____________
[— Manga Scene —]
Naruto was plummeting down the rocky ravine, the walls streaking past him like arrows.
'This feeling… is it that chakra?'
He closed his eyes…
And when he opened them, he was no longer falling.
A dim corridor, flooded with water. Massive pipes running along the walls. And at the corridor's end, an enormous chamber — and rising at its head, a colossal gate whose bars stretched up until they vanished into the darkness, a single paper fixed upon its lock:
Seal.
"It's huge…? What is this?"
"Hey, boy… come here. Come closer…"
Naruto took one step forward…
And massive claws burst out from between the bars, slashing the air just above his head.
"WAAAAAAAH!!"
"I want to kill you… but this door won't open… because of this annoying seal."
In the darkness behind the bars, two red eyes blazed above a grin full of fangs.
"You're… the Nine-Tailed Fox — the Kyūbi!!"
'I get it… that red chakra belonged to him…'
"So you've finally come here to see me… What brings you here?"
Naruto raised his finger at the beast, and shouted:
"Hey, you, stupid fox!! I'm letting you stay in my body, so… lend me your chakra as RENT!!"
"…"
Then the fox exploded into laughter — laughter that shook the water beneath the boy's feet.
"GAHAHAHA! You've got the guts to extort me like this!"
"If I die, you'll die too in the end…"
The beast stared long at the small boy standing before his cage…
Then the red chakra came flooding out from between the bars, coiling around his body.
"Fine… I'll give you some…"
"…as a reward for making it all the way here."
[— End Scene —]
Konoha's hall stopped breathing.
No one turned a page. No one moved. Even the child chewing a rice cake in the third row forgot his mouth hanging open.
"That's him…"
An old jonin in the back rows said it, in a voice he had not meant for anyone to hear.
The hall had known the name since the very first chapter. The Kyūbi. The beast that attacked Konoha in that future, the one the Fourth Hokage sealed at the cost of his life. A name passing through dialogue, a shadow in the characters' memories, a thing the adults whispered about.
But today, they saw him.
The claws filling half the page. The fangs. The eyes.
And without any agreement — sometimes without their owners even noticing — gazes began slipping across the hall toward the quiet corner.
Toward the blond boy.
Because everyone was carrying the same arithmetic in their heads, and no one dared say it aloud: that is the beast… and that is the boy who will die sealing it.
Minato himself did not raise his head.
He knew they were looking. He felt the stares brush the back of his neck like cold fingers. But he kept his eyes on the page, on the drawn claws, and turned a single thought over in his mind with a strange calm:
'So it's you.'
Nothing more. No inner speeches, no declared courage. Just a thirteen-year-old boy looking at the picture of the thing he had learned, only a few pages ago, that he would die facing…
…and turning the page with a steady hand.
Beside him, Kushina was not moving at all.
From the outside, she looked like any reader absorbed in the scene. But her knees were pressed together a little too tightly, her fingers on the volume's edge were white at the knuckles, and when the fox's claws swept across the page, she did not blink.
The flooded corridor. The bars. The paper on the lock.
'…'
No one in the hall knew. Not even the boy sitting beside her. And it had to stay that way: she had to sit in a public hall, with the thing that lived in her depths displayed on paper before hundreds of eyes, and act as though she were reading about a monster in a story.
Inhale. Exhale. Another page.
'Hold steady.'
Then she reached Naruto's shout.
Lend me your chakra as RENT!!
And she read it a second time, because she had not believed the first.
"…Rent?"
She said it out loud without meaning to.
And as if the word had been the permission the entire hall was waiting for, laughter erupted from every direction at once.
"He said RENT!!"
"Good heavens — the boy is haggling with the Kyūbi over his own chakra!"
"Look at the fox! Even the fox is laughing!"
And Kushina laughed.
She laughed out loud — louder than everyone — and slapped her knee, and her eyes watered, and half of it was entirely genuine — the scene deserved it — while the other half came from somewhere deeper that she herself did not understand in that moment.
Something in her chest came loose.
"That's a boy of my clan!"
she announced — to the hall, to the volume, to no one in particular.
"Without the slightest doubt! Uzumaki to the marrow!"
And when she finally calmed down and wiped her eyes, she noticed Minato holding out a handkerchief to her — without looking at her, his eyes still on his page.
She took it.
And neither of them asked the other anything.
…
And in a place the hall's sounds reached only as distant echoes…
In the damp darkness behind Kushina's seal, the tenant lay sprawled as always, half-asleep, watching the outside world the way he always watched it: through the girl's eyes.
He saw the pages turning. Saw the drawn corridor, the drawn bars, and his future counterpart lunging with his claws at a small blond boy.
The Kyūbi opened one eye.
Then he opened the other.
And he watched the small boy stand before his counterpart, raise a finger in his face, and demand of him…
rent.
And in the darkness that no creature had seen in years, something rare happened.
The Kyūbi smiled.
Not the fanged grin he used to terrify his bearers, nor the mocking smile with which he greeted Kushina's attempts to ignore him.
A real smile.
"This manga…"
The voice rumbled through the darkness — to himself, for there was no one there to hear it.
"…is getting more and more interesting than I expected."
"Rent, you say?"
The fox closed his eyes again, the trace of the smile still lingering on his fangs.
"Boy… it should be obvious I'm sealed in there against my will."
…
At the head of the hall, Uzumaki Mito did not laugh.
The lady had stopped at the page of the flooded corridor — two pages before the fox appeared — and had not yet moved past it.
She knew that wet tiling. She knew the sound of that water. In her time, the corridor had been narrower and the bars closer, because her seal had been harsher… but it was the same place. The place she had descended to more times than she could count, across decades, alone, on the nights when the tenant roared too loudly for her to sleep.
She finally turned the page, and read the entire bargain, while the laughter around her filled the hall.
'…He asked him for rent.'
She shook her head slowly.
'I strangled him. She restrains him.'
'And you open trade negotiations with him… genius!'
And Mito smiled a small smile that no one saw.
'I never expected that I would live past transferring the Kyūbi to my heir…'
'…long enough to see how my heir's heir would deal with the Kyūbi.'
…
"He pushed him off a cliff."
Tsunade had set her volume down on her knee and turned her entire body toward Jiraiya.
"A thirteen-year-old child. Off a cliff. That is the training."
"It worked."
said Jiraiya, without lifting his eyes.
"It worked? And what if the chakra hadn't come out? What if the boy had frozen? You know what a fall from that height does to a body — you've seen it in the field, same as I have—"
"Tsunade."
Jiraiya finally raised his head. And there was no trace of humor on his face.
"If he had thought the boy would freeze, he would not have pushed him."
"…"
"My counterpart bet on the boy harder than the boy bet on himself. That is the worst thing about teachers…"
The man returned to his page, and added in a lower voice:
"…and sometimes the best thing about them."
Tsunade did not answer. But a little later, while turning her page, she muttered from the corner of her mouth:
"If you ever push one of your students off a cliff, I will push you off the mountain."
"Fair."
…
And in Kumogakure, Killer Bee had read the scene three times, because the voice in his head would not stop interrupting.
"Turn back the page."
'We've read it, old man—'
"Turn it back."
Bee turned it back, grumbling — and in his depths, the Hachibi stared at the lines as if they were written in a language he could not understand.
"Kurama… gave him his chakra."
'Yep.'
"Kurama."
'Yep, yep.'
"My brother — who once refused to tell me which way the wind was blowing…"
The ox fell silent for a long time.
Then he said, in a voice far quieter than usual:
"…Keep this volume, boy. I want to know how that little one's story ends."
And Bee smiled, and said nothing.
For that was the first time the ox had ever asked for anything.
____________
Upcoming chapter titles (spoilers):
____________
Chapter 214: A Summoning Beyond All Expectations!
Chapter 215: I Was a Monster Since Birth!
Chapter 216: The Resemblance Between Naruto and Gaara!
Chapter 217: This Is My Ninja Way!
____________
Support the journey and unlock advanced chapters!
If you're enjoying Rob's story, his journey of publishing the Naruto manga inside the Shinobi world, and the impact it has on the world, and you want to know what happens before everyone else… there's always a way to stay ahead.
I work on this novel every day, developing its world and chapters, and every bit of support helps me keep delivering higher-quality content at a faster pace.
By supporting me on Patreon, you'll get exclusive access to advanced chapters before they're released to the public. You can move ahead in the story and read up to 30 chapters in advance!
📚 Support Tiers:
$5 → Read 5 advanced chapters
$10 → Read 10 advanced chapters
$15 → Read 15 advanced chapters
$20 → Read 20 advanced chapters
$30 → Read 30 advanced chapters
Every bit of support, even a small one, makes a real difference and helps me continue writing this journey that we're experiencing together.
Join now and start reading the stacked chapters before everyone else:
Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/BlackStar_BH
Thank you to everyone who supports the story and believes in this world. You are the reason it continues. ❤️
____________