Chapter 316: I'm a Decent Guy, I Swear
Minato followed the path the crowd had cleared, heading toward the street where Ryū's home sat.
Kushina trailed close behind him, cradling Naruto—pacifier tucked in his mouth—tightly in her arms.
Right now, Minato didn't carry himself much like a Hokage at all. Sure, that same Hokage-worthy bearing was still there underneath, but in this moment, he looked far more like an ordinary father, an ordinary husband.
After all, he was human too—someone with real feelings, a living, breathing person. Once you had a family of your own, of course you valued it deeply.
Frankly, if you asked Minato to choose between his family and Konoha, there was a good chance he'd choose his family.
Why, exactly?
Only he himself really knew the answer to that.
In the original Naruto canon, Minato actually had several viable ways to deal with the Nine-Tails. But at the time, his wife had already been caught in mortal danger.
If he'd chosen not to save her, he, as the Fourth Hokage, would have survived—might've gone on to lead Konoha to even greater heights, forging a whole new era of prosperity for the village.
But if he chose to save her instead, there was a real chance he'd die alongside her. And Minato understood perfectly well just how much impact a Hokage's death could have on an entire hidden village.
And yet, in the original story, Minato chose exactly that—to die alongside Kushina, using the last of his strength to reseal the Nine-Tails in the process.
Some people saw that choice as naive. Others saw it as the right one.
However you judged it, really, came down to personal perspective.
As Minato walked toward Ryū's street, barely a hundred meters in, his footsteps suddenly came to a stop, a flicker of genuine surprise crossing his face.
Kushina, cradling their son beside him, paused right along with him, asking curiously, "Why'd you stop? Something wrong?"
A trace of wariness crept into her expression. If they'd genuinely run into trouble here, that could get complicated fast.
After all, she still had Naruto in her arms right now—fighting under those conditions would leave her hands badly tied, and could easily end up dragging her husband down instead.
That wasn't a scenario Kushina wanted to see play out, not one bit.
Noticing her tension, Minato gave her shoulder a light pat, signaling her to relax.
Then, glancing over at a nearby food stall by the roadside, he said with a smile, "Looks like we won't need to walk much further. Ryū-kun's right over there."
Over there?
Where, exactly?
Following her husband's gaze, Kushina spotted, some ten-odd meters ahead, a small street stall selling grilled meatballs.
The vendor was hawking away, something about "thirty ryo a skewer, three skewers for a hundred."
Sounded fine at first listen, but thinking it over for a second—wasn't that a total rip-off? Three skewers at thirty ryo apiece should only come to ninety, where was this "hundred" business coming from?
Kushina couldn't resist a mental jab at the logic, though she wasn't quite sure where exactly to even start picking it apart.
That's when she noticed two young people sitting on stools in front of the stall—one boy, one girl, both with the exact same shade of jet-black hair, both looking fairly young.
The boy looked to be around seventeen or eighteen at a glance, while the black-haired girl beside him looked to be maybe thirteen or fourteen—quite a bit younger.
Both of them, it had to be said, were genuinely good-looking—the boy handsome, the girl pretty—giving off something of a sibling-like impression.
Probably because their hair color and eye color matched so closely, which was likely why Kushina's first instinct read them as siblings.
In reality, Anko's eyes leaned more toward brown, but in the dim evening light, it was easy enough to mistake them for the same near-black shade as Ryū's.
As Kushina and Minato spotted Ryū and Anko, the two of them naturally noticed the approaching couple right back.
Ryū, one of the actual subjects of this whole visit, hadn't even reacted yet when Anko, visibly startled, shot up from her stool and bowed respectfully. "Hokage-sama!"
Minato blinked in mild surprise himself. His attention had been entirely on Ryū up until that point, but Anko standing up to greet him drew his notice properly now.
Of course he recognized her—she was Orochimaru's student, after all, and there weren't many people among Konoha's leadership who wouldn't recognize her by sight.
Though... when exactly had Anko gotten this close with Ryū? The two of them looked practically like old acquaintances—genuinely puzzling.
Minato nodded warmly, smiling. "Anko, no need to call me 'Hokage-sama' so formally. You're Orochimaru-senpai's student, and I'm Jiraiya-sensei's student—technically, that actually puts the two of us on the same generational tier."
He held no particular prejudice against her, certainly wasn't about to treat her poorly just because her teacher happened to be a defected criminal. If anything, he'd gone out of his way to look out for her—for instance, when Danzō had once tried to have her brought in to ROOT for interrogation, Minato had personally vetoed it outright.
Minato knew exactly what ROOT was. Hand Anko over to Danzō, and would she ever come back out again? And even if she somehow did, would she still be recognizably herself afterward?
"Say, Anko, do you and Ryū-kun know each other? I actually came by hoping to introduce him to my son and my wife—Ryū-kun's the one who saved both Naruto and Kushina, after all."
Minato didn't bother hiding the purpose of his visit—he said it plainly, since it wasn't exactly a secret to begin with.
Anko hurriedly replied, "You're Konoha's Hokage—I'm just an ordinary Chūnin, hardly on the same level as you, Ho—Minato-sama. Ryū-kun and I only just met, really, just a passing chance encounter."
A passing chance encounter? Watching Anko's noticeably flustered demeanor, Minato's expression shifted into something distinctly odd.
Surely... surely this wasn't actually exactly what it looked like?
A young man and woman, alone together, sharing a meal on a festival evening.
Wait—Anko was only thirteen this year, wasn't she? Barely just made Chūnin, too. Never expected Ryū-kun's tastes ran... this particular direction.
Sure, technically speaking, Konoha's legal marriage age was twelve and up, but that was still awfully young! Practically nobody actually got married at twelve.
Watching Minato's stunned expression, clearly spinning off into all sorts of speculation, Ryū felt several dark lines materialize across his forehead. Of course he could see exactly what was running through Minato's head right now.
Unbelievable—this man, who looked so composed and proper on the surface...
...was apparently just as capable of spiraling into completely inappropriate mental tangents underneath?!
He, Ryū, was a perfectly decent, upstanding guy, thank you very much!
Don't go jumping to the wrong conclusions here!
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