right leg and he ran a finger along its head with a small smile.

He enjoyed training dogs, but controlling human lives was so much more fun.

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