Chapter 121: Small Steel Balls (Patreon)

Konoha, the Hokage's office.

Uchiha Fugaku's forehead was beaded with cold sweat. His fingers trembled like a head of state fumbling to take off his glasses, and the intelligence scroll in his hand was on the verge of slipping free.

The reason was simple.

The scroll stated, plain as day, that the mastermind behind the Nine-Tails' Night had now been identified — Uchiha Obito.

Uchiha who? Obito?

He recognized every single character written there, and yet strung together, they nearly overloaded his brain.

Among the suspects on the list he'd handed Genshin earlier — the list of masked-man candidates — Obito's name had indeed been included. But he'd never once entertained the possibility that Obito himself was the true mastermind.

The reason was simple: in a clan where practically everyone wore the same cold, stoic face, Obito had always been the outlier. A sunny, cheerful idiot didn't belong in the same picture as the grim, vengeance-laden Uchiha.

And now someone was telling him Uchiha Obito was the one behind the Nine-Tails' rampage? He'd sooner believe the Uchiha and the Senju were secretly the same bloodline — that, at least, would be more believable than the report in front of him.

He drew a long breath, gathered his thoughts, and finally managed to convince himself to accept the truth.

"Lord Hokage, where did this intelligence come from?" Fugaku asked.

Hiruzen Sarutobi took an unhurried pull on his pipe before answering. "From Genshin and Tsunade. They clashed with Orochimaru and Uchiha Obito — during the fight, Genshin shattered the masked man's mask. After the two of them escaped, Tsunade used a Summoning Animal to send word back to the village."

Orochimaru was involved too?

Fugaku found it baffling that Obito would be mixed up with Orochimaru, but he nodded anyway — at the very least, the source of this information was reliable.

If there was anyone left in the village who might still side with the Uchiha Clan, it was Tsunade's faction. And since Genshin had clashed with the masked man twice now, if the two of them had confirmed his identity, then the report could be trusted.

"Oh, and one more thing," Hiruzen added. "Fugaku, keep this to yourself for now. At present only you and I know of it in the village. We'll discuss what comes next once Tsunade and Genshin are back."

He still hadn't decided how to break the news to Kakashi, nor was he sure the boy could bear such a blow. Kakashi had only just begun, little by little, to climb out of the shadows of his past, and Hiruzen had no intention of letting the boy repeat White Fang's fate.

For that same reason, he hadn't even told his two old comrades, Koharu Utatane and Homura Mitokado, first. Those two held fast to the Second Hokage's ideals and already harbored deep prejudice against the Uchiha; telling them first would only risk inflaming things further.

Fugaku nodded. Ever since the Third Hokage had summoned him in secret, he'd suspected this matter couldn't be made public. He clenched his fist quietly, thinking, for the first time, that his own clan really did have too many lunatics in it. Something new every few days — being clan head without a strong heart was simply not survivable.

Maybe... maybe it was time to let Shisui take over for a while, and retire to go beat up Sasuke alongside his wife instead.

After Fugaku left, Hiruzen let out another puff of smoke. Wreathed in it, his face was unreadable, cast in shadow.

The man once hailed as a village hero had turned out to be the very cause of Konoha's calamity. The thought made even his old face burn with shame, and he let out a quiet sigh.

For now, all he could do was wait for Genshin and Tsunade to return.

Meanwhile, on the other side of things, Genshin and Tsunade were currently strolling boldly into a gambling den.

They looked for all the world like an older sister and younger brother sneaking out behind the family's back to have some fun.

Two guards stood at the entrance, one tall and one short, both sporting thick necks of muscle and knife scars. Genshin didn't get the chance to see any dramatic showdown play out — the pair proved sharp enough not to even think about stopping them. The short one opened his mouth to ask something, but the tall one smacked the back of his head, and the short one shut up at once, not daring to make another sound.

Once the two of them had walked inside, the tall guard grabbed the short one's head and hissed at him furiously, "How many times have I told you — in this line of work, the most important thing is knowing how to read a room! We're already in a shady business as it is — if you don't sharpen your eyes, you won't even know how you died!"

The short guard mumbled with a wronged look, "But I don't even know who they are! I just wanted to ask what they were here for. Why are you so scared?"

The tall one snorted coldly. "Who cares what they're here for! You could tell just from the way they stand — those two are dangerously strong! How much do we even get paid a month? Do your job, keep your mouth shut, and that's enough. It's not worth risking your life over."

Inside, Genshin looked left and right, taking it all in.

So this was a gambling den, huh? The moment he stepped through the door, a wall of noise hit him — the din of chatter and shouting. Tables were crowded with gamblers, chips clattering, cheers and curses rising over each other.

Cards, dice, mahjong tiles... and was that a pachinko machine?

Genshin hadn't expected to find a pachinko machine here of all places. In his past life he'd seen plenty of dramas where some useless husband blew all his money on pachinko while his wife wept and the loan sharks came knocking, but this was the first time he'd seen an actual machine in the flesh.

It was an upright, vertical pachinko cabinet, its body wood-framed and sheathed in metal, its face covered by a single pane of clear glass. Inside, a dense maze of metal pins, baffles, and channels crisscrossed the interior.

A spring-loaded launch lever sat on the lower right of the cabinet, with a ball tray and payout chute at the bottom — when you hit a jackpot, a clattering flood of shiny steel balls would spill out.

The sheer industrial charm of the thing made Genshin's fingers itch. He wanted to try it out, see what it was all about.

Tsunade noticed where Genshin was looking, followed his gaze, and her eyes lit up.

"Oh, a pachinko machine? Not bad, my disciple has good taste! Grandfather always said pachinko and slot machines were my favorites as a kid!" She clapped Genshin hard on the shoulder.

"Come on, watch me work!"

Tsunade pulled out a thick wad of cash with a flourish and counted it out — a full million, roughly the equivalent of an S-rank mission's reward. She handed it over to the counter and got back a basket full to the brim with steel balls.

Clearly she hadn't spent money in a while — the legendary big spender had built up quite a reserve again.

The house rule here was that balls could only be exchanged for cash — not converted directly back to silver. You had to trade them for prizes in the shop first, then cash those out elsewhere.

After a moment, seeing the two poor guards struggling in vain to lift the basket of balls, Genshin waved them off. He scooped up the entire basket one-handed and followed Tsunade forward.

The short guard stared at how effortlessly Genshin carried it, swallowed hard, and turned to the tall one. "From now on, you're my big brother. Whatever you say, I'll do."

Damn it, good thing I didn't try to stop them — if that slap had landed on me, I'd have been planted six feet under.

Bursting with excitement, Tsunade strode up to the machine, grabbed a handful of balls, and with a clatter dropped in five to start, testing her luck.

The pachinko machine's mechanics weren't complicated — it all came down to spring tension and where the balls happened to land.

At first she played it steady, feeding the balls in one at a time, occasionally winning a small prize amid the clattering payout sounds. But within two minutes, the gambling itch kicked in, and she started shoveling handfuls of balls in at once without a shred of concern for the cost.

Genshin stood beside her, eyelid twitching. A million in silver's worth of balls, and she was flinging them around like sand, barely even watching where they landed, playing purely on feel.

"Steady, Tsunade! Don't just chuck them in like that!"

"Why so nervous! Gambling is all about momentum! Play it scared, don't even bother, you know?"

That phrase sounded familiar — it reminded Genshin of gaming sessions with his buddies back in his old life.

"There's a sniper camping point A, don't go there!"

"Relax, I'll just take a peek!"

BANG!

"Damn it! I'm dead, but the guy on the other team's wrecked too!"

It really was similar — eerily similar. Genshin buried his face in his hand.