Moving into the new house should have felt like a victory.
In some ways, it did.
It had space. Real space. Not compound space shared with a dozen other families and twice as many children. Not a cramped room where everything had to be stacked, folded, or apologized for. This place sat near the outskirts of the village, where the roads got rougher, the yards got wider, and people minded their own business a little more.
We had a patch of dirt out back that could become a garden with enough work. A fence that leaned but hadn't surrendered yet. A roof that looked like it might leak in two places instead of six. To Duy, it was a palace.
To me, it was potential.
Duy spent the first hour after we arrived carrying things in and declaring every corner youthful. The front room was youthful. The kitchen was youthful. The yard was the future training ground of youthful greatness. At one point he stood in the middle of the house with his hands on his hips and announced that even the floorboards creaked with passion.
I let him have that.
A man ought to enjoy the first home he can honestly call his own.
Especially a man who'd clawed his way there on genin pay, sore muscles, and optimism loud enough to influence weather.
I spent the first day doing my own kind of inspection.
The pantry.
The water.
The yard.
The kitchen setup.
The distance to nearby neighbors.
The quality of the light.
The soil out back was better than I'd hoped. Dry on top, healthier below. The fence line would need work, but nothing impossible. There was room enough for chickens if we got lucky. Maybe a goat later. Maybe more, if I stayed patient and life cooperated.
That was the good news.
The bad news was the food.
The second night in the house, I sat at the little table with Duy and stared at dinner like it had personally insulted me.
Rice.
Pickled vegetables.
A thin soup that had ambitions of becoming broth someday if it worked very hard and believed in itself.
Duy smiled proudly. "Our First meal in our own home!"
I looked down into the bowl.
It looked back, nutrient-deficient and unapologetic.
Now, I am not an ungrateful man. I had lived long enough in one life to know that a man with shelter and food shouldn't spit on either.
But I had also been a rancher, and there are some facts about the world that remain true no matter what village hidden behind what mountain you happen to be living in.
Bad fuel makes bad results.
Cheap food keeps you alive.
Good food builds you.
Those are not the same thing.
Duy saw my face and laughed. "What is it, my son? Does the meal not stir the flames of youth?"
I looked up at him and tried to choose words gentle enough for a man who had just moved us into a house with more hope than money.
"The food's weak," I said. "It'll keep us standing, but it won't build much."
He blinked.
Then he leaned over and peered into his own bowl like maybe it had betrayed him personally.
"This soup?"
I nodded.
He looked wounded for half a second, then thoughtful.
"Well," he said, scratching his cheek, "it is… modest."
That was one word for it.
We could afford the house.
Just barely.
That was the shape of the problem.
The mission to Uzushio had paid enough to get us in the door and keep us there if Duy stayed employed and if we stayed careful. Careful meant cheap food. Cheap food meant poor nutrition. Poor nutrition meant weaker recovery, slower growth, worse training, and a future I found personally offensive.
I could not stand for it.
Not if I meant to build this body properly.
Not if I meant to make use of whatever strange sense I'd been given.
Not if I meant to survive in a village where most of the important people could probably kill a bear by mistake.
So I started planning.
That's one advantage of having already been old once. Panic loses most of its glamour. When a problem shows up, you don't waste time being insulted by it. You sit down and ask what it can be turned into.
I had a house.
A yard.
A growing sense for vitality.
Some experience with fermentation, distillation, and the sort of practical foolishness rural people dignify by calling tradition.
And then, while Duy snored with the untroubled confidence of a man convinced effort solved most things, I had a thought so clear it nearly woke me all the way up.
Medicinal moonshine.
Now, before you get judgmental, let me explain.
Back in my first life, my grandfather had known how to make shine. Not for glamour. Not because he was a criminal mastermind. Because during hard years, prohibition years, and plain old poor years, men in the country learned fast that corn, sugar, yeast, and patience could turn into money if you minded your fire and kept your mouth shut.
But the thing he'd taught me that mattered wasn't the shine itself.
It was what people added to it.
Roots.
Berries.
Herbs.
Tonics.
Pain remedies, cough killers, warming blends, sleep aids—all of it living somewhere between medicine and vice depending on dosage and how honest a man was being with himself.
Most of it wasn't fancy.
Some of it worked.
And if I could combine something like that with my vitality sense, if I could find stronger plants, cleaner plants, maybe even nudge them a little with that warm little current in me, then maybe I could turn cheap countryside knowledge into actual income.
Not enough to get rich.
But enough to buy eggs.
Meat.
Better vegetables.
The things a growing body needed.
The next morning, I started foraging.
Or tried to.
The land around the outskirts of Konoha had plenty growing wild if you knew what you were looking at. Shrubs. Low weeds. Creeping vines. Patches of stubborn little plants tucked between rocks or under fence shadows.
I crouched over the first cluster I found and frowned at it.
Green leaves.
Thin stem.
Smelled vaguely bitter when crushed.
Absolutely useless information.
"That," I muttered to myself, "is a problem."
Because I knew plants existed.
I knew some of what they did in broad terms from my first life.
But broad terms don't help when you're kneeling in the dirt of another world staring at a leaf you cannot name in a system you do not yet understand.
I tried a second patch.
Then a third.
One felt lively. One felt faint. One had a dry little buzz to it that suggested it might matter.
None of that told me what any of them were called, whether they were safe, whether they fermented well, whether they'd taste decent, or whether they'd quietly shut down a man's liver.
I sat back on my heels and rubbed a hand over my face.
"I hate being ignorant."
That was the heart of it.
Not effort. Not ideas. Ignorance.
And the worst part was that I didn't have the money to solve the problem the stupid way.
There were herbs in village shops. I'd seen them. Bundled, dried, labeled, expensive.
I knew enough to recognize value when I saw it and enough to recognize when I couldn't afford any of it.
Even the ingredients I did know from Earth wouldn't help much. Grain cost money. Sugar cost money. Containers cost money. Time cost money. Everything cost money, and what I had in abundance was frustration.
So there I was.
A three and a half-year-old old man with a plan, a half-developed supernatural agricultural sense, no useful vocabulary for local plants, and not enough cash to experiment my way into competence.
Which left one easy solution.
The library.
I did not say this out loud immediately, because I knew what would happen. Duy would either be deeply impressed that his son hungered for knowledge or profoundly alarmed that his toddler wanted to go research intoxicants and medicinal herbs.
With him, it could go either way.
As it turned out, the decision got made for us before I had to raise it.
Three days after we moved in, Duy came back from the mission office with that particular careful look men get when they're trying to present bad news like it's just another kind of weather.
He sat across from me at the table after dinner and folded his hands.
"My son," he said.
That tone alone told me I wasn't going to enjoy the next part.
"I have been assigned a mission."
I nodded.
That wasn't unusual.
"Two weeks."
That was less good.
I waited.
Duy rubbed the back of his neck. "You'll stay at the Senju compound while I'm gone."
I stared at him.
He stared back with the determined gentleness of a man who had already argued with himself about this and decided he was going to be responsible whether either of us liked it or not.
"I live here now," I said. "I should stay here."
"You do live here," he agreed. "But you are still three."
There are times in a man's life when hearing the truth only makes it more offensive.
"It's my house too."
"And I am your father."
Blast him.
He had the unfair advantage of being right in the most inconvenient direction possible.
He leaned forward. "If you were older, if you could cook safely, if you could care for yourself without risk, then perhaps. But you cannot."
I opened my mouth to argue, and he held up a hand.
"You are strong for your age," he said. "You are clever for your age. You are…" He paused, searching for the word. "…unusual and smart."
That was one way to put it.
"But you are still three."
There it was again. That number. That humiliating, technically accurate prison sentence.
"I know how to eat," I muttered. "I'm not helpless."
He smiled faintly. "Not helpless, no. But you are one overturned pot away from setting the kitchen on fire."
I could not honestly promise otherwise.
That made it worse.
Duy stood, came around the table, and crouched until we were eye level.
"I do not send you back because I wish to," he said quietly. "I send you because I must know you are safe."
Now, that was harder to argue with.
Not impossible.
But harder.
Because beneath all the noise and nonsense and speeches about youth, Duy loved me with the straightforward ferocity of a man who'd built his whole life around refusing to abandon what was his.
It is difficult to stay angry at that when you know what abandonment actually looks like.
So I looked away and exhaled through my nose.
He took my silence for the partial surrender it was and rested a hand on my shoulder.
"When I return," he said, "we continue. Training. Building. The future of this home."
I glanced back at him.
Then, because if I was going to be exiled by practical necessity, I might as well profit from it, I asked, "Does the compound have a library?"
Duy blinked.
Then his face lit up like dawn had personally chosen him.
"YES!"
Too loud.
Far too loud.
"MY SON SEEKS KNOWLEDGE!"
"I seek books," I corrected. "Knowledge is what I plan to do with them."
"BOOKS OF YOUTHFUL KNOWLEDGE!"
That was close enough, I supposed.
The next morning, he packed my things with the solemn gravity of a man preparing a prince for diplomatic travel instead of returning his toddler to community housing for two weeks. Clothes. Blanket. A little carved toy horse he insisted I liked more than I did.
By the time we reached the Senju compound, my temper had cooled enough to make room for strategy.
If I couldn't stay home, then I'd use the time.
Books meant names.
Names meant understanding.
Understanding meant process.
And process meant money.
Not fast money.
Not reckless money.
Useful money.
The kind that turned weak soup into broth worth respecting.
Duy knelt before leaving and gripped my shoulders. "Endure these two weeks with passion, my son! When I return, we will step boldly into the next season of youth!"
I looked at him.
Then at the compound behind me.
Then back at him.
"Bring money," I said. "Effort is admirable, but it doesn't buy eggs."
He barked a laugh so loud two caretakers turned to stare.
"I shall bring effort!"
"That," I said, "is exactly what I'm worried about."
He laughed even harder, ruffled my hair, and rose to his feet.
Then he was gone.
I watched him disappear down the road in that green blur of sincerity and bad judgment, and when he turned the corner I let out a slow breath.
Two weeks.
I could work with two weeks.
I turned toward the compound already thinking about shelves, herb guides, brewing manuals, village records, and whether the section on medicinal plants would let a child sit quietly in the corner without too many questions.
Frustration was fine.
So long as it had somewhere to go.
And if I couldn't yet care for myself like a grown man, then I'd do the next best thing.
By the time Duy came back, I'd have a plan worth funding.