Chapter 221: A-Mu is Part of His Family
The Hatake residence sat as a quiet, detached courtyard house a fair distance from Konoha's bustling Central District. That minor commute, however, was a trivial price to pay for the sheer tranquility it offered. Beyond the manicured front garden lay a sprawling backyard perfectly suited for rigorous shinobi training. Just a few steps past the rear fence, a pristine lake rippled under the evening breeze, an ideal spot for fishing. Compared to the cramped, noisy streets of the village center, this secluded environment was a paradise.
Their discharge from the hospital had dragged on far longer than expected. By the time they finally stepped through the front doors, the sky had bruised into a deep twilight. Three stomachs growled in near-perfect, embarrassing unison.
Sakumo didn't miss a beat. He shed his flak jacket, tied a simple apron around his waist, and marched straight into the kitchen. The legendary White Fang opened the refrigerator with the same decisive efficiency he used on the battlefield, pulling out an array of fresh ingredients.
Kakashi silently rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands at the sink, and stepped up beside his father. The silver-haired boy washed and chopped vegetables with a rhythmic, practiced ease. The knife blurred in his hands, dicing carrots and scallions with lethal precision. It was glaringly obvious that the young prodigy was just as deadly with a kitchen knife as he was with a kunai.
Stelle lingered by the doorway, a rare twinge of genuine inadequacy prickling at her chest. She had half a mind to offer her assistance, but a harsh dose of reality held her back. Everyone was starving. If she stepped into that kitchen, she would only turn a gourmet dinner into a biological hazard. Resigning herself to her uselessness, she sat obediently at the dining table, swinging her legs.
Since she absolutely despised the grueling trial-and-error of learning culinary arts, she fully embraced the path of a slacker. It wasn't entirely her fault, anyway. Her reliable teammates had always spoiled her, constantly interrupting her fleeting bursts of determination to actually learn a life skill. Besides, she usually just forced her shadow clones to handle the tedious chores.
The rich, savory aroma of home-cooked food soon wafted through the house. Even with such a severe time crunch, Sakumo managed to produce a feast. Steaming bowls of fluffy white rice sat alongside perfectly salt-grilled sanma, their skins blistered and crispy. Plates of tender braised ribs and golden, pan-fried chicken crowded the wooden table.
Stelle snapped her chopsticks apart. She bit into a piece of piping hot chicken, the savory juices bursting across her tongue, followed by a warm, comforting sip of rich miso soup. Genuine, unscripted tears of sheer culinary ecstasy welled up in her golden eyes.
[System, I finally don't have to eat the radioactive sludge I make myself every day anymore.]
The mechanical voice in her head practically wailed, crying even louder than she was.
[I am so sorry, Host! I truly did not comprehend that your cooking skills were this catastrophic, causing you to suffer such immense physical torment! Once you pay off your debt and I return to Level 10, I will immediately calculate how much mood value is required to purchase a Culinary Mastery talent. You will never have to endure your own meals again!]
Stelle choked on a piece of chicken. She waited for the punchline, but the System's digital wails were entirely sincere. It wasn't even being sarcastic.
A crisp, clean handkerchief suddenly hovered in her peripheral vision.
Stelle blinked away her dramatic tears and looked up. Kakashi stood beside her chair, his dark eyes fixed on the wall to avoid looking directly at her face as he offered the cloth. She suddenly realized how pathetic she must look, weeping over pan-fried chicken.
"The food is just... really good," she stammered, trying to salvage her dignity. "I'm just a bit happy, it's—"
"I know. Some sand got in your eyes," Kakashi interrupted smoothly, already providing her with an out. "Wipe them, little crybaby sister."
The silver-haired boy recalled the first time he had shared his bento with her at the academy. She had secretly cried back then, too. At the time, they were barely acquaintances. Handing her a handkerchief would have felt entirely too intimate, an awkward overstep of boundaries. But things were different now. She was living under his roof. She was part of his family. Naturally, it was his responsibility as the older brother figure to look after her.
Realizing she had inadvertently reinforced her tragic, pitiful persona, Stelle wisely chose to keep her mouth shut. The more she tried to explain that she was just crying over not having to eat her own garbage cooking, the weirder the situation would become.
Sakumo smiled warmly from across the table. He picked up a beautifully grilled sanma with his chopsticks and gently placed the entire fish over her rice.
"Eat up, A-Mu. Don't be shy," the older man urged, his voice rich with paternal warmth. "Treat this place as your own home from now on."
"Thank you, Uncle!"
Stelle beamed, her tragic persona slipping into an expression of bright, childish gratitude. She picked up the fish and tore into it with zero hesitation.
In reality, she was a notoriously picky eater. She absolutely despised the slimy texture of natto, the sour kick of plum rice, and the excessive sweetness of inari sushi. Over the years, her companions had thoroughly spoiled her, allowing her to develop a laundry list of finicky dietary demands. She vastly preferred rich, steaming hot meals—massive bowls of tonkotsu ramen or bubbling pots of spicy shabu-shabu.
Yet, after adopting this impoverished alias and surviving on her own wretched, charred creations for weeks, Stelle discovered a newfound appreciation for literally anything edible. Every single bite of Sakumo's cooking tasted like a Michelin-star masterpiece. Even the sanma, a fish she previously considered painfully average, melted in her mouth like divine ambrosia.
Truly, human bad habits were entirely the result of being pampered.
Mid-chew, her brain finally processed the earlier conversation. Wait a second. What exactly did Kakashi just call her? Little crybaby sister.
Her chopsticks paused. That specific nickname... It meant that when she had formally introduced herself earlier, the brat had completely dismissed her age as a lie. She swallowed a mouthful of fish with considerable effort, reached over, and poked Kakashi sharply in the arm.
"I am nine years old this year," she stated, her tone deadpan. "I am actually older than you."
Kakashi violently choked on his miso soup. He coughed, thumping his chest before turning to size her up, his gaze sweeping from the top of her head to her seated waistline. "Impossible," he wheezed, wiping his mouth. "You're way too short."
Stelle stared at him, utterly speechless. The sheer audacity of this kid.
Had he and the System conspired against her? One was constantly throwing accidental shade at her culinary skills, while the other was actively mocking her stunted physical avatar.
Sakumo chuckled softly, diffusing the tension as he transferred the final piece of sanma into her bowl. "Just eat more, A-Mu. You'll grow tall soon enough."
The older Hatake's gaze lingered on her face for a fraction of a second before he quickly looked away. A heavy, unspoken emotion flickered in his eyes. He clearly had a mountain of things he wanted to say, questions he wanted to ask, but the words caught in his throat. Opting for silence, he simply lowered his head and focused on piling even more food onto the small girl's plate.
Later that night, Stelle retreated to the guest room Sakumo had hastily prepared for her.
She had absolutely no idea what kind of silver-tongued furniture salesman had managed to hustle the legendary White Fang, but the results were blinding. The entire room was an explosion of aggressive pink. Pink bedsheets, pink ruffled duvet covers, pink lace curtains. Even the wooden desk and the wardrobe had been painted a soft, pastel rose.
The sheer, unadulterated pinkness of the space left Stelle standing in the doorway, completely stunned. In all her lives and aliases, she had never slept in a room this violently girly.
Hours later, the house fell into a deep, silent slumber. Stelle was just hovering on the edge of sleep when a faint scratching sound echoed from the exterior wall. Someone was scaling the fence.
Her golden eyes snapped open in the dark. It was one thing for Konoha to have a petty thief problem, but to actively break into the private residence of a former Anbu Captain? This intruder possessed a truly terminal level of bad luck. Even without drawing his infamous White Light Chakra Sabre, Sakumo could snap a grown man's neck with two fingers.
She focused her senses, reaching out to analyze the intruder. A familiar, erratic chakra signature brushed against her perception. She sighed. Obito.
Stelle threw off the pink duvet and sat up. Sure enough, less than two minutes later, a hushed, frantic whisper drifted through the crack in her window.
"A-Mu... A-Mu... Are you in there?"
Resigned to her fate, Stelle slipped out of her pajamas and changed into her casual clothes. She pulled back the heavy pink curtains and pushed the glass open. Obito crouched on the window ledge, grinning like an absolute idiot, clutching a wooden food box to his chest.
Stelle stared at him, genuinely impressed. She had only arrived at the Hatake compound that very afternoon, finally shaking off the oppressive surveillance of the Hokage's Anbu. Yet, somehow, this goofy Uchiha genin-in-training had pinpointed her exact location by midnight. For a kid who regularly failed his academy exams, his information-gathering skills were terrifyingly efficient.
She quickly arranged her features into a mask of wide-eyed astonishment. "Obito? How in the world did you find this place?"
"I've been sneaking into the hospital every day to look for you, but I couldn't figure out which secure ward they put you in!" Obito whispered loudly, his goggles glinting in the moonlight. "So tonight, I marched right up to the Clan Head and begged him to help me track you down. He was totally moved by my absolute sincerity and told me you were staying at Kakashi's house!"
Stelle suppressed a snort. She could vividly picture the actual scenario: Obito circling the notoriously stern Fugaku like a hyperactive, screeching monkey, jumping up and down and whining relentlessly until the proud Clan Head suffered a migraine and gave up the intel just to make the kid go away.
"Okay, but how did you know I was in this specific room?" she asked, leaning against the window frame.
Obito pointed a gloved finger straight at the ruffled lace framing her window and shrugged. "I mean, look at it. I just couldn't imagine that stuck-up, brooding Kakashi hanging bright pink curtains in his bedroom."
Stelle pressed a hand over her mouth to stifle a laugh. For all his foolishness, Obito possessed a shockingly sharp sense of observation when it mattered.
"Let's go outside," she whispered, gesturing toward the yard.
She swung her legs over the sill, dropping lightly onto the grass below, and motioned for Obito to follow. She led the Uchiha boy past the training posts and out toward the serene lake behind the property. Given Sakumo and Kakashi's sensory skills, both Hatakes had undoubtedly detected Obito the exact second his boots touched their roof tiles. Still, it was basic courtesy to take their midnight rendezvous out of earshot so the hosts could pretend to sleep.
A massive, silver full moon hung low in the sky, casting a soft, ethereal glow across the rippling water. As the pale light washed over Stelle's upturned face, Obito gasped, nearly dropping his food box. He stared at her clear, unblemished cheeks, completely free of the horrific injuries that had plagued her before.
"A-Mu! Your face... it's really healed! That's amazing!" Obito cheered, practically vibrating with excitement. He circled her two or three times, inspecting her from every angle. His grin stretched from ear to ear, his dark eyes sparkling as if they had captured the starlight itself. "A-Mu, you look so cute and beautiful!"
Stelle rubbed her smooth cheek. This was her original face, after all. Despite her thick skin and shameless trolling, receiving such a blunt, earnest compliment still sparked a genuine flutter of happiness in her chest. She offered him a bright, sweet smile.
"Obito looks very handsome tonight, too."
The boy froze, a furious blush exploding across his cheeks. "R-Really?"
"Really!"
[Ding! Mood Value +...]
The System's delightful notification chime rang like a cash register in her mind. Stelle crossed her arms, her golden eyes darkening with calculated amusement as she watched Obito literally run laps around the edge of the lake, his arms thrown wide open in sheer, unadulterated joy.
She had never farmed mood values this effortlessly in her entire life. Obito was simply too easy to satisfy. A basic compliment, a few moments of quiet companionship... she hadn't even executed any elaborate manipulative schemes to get close to him. The boy had just aggressively attached himself to her orbit entirely on his own.
How could a human being be this ridiculously pure? Compared to a literal emotional goldmine like him, what the hell was Black Zetsu? That shadowy mastermind was absolute trash at providing mood values compared to this kid.
"By the way," Stelle called out, halting his victory laps. "Why did you come looking for me so late?"
Obito skidded to a halt, clutching the food box tightly. "Because I missed A-Mu! We haven't seen each other for exactly fifteen days, eight hours, and thirty-five minutes! Even though I knew I was going to see you at the academy tomorrow morning, I just couldn't wait another second!"
Stelle blinked. Did he seriously track the time down to the exact minute?
She mentally reviewed her entire history with the Uchiha boy. She had tidied up his messy room exactly twice. She had slapped some basic ointment on his scraped elbows after a botched training session. She had tossed him a few generic words of encouragement, and she had shown him how to rig a basic wire trap. That was literally it.
They hadn't fought back-to-back on a blood-soaked battlefield. There was no deep, life-and-death trauma bonding, nor had they survived any harrowing, narrow escapes together.
Tracking their separation down to fifteen days, eight hours, and thirty-five minutes... Wasn't this level of attachment just a little bit too heavy?
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