Chapter 17: Mito Uzumaki I

They spent the night discussing Yujin’s discovery of Chakra in his body.

The next morning, Shizune came to visit. She seemed excited and couldn’t stop talking about how Tsunade was about to adopt her. The girl was genuinely happy to have a mother. She was so excited that she spoke incoherently at times.

The idea of adopting Shizune came from Yujin. Initially, Tsunade seemed to want the girl as her apprentice only. When Yujin heard about this, he suggested adopting her since she had no close relatives anymore, and for someone her age, family is important.

Shizune is only four years old, so she naturally was happy with the idea, and Tsunade did not oppose it.

However, Yujin didn’t know that there is a process to adopt children in the village.

“I’ve never heard of such a thing. Where I come from, if you wanted to adopt a child without parents or abandoned by parents, you just took them and brought them home ... There were no orphanages either.”

“But isn’t that dangerous? Anyone could just take a child away.”

“Sure, but there was a war going on for many years. There were orphaned children everywhere. The feudal lords were too preoccupied with the war to care about orphans.”

“But what happened to the children then?”

“They died of hunger, cold, thirst, were adopted by someone, or killed for some reason. Some managed to survive and grow up, becoming mercenaries or luckily becoming Martial Artists.”

Tsunade sighed upon hearing this. Although the Leaf Village was civilized, there are many other places that are not, and probably have scenes similar to what Yujin described happening. Especially because of the ongoing war.

“Sorry for bringing up this topic, didn’t want to make the conversation heavy.”

“It’s okay, I like talking to you about anything.”

He smiled upon hearing this, and Tsunade reacted strangely to his smile.

Yujin had noticed this in the past few days. For some reason, at certain moments, Tsunade has some strange reactions. Sometimes, when they are talking, she gets lost in thought, or looks at his face for more than a few seconds without saying anything.

Sometimes she avoids eye contact strangely, or just ends the conversation and leaves abruptly.

These strange reactions are confusing him because he can’t understand what’s going on in her head, something that didn’t happen before. Before, he could understand exactly what she was thinking because she was always open with him, always speaking her mind.

Because of that, he understood her mood easily and always knew her concerns. In the past few days, however, she has been acting in this strange way.

He thought about asking several times, but for some unknown reason, he always held back. Even now, he wants to ask the reason for her strange reaction, but in the end, he said nothing. It’s not like it happens all the time, so he let it go.

Yujin didn’t experiment with Chakra. He wanted to improve first before testing his new power. In the following days, he just ate and slept normally. Every day, he felt improvement in his body.

He had been constantly checking the growth of Chakra, and the longer it took, the slower it increased, which increased his belief that Chakra was trying to match his Qi.

He already had plans to resume his physical training after fully recovering. He lost a lot of muscle mass, which is not good for a Martial Artist. He also made plans with Tsunade for her to teach him to use Chakra to create “spells,” as he calls ninjutsus.

The days were peaceful. He spent most of the time talking to Tsunade or playing with Shizune. Sometimes, the three of them went out for a walk, had something to eat, or bought something.

Yujin still had a considerable amount of money, although he was worried it wouldn’t last long.

One day, however, while the three were having fun at Yujin’s house, someone knocked on the door, something very rare. Tsunade went to check, and it was someone from her family with a message.

Upon hearing the messenger’s words, Tsunade frowned. After explaining to Yujin that she had a family meeting to attend, she left Shizune with him and left.

In the main building of the Senju complex, where meetings usually took place, the entire family was gathered, including Mito Uzumaki, Tsunade’s grandmother, who had been in seclusion in recent years in a mansion on the complex.

The woman is a legend in the ninja world as one of the best fuinjutsu practitioners, the jinchuriki of the nine-tailed beast, and the wife of the also legendary First Hokage, Hashirama Senju.

Due to old age, she had been isolated in the clan for the past few years, but her presence at the meeting spoke volumes about its importance, making Tsunade nervous.

Next to Mito Uzumaki was a girl who didn’t seem to be more than twelve years old, with beautiful red hair. She seemed extremely nervous. Tsunade had met her several times before, and she knew she was a distant relative from Uzushiogakure, a hidden village far from Konoha. Her name is Kushina Uzumaki.

She also knew that the girl was sent to the village to become the next Jinchuriki of the nine tails after Mito’s death. The girl’s presence at this important meeting, alongside Mito, her nervous expression, and the solemnity of the meeting, made Tsunade have a bad feeling.