"Good morning, Fujiko-sensei. Have you been waiting for me here this whole time?" Akira asked with a smile when he spotted the old lady in the backyard, gently rocking in a chair while stroking Aika, who lay across her knees.
The fox acknowledged her master's presence with a cute yap, but she didn't hurry over to nuzzle him; Fujiko's fingers were too perfectly finding her weak spots, making her purr with satisfaction like a cat - though from a fox's mouth it sounded more like a dog's soft whimper.
"Head to our clearing and do your warm-up. I'll be along shortly." No hello, no good morning. Fujiko didn't even ask why he was late, nor did she remind him what punishment awaited for skipping training - or rather, for so rudely wasting her personal time.
Akira wasn't fooled by his teacher's calm, indifferent air - if anything, that behavior scared him most. Sure, he could avoid the teacher's punishment, but that would mean the end of her mentorship, and however he felt about their sessions, they undeniably benefitted him.
Even a world champion in martial arts could gain a lot under a real shinobi mentor, never mind him. Solo training is a far cry from sessions where a kunai sings threateningly around your groin. Like it or not, you'll give your absolute maximum. Going all-out every single day by yourself is practically impossible - unless you've got Gai-level willpower.
Authors love to write about isekai protagonists who tear themselves apart with daily training, surpassing their limits day after day. In reality, that's not how it works. A person whose biggest concern is what to order for dinner won't suddenly start training at 100% every day just because they got reincarnated. Well... unless we're talking about certain Chinese isekai heroes.
Thinking about how national cultures shape work ethic, Akira reached one of the few training grounds of the Uchiha. Back when the clan's numbers were healthy, four such clearings - or "ranges," as people often called them - were enough that no one felt cramped. Now, with the clan population not even breaking into three digits, two of those ranges were almost always empty.
Already changed into training clothes, Akira started warming up. First, a full stretch of every joint - that usually took twenty minutes. Then a run around the range to get the heart pumping. After that, bringing the muscles to tone with various bodyweight drills. In under fifty minutes, Akira was fully fight-ready. Experienced shinobi could prime their bodies to peak in twenty minutes. If they were on a mission and didn't have time for that, chakra would do the job in under a minute.
Quick, yes - but risky. Chakra will tone the muscles, but it won't warm the joints. And while shinobi are "superhuman" in a villager's eyes, without proper prep they can injure themselves just like a newbie who walks into a gym for the first time and decides to yank his bodyweight and more in a single go.
"Well? Where is she? Is this her payback? No, that would be petty on her part," Akira thought, having waited a total of a half hour for his sensei.
Ten minutes later, he finally heard someone approaching the range. He was already smiling, ready to report that his warm-up was complete, when his expression froze.
"Today you'll spar with her. Ten rounds. A round ends only when someone loses consciousness." Fujiko nodded toward the girl standing just behind her.
"Mmm. Understood," Akira said, keeping his tone in check. "Sensei, may I write my will in advance?"
Itachi, hearing that, raised a brow in mild confusion.
"Hehe, no, Shinigami won't save you. And yes, you may remove your weights."
"As if that'll help," Akira muttered, unclasping the small metal rings from his limbs - the kind you could easily hide under clothes if you wanted. Getting good ones was hard. For obvious reasons, the Uzumaki clan wasn't producing them anymore. If he hadn't managed to procure them through shopkeeper connections, he would've had to ask Kushina and settle for something of lower quality.
Whatever her reputation in fuinjutsu, her specialization was narrow. As she herself admitted, she knew barrier and sealing arrays best - anything tied to space. Sure, she could inscribe a storage fuin on a ring that wouldn't seal weight away, essentially creating a weight-band. But the beauty of these bracelets was that the added mass distributed evenly across the entire body, and the load could be tuned by feeding chakra correctly into the fuin scheme.
In other words, when Akira threw a punch, he wouldn't have his whole body dragged forward by the weight concentrated in the fist.
He'd gotten them on his sensei's orders - along with the decree to never remove them without her permission. He didn't mind; they didn't hinder daily life at all once set to minimum load, and the extra sixty kilos spread evenly across his frame had already become barely noticeable to him.
"Ready, Akira-san?" Itachi asked, taking her stance ten paces away from him.
"Yes. Just one request." He raised a hand, drawing Itachi's attention - and Fujiko's as she settled into the rocking chair near the range. She'd stolen his habit of hauling around scrolls for tea and seating; in this case, she'd privatized a custom-built rocker. Akira didn't mind gifting it to his teacher.
"She won't hit you in the groin if that's what you're worried about," Fujiko grumbled.
"I'll be careful," Itachi nodded, casting a quick look downward at Akira.
"I just hope ten knockouts don't turn me into an idiot," Akira thought, taking his fighting stance.
****
Mezumi got up later than usual today. She wasn't an early riser by most standards anyway, but this time she lazed about until noon. The reason - her younger brother.
Three weeks living together had brought her and Akira close enough that her big-sisterly care and sense of responsibility had awakened again. Yes, Akira was no longer that misaligned, sweet boy she'd had to watch so he wouldn't get into trouble. He'd grown up. He was fully independent and - much as she hated to admit it - he didn't need her help at all.
Financially, he could compete with any minor clan in Konoha - that is, any clan not on the clan council. He could solve problems. As much as Mezumi liked to flatter herself, he would have been able to work something out with her relative in Tanzaku anyway. As for his safety... she didn't worry too much.
Living in Konoha, and in the Uchiha district no less, there were few who could threaten him. And if any tried... Mezumi wasn't blind. On the contrary, she was sensitive and observant, and her keen mind let her put two and two together easily. She could say with certainty that her brother had special relations with the head of the Uchiha clan. Granted, any fool could say that - not everyone was allowed to live in their district, let alone be made a clan advisor.
Mezumi simply knew - knew, not guessed - why. Mikoto clearly had a strong fondness for her brother. Which meant that, should real trouble arise, that woman would help fix it.
And, as it turned out, his ties with the informal head of the Uzumaki clan were even closer. She knew exactly where he went yesterday. When he didn't come home by midnight, she realized he'd stayed over at his "friend's." Mezumi would have bet anything he hadn't slept alone.
Even so, she couldn't fall asleep right away; there was always a chance he hadn't returned for different reasons. And the morning rumor of a murder in the village didn't calm her. Fortunately, early-rising Nekorin, who relayed the news, also assured her that Akira had come home in the morning and gone straight to training.
*Heh, my little brother doesn't miss. He's charmed two very far-from-ordinary women. If Father were alive, he'd have a good hearty laugh,* Mezumi thought, studying her toes as she lay in the bath.
Who knows how much longer she would have soaked in the hot water if the door hadn't suddenly opened.
Covering the breast rising just above the water with a hand, Mezumi frowned at Akira. He had zero respect for her personal space. When he needed the bathroom and Nekorin was inside, he politely knocked so she'd know he needed it too. With Mezumi, though - no knock, no sorry, not even the courtesy of averting his eyes. And this happened almost daily.
She had, of course, thought to put a lock on the door, but Akira forbade it outright, arguing that once she left, he'd be living alone again and had no reason to lock himself in.
"I'm still washing," she announced, seeing him undress completely.
"Perfect. I just need a hand scrubbing the sweat off my back," he said, stepping up to the tub.
"You can't just do it yoursel—" Mezumi cut herself off mid-sentence when she saw his condition. When he'd undressed, she looked away. Now, standing two steps from her, she took him in properly. Her gaze went, like iron filings to a magnet, to the most attention-getting part of a man's body - there's no fighting that. When a woman sees a naked man, that's where she looks first.
She wrestled her instincts down and raised her eyes - and saw his swollen, bright-red and, in places, bluish-purple muscles. His arms were almost completely purple; only his fingers looked normal.
"What happened?" she asked, alarmed.
"Training. This is how I look after sparring with the Uchiha clan's genius. But note: the most important parts are untouched." While Mezumi, of course, had her own opinion on which parts were "most important" and was looking right at them, Akira set a foot into the tub - right where her legs were pressed together.
"Right, not a scratch on your face... Wait, there isn't enough room."
"We'll fit," Akira disagreed - he'd once spent a month of his life playing Tetris. With a surprised squeak from Mezumi, he grabbed her calves and lifted, seating himself where her feet had been. Once down, he stretched his legs so they ran on either side of Mezumi's waist. Her legs, which he still held, he spread and laid across his thighs, while her feet ended up tucked neatly beneath his armpits.
"Shameless, absolutely shameless," she muttered, covering her modesty with the only free hand. Her other hand covered her chest.
But Akira no longer heard her. The comfortable position finally let him relax completely, and his brain, seizing the chance, dropped him into accelerated recovery - sleep.
*There he goes again, passing out in the bath. I should ask his teacher to go easier on him. At this rate he'll burn out,* Mezumi thought, eyeing the bruises.
Every now and then, though, her gaze dipped to the part drifting under the water. The heat had done enough to the blood flow in his pelvis that, even unconscious, Akira's member was slightly engorged. The sharpness of the situation was that their intimate places were separated by only a forearm's length.
Akira slept. Mezumi was alone in the bathroom. Whatever she did now, no one would know. That thought circled in her mind for several minutes.
*Well... I suppose there's nothing so terrible about this.*
As most women would gladly part their thighs for Akira, so too would most men part theirs for Mezumi if she asked. And yet, Mezumi felt aversion to men - not to them as people or as a sex, but to their physicality. Rarely did she meet a man who suited her looks-wise, and even more rarely did such a man turn out not to be a monster in character. In terms of lying with a man, you could call Mezumi a virgin; and if she'd seen sexual organs, they were exclusively female.
Of course she knew what a male penis looked like - books and illustrations exist, after all, and as kids she and her little brother had bathed together. But that was in childhood. In various romances, warriors' "manly endowments" were described as spears that pierced the heavens, inspiring awe and fear in any woman. Talking to many women later, Mezumi realized that romances routinely exaggerated the sizes of historic figures and heroes. After all, how could a famed, manly, ruthless general-samurai have a penis the size of a pinky? Unthinkable!
As the freest-spirited of her acquaintances liked to say: it's good enough if a man's length is about a woman's palm.
*And Akira's is clearly longer - and that's not even fully hard,* Mezumi thought, slowly sliding her hand under the water toward the named organ.
Watching his face carefully, curiosity led her to touch him. Akira's expression didn't even twitch. Emboldened, she touched "it" again. Convinced he wouldn't wake from this, she finally dared to study his male sign a bit more thoroughly.
Instead of just the one inquisitive finger poking and stroking, the rest joined in. Feeling movement, she startled and snatched her hand back.
*He's asleep,* she confirmed with relief. When her attention returned to him, she realized with a start that the head had partly risen above the surface, gleaming as it peeked out of the water.
Akira was aroused. Mezumi realized she was too.
*No need to push my luck any further.* If Akira woke at the worst possible moment, she'd have no idea what to say. She slowed her exploration of his genitals. There was, however, another sex organ she could touch without fear - and that stiffening member, coupled with the fact it belonged to her younger brother, only added spice to acts she hadn't enjoyed in a long while without someone else's hands.
"Nmn..." a soft moan slipped from behind her closed lips. The sound helped her come to, to realize exactly what she was doing.
*What am I doing? Lying completely naked in a bath with my brother, touching his penis, then spreading for myself in front of him. No, there's definitely something wrong with me.*
Not daring to go further, still flushed with arousal, Mezumi stepped out of the tub and moved on to her morning beauty routine, mulling over what she'd just done.
*This is all Akira's fault - strutting around in his birthday suit, he has no sense of propriety. And because he's here, I have to hold off on playing with Nekorin. The last time we managed to relax was only a week ago, when we booked a hotel.* Akira never brought women home while his sister was around, so she considered it fair not to indulge in debauchery under his roof either.
Unfortunately, lazy by nature, she didn't want to book a room every day; it was always easier to take care of herself. Because of that, she and Nekorin only had fun when she was at her limit holding her lust in. And Akira's little freedoms at home didn't help at all. If he were her older brother it might have been too weird, but since he was younger, the responsibility for "allowing" such behavior in his own house fell on the shoulders of the person who permitted it - Mezumi.
But you can't forbid the homeowner from walking around his own place as he pleases, hence the dead end. Still, she could live with it. In every other respect, it was pleasant living with her brother - someone before whom she didn't have to play the seme, just an ordinary, lazy girl who was treated as an equal. Nekorin - her closest and most trusted retainer - couldn't match Akira in that.
No matter how she coaxed her, no matter how many embarrassing things they did, Nekorin always regarded her first as her lady, and only then as a friend.
All good and bad things end sooner or later. In a week, she was planning to return to her prefecture. She couldn't leave such a critical node in the Land of Fire's economy unattended for long. Maybe she would have stayed a bit longer, but she didn't like the looks her maid threw at Akira.
*She already sways her hips at him every chance she gets. If I leave them alone, my younger brother will end up possessing her body completely - and then her heart.*
Mezumi's jealousy was understandable. Everything about her servants belonged to their lady on demand - everything except their soul. The idea that their hearts and bodies could be stolen from her in the most banal way was distasteful. She had no doubt the male servants would never betray her trust - not that they were even allowed in her presence. But the same could not be said of the women - they were more susceptible to the charms of the opposite sex.
What happened three days later only cemented her resolve to return to the prefecture without delay.
It happened after lunch, around four. Around that time, Akira usually took Aika out, letting her romp in the park, and then wandered into the city center in search of an interesting snack shop or a new place where he could sit and eat.
Meanwhile, Mezumi worked through documents delivered by post or via urgent telegram from her palace - prefecture business. She could never fully delegate her work; that would be irresponsible. At such times, Nekorin was either out on the lawn watering newly planted flowers or in the kitchen making dinner.
A sudden rain pulled Mezumi from her papers. Deciding to take a break, she slipped quietly toward the kitchen with a little prank in mind. Only... Nekorin wasn't in the kitchen, nor in the living room. And with the rain, she obviously wouldn't be outside. That made Mezumi frown - the bathroom door stood open, and there was nowhere else her maid could be. If Nekorin stepped out, even briefly, she always asked permission.
A sour suspicion crept into her mind when she saw Akira's bedroom door slightly ajar.
*With the rain he could have returned early. Don't tell me...* Lips pressed tight, suppressing the annoyance rising in her chest, she padded forward even more quietly. Thanks to the recent renovations, not a board nor bit of trim creaked - for now, the house was perfect for a silent approach. Well-oiled hinges on doors and windows made no sound when opened.
Shinobi, by contrast, liked noisy houses; some even treated stress points so everything would creak at movement. Occupational hazard, you could say. Of course, a professional shinobi knew where to step so that even the oldest floorboards didn't utter a peep. In the worst case, they moved along ceilings or walls. Mezumi had no need for that.
Pressing lightly, she eased the door open, held her breath - and finally found her maid.
*I don't even know whether to be angry or delighted,* she thought, discovering only Nekorin in the bedroom. The only thing keeping her from rejoicing at her brother's absence was that the maid was managing just fine without him.
*And here I was wondering why she washes his bedding so often,* Mezumi pouted, continuing to watch as her maid very actively brushed "excess dust" off Akira's pillow.
All would have been well, except she was using her hips and her crotch to do it, moving with slow, cyclical motions that spoke of experience in their own way.
*Honestly... seduced her without doing anything,* Mezumi thought ruefully, watching Nekorin hold the pillow with one hand while kneeling on the futon, and with the other hand clutching a T-shirt to her face, inhaling its scent with a languid sigh. Mezumi didn't need a fortune teller to know whose shirt that was.
*Filthy, obscene - and at the same time, such a turn-on... and yes, her backside is top-notch.* Mezumi's gaze was riveted to those two charming peaches, hugged by white panties. The urge to startle and scold her maid vanished when she realized how sexy the scene was. She had never once caught Nekorin in the act of self-pleasure - and she had no intention of wasting such a singular gift of fate.
*If I reveal myself, she'll stop. If she realizes I'm watching, she definitely won't continue.* Of course Mezumi could give an order - but that would kill the spice. And, to be honest, lately she'd felt something missing in her sex life with Nekorin, and this right here reawakened an old fire.
Not wanting to interrupt Nekorin, she sank carefully to her knees, hitching up the hem of her house dress. The little ache where her kneecaps met the floor couldn't dampen the rising heat.
Watching Nekorin with one eye, she began rubbing herself with her fingers. First through the fabric of her dark panties, then slipping her fingers under them. [ image ]

*This reminds me of...* The scene - watching indecency from behind a door - stirred old and very vivid memories. Mezumi remembered her first orgasm perfectly. In fact, it might be the thing she remembered best from her maidenhood.
It happened six months before her younger brother disappeared. She still chuckled sometimes when she thought of that night. Akira loved sleeping with his big sister, and despite their parents' rules, he would sneak into her room at night from time to time.
Mezumi adored her little brother, and she spoiled him when she could. She never told on her unruly rascal. One night, Akira came to her in a panic, waking her with the words that Father was beating Mother - that she was crying.
Calming him with a promise to sort it out, they went together to their parents' room.
Just like now, kneeling, Mezumi watched the indecency through a cracked door.
Father was "beating" their mother - but not with fists, with an open hand. And precocious Mezumi immediately understood that Mother's cries had nothing to do with those harmless little smacks. Mother's repeated "Harder, deeper," and Father's baffled, "How could I go any deeper?" made it clear none of it was against her will.
Akira, standing behind his kneeling sister, was beside himself with worry, but she motioned with her fingers for him to be quiet.
Mezumi, enthralled by her parents' act, felt an itch between her thighs and began to squirm her hips, discovering entirely new and unexpectedly pleasant sensations.
At some point those sensations spiked, and the nervous system of a girl far too young for such arousal made her pay the price by collapsing boneless to the floor. At that moment, her concerned little brother asked anxiously:
"Are you okay?"
Hearing those words, the Mezumi of then said she felt bliss. Hearing them now, she jolted head to toe in fright.
Mezumi had been right to suspect Akira might come home early because of the rain. She had simply forgotten herself too much and switched off every sense except the one focused on watching Nekorin.
Pulling herself together at once, Mezumi rose, smoothed her hem, and, as if nothing had happened, asked calmly:
"When did you get back?"
Akira didn't even try to play along with her oh-so-polite game of pretend.
"About the time you started using three fingers." Only then did she notice that he'd been behind her the whole time, sitting comfortably on a chair that she had no idea how had gotten there, sipping tea.
"And that didn't faze you at all?" she asked, fighting to keep her emotions in check. She meant: weren't you ashamed to watch?
"Well..." Akira mused, lifting his gaze to the ceiling. "Maybe your nails. Trim them, would you? It won't be long before you hurt yourself by accident."
*HE IS TOO SHAMELESS!* She yanked off a slipper and hurled it at his fox-like, smug, grinning face. He dodged easily with a simple tilt of his head - and again when she threw the second slipper. Stamping her bare feet in place, Mezumi, mortified, head down, scurried back to her room.
She knew the longer she spoke to Akira, the more awkward she'd feel. And appealing to his morality or sense of honor was impossible even for her. For any jab, Akira would find a retort - or three.
A few seconds later, an utterly crimson Nekorin came out of the room, arms full of Akira's futon, pillow, and assorted bedding.
"Oh, Akira-san, you've returned. I was... just about to wash your things."
Akira glanced at the rain sheeting down the living room window and, smiling at Nekorin, simply said:
"Wonderful."
Head down, she, like her lady, hastily fled his line of sight.