Chapter 58

Tsunade was sitting in the living room of her house while Yuta was lying on her lap, using her knees as a pillow. While they were talking, a little girl with purple hair came out of the kitchen with a tray in her hand.

Fern handed a cup of sake and a cup of tea on the tray to Tsunade and Yuta respectively.

After Tsunade took the cup from the cute girl, she couldn't resist her cuteness and reached out her hand to mess up the girl's hair. As Yuta looked at Tsunade, he remembered what happened a week ago when he brought the girl here.

When Tsunade found out the little girl was from outside the village, she immediately patted Yuta hard and told him never to sneak out of the village again during wartime. When Yuta saw how worried Tsunade was about him, he felt happy and sad for her at the same time. He knew that the reason Tsunade was so worried about him was because she had learned her lesson the hard way.

First, Tsunade lost her brother during a war and then she lost one of her closest friends, Kato Dan. He could tell Tsunade right now that he was strong enough that nothing would happen to him even if he left the village, but that wouldn't work.

Even if Tsunade accepted his strength, there was still one fact she hadn't forgotten. Nawaki was a ninja with talent and potential. At the time of his death, he had reached the level of a special jonin in terms of chakra and physical strength, but he died in a trap that even a chunin would not step into. So even though Tsunade recognized his power, she would not be comfortable with him going out.

After taking the tea served by Fern, Yuta thanked her and helped her to fix her hair again, which Tsunade had messed up. After thanking Yuta in hushed tones, Fern returned to the kitchen and continued to help Shizune with the cooking.

Tsunade, the only adult of the family, and Yuta, the half-adult of the family, relaxed in comfort while Shizune and Fern worked hard at cooking. Tsunade raised as a princess, felt nothing about it. Maybe if Yuta had gone into the kitchen and seen the two girls trying to cook on the small stools he would have decided to help them, but right now he was thinking about something else and enjoying the softness of Tsunade's big legs.

In a way what he was doing was a good thing, even if Yuta didn't realize it. If Fern hadn't been serving Yuta and Tsunade since she arrived she would have been paranoid that Yuta had kidnapped her to do something else. Right now Fern was just learning about the food of this world from Shizune and her mind was only on the food she was going to make.

It was good that this was happening because sometimes it is the brain that does the most damage to a human being. A comfortable life of suspicion all day can drive a person crazy, but working all day can only make a person tired.

...

Dinner was soon ready. During dinner, Fern and Shizune were talking among themselves. At Shizune's pushing, Fern's personality started to become a little more extroverted. For the last two days, right after sunrise and breakfast, Shizune would take Fern out for a walk around the village and visit the shops. He saw that Fern was particularly curious about the concept of ninja, so he and Shizune had something in common to talk about.

As Yuta listened to their conversation, he realized that Shizune still hadn't noticed his weakness for food, especially barbecue. So Yuta used this opportunity to normalize his awkward relationship with Fern.

"Tsunade-nee I won't be able to join you for practice tomorrow."

Tsunade looked at Yuta's serious expression before putting down the chicken leg she was about to put in her mouth. "What's wrong?"

Yuta realized that Tsunade was not scolding him. What he had expected was for Tsunade to punch him and tell him that there was no escape from training.

"Tomorrow I want to show Fern around the village."

Tsunade took one more look at Yuta's serious expression, realized that it was actually nothing important, and punched him angrily. Yuta felt the mushroom growing on his head and looked at Tsunade with a complaining expression. Before Yuta could complain, Tsunade explained why she had hit him.

"If you don't want to come to practice, just don't come. The cat and mouse game we played with you has zero to do with training anyway. Besides, if you show such a serious expression for such a simple thing, next time I will beat you so hard that no one will be able to understand what your expression is."

Yuta, feeling unfairly wronged, activated the reverse curse technique and got rid of the mushroom growing on his head.

Fern tried to keep her eyes on the table as the wind from the previous punch blew her hair away, and continued to eat as if nothing had happened, but her heart was filled with confusion and some fear.

Even though Tsunade didn't suspect her, Fern was aware of what kind of situation she was in after Yuta's warning, so she suppressed her curiosity and didn't watch the training between Tsunade and Yuta, to avoid making other people feel like she was a spy.

So Fern saw this kind of violence for the first time. If Yuta hadn't continued talking and eating after the punch, Fern would have assumed that his head had exploded.

This show of force reminded Fern of a possibility she had ignored until now; maybe these people were not human and the information in her head was completely fake, maybe a group of demons were pretending to be human and confusing her and Frieren. Maybe it was all just a big theater. Maybe Frieren had tricked herself into making a deal with the demons so that she could leave and she had to stay here. Maybe only this woman and Yuta were demons, but they needed two human children like her and Shizune to hide well among humans. Maybe even Shizune...

Fern was about to lose her composure with her self-created conspiracy theories when Shizune tapped her on the shoulder and asked if something was wrong. This caused Fern to scream in fright and drew everyone's attention.