Patre/my_ed_might_hit_me
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Meanwhile, in the Hokage's office, Sarutobi Hiruzen looked into his nieces's tearful eyes and decided to talk her out of it early.
"Okay, don't cry. Didn't you hear the Anbu saying Eren had a sudden personality change today? Maybe he's not the right person for this."
Sarutobi had initially thought it was a good idea, but he never expected Eren to suddenly become such a rude person.
Of course, Sarutobi never imagined Eren would deceive himself all these years.
"But, uncle! You said you set up Uzumaki Eren and me on a blind date."
"Don't think about that right now. Besides, it's best for you to marry a jonin who can save you when you're in trouble."
"But!"
"That's enough, Kairi! Go home, it's late."
Sarutobi Kairi saw her uncle getting irritated and realized it was time to stop talking about the blind date. Leaving the office, she asked an Anbu to escort her and headed home.
Seeing this, Hiruzen realized that Kairi had always asked the same Anbu to drive her home. Moreover, Kairi waited in complete silence until she was certain Eren wouldn't show up.
Hiruzen nodded as if he finally realized everything and asked the Anbu behind him for information about the Anbu accompanying Kairi.
After a while, Hiruzen stopped thinking about it when he couldn't find anything wrong. He had no reason to disapprove of the two of them.
Hiruzen was unconsciously glad Eren hadn't come. If Eren had come, if the blind date had gone ahead under his pressure, and if Kairi's relationship had been revealed later, it would have made Eren hate him.
"Anyway, break into Eren's house tonight while he's sleeping and see if he's been affected by any genjutsu lately."
"Yes, sir!"
As soon as the Anbu who had received the order had disappeared, Sarutobi opened his desk drawer and pulled out a black tobacco. He had sent someone to buy it when he heard about Eren's new product, and it wasn't cheap at all.
After crushing the tobacco and placing it in his pipe, he immediately lit it and took a deep breath.
What followed next were harsh coughs that shook the entire Hokage building.
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After depositing my employees' half-salaries in the black envelopes with gold trim I always use, I was about to go door-to-door to distribute the salaries when I received a notification from the system that my template similarity had been deducted by 3 points.
After some thought, the most likely reason was that the envelopes I used for paying were unnecessarily expensive.
I sighed and, too lazy to replace all the envelopes, accepted the negative rating I received and began distributing the envelopes. Thankfully, I didn't receive any more negative ratings for the envelopes, which cost so little.
I managed to maintain my concrete face as I went door-to-door, subjected to creative curses extolling my wisdom, and returned home.
My residence is the house where Kushina lived with Minato before her death. When Kushina died, I spoke with Hiruzen and inherited the house with a small sum of money.
If I were to describe its appearance, it would be a small, two-story detached house, similar to the one Naruto lives in in the Boruto anime.
As soon as I got home, I relaxed under the hot water and quickly sank into bed.
That's when I remembered another aspect of the template, both good and bad.
Trader Rekt used to open his shop every morning at 4:05 AM and close it every evening at 9:50 PM. This meant I had to open mine at the same time to maintain template similarity.
I was about to angrily gnaw on my pillow and fall asleep when I received an unexpected notification from the system.
[Template similarity -10]
[Please increase your template similarity within 10 minutes to activate the early template completion function.]
"WTF did I just do??? Is Rekt Dosn't sleep, or something like that?"
[A tip from Trader Rekt: Bedtime is when you're most at risk. You should secure yourself before going to sleep! As I always say: Don't trust anyone, not even yourself.]
"What! What do you want from me? Should I tie myself up before going to bed? What do you want?"
Cursing the system for being dragged out of bed just as I was about to fall asleep, I began taking every security precaution I could think of. I also had to act quickly, because my time was limited.
First, I locked the doors a few more times to make sure no one could enter the house while I was asleep. Then, just because I knew how to use ninjas to break into the house, I set booby traps in front of each window.
By booby trap, I simply wrapped some rope under the window. After all, I couldn't possibly have built a better trap in such a short time.
"As if a ninja were to climb through the window and fall to the ground because their foot got tangled in the ropes..."
Unfortunately, there are very few ninjas in the world who would be caught in such a simple trap.
By the time I finished setting the booby trap in front of the last window, only one minute remained on my 10-minute countdown. Fortunately, Trader Rekt found the trap I set sufficient, and my pattern similarity increased by 13 points, reaching 100% again.
With my nerves completely on edge, I lay down on my bed and fell asleep instantly, until I was awakened by the sound of something falling to the floor.
...
Hearing a sudden noise in the middle of the night, I jumped out of bed in fear, as any ordinary person would, reflexively turning my head toward the source of the sound.
I was so shocked by what I saw that I remained frozen for several seconds.
"It's been a while, Kakashi?"
A magnificent ninja like Kakashi had fallen flat on his face, his foot tangled in the ropes I had haphazardly placed. Upon hearing my voice, he quickly untangled himself from the ropes and stood up, tidying himself up.
Despite the dimly lit room, I could clearly see Kakashi's face turning red through the gaps left by his mask.
"Last time I saw you, you weren't the kind of ninja who would fall into such a simple trap. Won't you talk?"
Kakashi finally managed to snap out of his daze and began scratching the back of his head in embarrassment. He kept his head turned away, avoiding looking at me, which was very strange.
Even though I sleep in my underwear at night, I'm three years older than him, and we're both boys. I pushed Kakashi's suspicious embarrassment into the back of my mind and calmly stared at him, waiting for him to speak.
First, he got up from the ground, freed himself from the rope that had gotten tangled around his foot, coughed twice to shake off his embarrassment, and then began to speak.
"Of course, as an Anbu captain, I'm not one to fall into such a simple trap, but this house is a place I used to frequent, and I didn't expect a non-ninja's house to be set up, so I got stuck. And, you know, I was quite distracted by the cat I saw on the way there. Hahaha, ahah, ahaha..."
I sighed and changed the subject to spare him the embarrassment.
"I mean, I'm serious. We haven't spoken since Kushina and Minato left. Back then, at least once a month, Kushina would invite us over for dinner, and we'd sit down and eat together. Now, you don't even come to my store unless Jiraya-sama release a new book... Hahaha, look at your face. Kushina's cooking wasn't exactly top-notch, but our time together was fun."
Kakashi involuntarily frowned when I mentioned Kushina's cooking.
I don't know why Kakashi was here right now, but I completely meant what I just said.
If Kushina didn't see me as a little brother and didn't frequently invite me over to spend time with the others, this world would probably still be a "Naruto anime and the characters in it" in my eyes.
Thanks to Kushina, I've become very close to Kakashi and Minato in the past, but the one who still holds the biggest place in my heart is Kushina herself. She's practically a real sister to me.
Back then, I dreamed of having a system almost every day, so I could comfortably inform those around me about future disasters.
Sometimes I even wanted to risk everything, warn Kushina, and not think about the rest, but what if my warning had led to the destruction of the entire ninja world? And worse, what if, right after I saved Kushina's life, she had died of some random other reason, and all the risk I'd taken had been for nothing?
As I looked at Kakashi's face, I was reminded once again of the immense freedom it felt to have a system, or rather, to have the potential to change things.
"Why are you crying? Is everything okay, Eren? I didn't think you'd miss me this much."
Hearing Kakashi's expression of surprise, I felt a tear roll down my cheek and quickly composed myself.
"Hahaha, shut up! You sound like I'm gay."
And at that moment, I received a notification from the system that my template similarity had decreased by 10%.
[A tip from Trader Rekt: in a world this dangerous, no man should reveal his weak heart]
"Damn you, Rekt!"
"Who is Rekt?"
I forgot Kakashi was here for a moment.
"An old traveler who told me his life story this morning. Seeing you suddenly brought tears to my eyes. The damned man's life was so miserable."
"Oh, that makes more sense."
"Soooo? Kakashi. Can't you figure out why you're here anymore? If you just need a place to stay, you can go sleep in any room you like."
Kakashi leaned against the window seat and stared at me for a moment, then spoke as if he'd made a decision.
"I'm not supposed to tell you this, but I think it's okay. Because of your behavior and sudden change in personality since this morning, Hokage-sama asked me to check on you. There are plenty of records of you speaking rudely to people, even among Anbu. But I don't see anything unusual when I look, so it's okay."
After Kakashi finished speaking, he was about to jump out the window again when I stopped him.
"Do your job properly, Kakashi. Whatever checkup you're ordered to do is fine. But after you're done and report in, be sure to stop by my house before four. I'll make breakfast for two."
Kakashi hesitated for a moment before agreeing. While the time I'd called him to breakfast seemed a bit surprising, there were no objections. He was probably planning to train for the Anbu all night.
"Hokage-sama asked me to use my Sharingan to check if you were affected by a mental jutsu. Besides that, I was supposed to check your chakra flow, but I've already done that."
"No problem."
After staring at Kakashi's Sharingan eye for a moment, Kakashi declared he'd completed the checkup and left my house. I checked my alarm and went back to sleep.
...
After another extremely long and tiring day of work, just like the last three days, I closed the front door of my store, trying to suppress the urge to yawn.
I'd actually completed the template a few hours ago, but I've been in business long enough to know that changing my business hours during the day would have a negative impact on my store.
Standing at the front door of my store, I briefly glanced at the business hours sign hanging there, then, without hesitation, I pulled out some chalk from my pocket to change the text on the sign.
"We regret to inform you that Eren Store will be unavailable for a few days..."
Finally, I'm done with the damn template, and now I can rest freely. Well, considering the entire multiverse, it's really unlikely that the next character to emerge from the template will be a business-related character.
Any normal person would probably be quite curious right now about what kind of reward I've earned after working excessive hours for days.
Well, not me.
Damn Rekt is so greedy that he wouldn't even let me take a bath without sacrificing a few hours of sleep.
*Stomach growls*
Right, I forgot.
Unlike the previous days, today I ignored Ichiraku ramen without hesitation and went straight to Yahiku Q restaurant.