At that mont, Arai was afraid.
Genuinely afraid.
He was terrified that once Yuji spoke, the words would confirm everything he had been suspecting. So he said nothing. He couldn’t bring himself to respond.
The sudden silence made Yuji’s eyes shift slightly.
He was certain. The person in front of him had grown suspicious. The tracking of Sasori had been aid at uncovering the truth. He wasn’t sure what had given it away, but the silence told him enough.
He closed his eyes for a mont.
Then opened them, and smiled.
"I just wanted to discuss a plan with you, Arai-sensei. Nothing more than that. No need to be so tense."
"A plan?"
"Yes. A plan for selling the Hidden Sand Village’s dicine. What else did you think it was?"
Yuji walked to the side and began pouring tea. "Even with the finished products ready, breaking into the market won’t be simple. We need to give the outside world ti to accept what we’re offering. My initial thinking is..."
He began laying it out in detail.
Starting with paying out of his own pocket to approach other villages and countries directly, offering them upfront compensation and a share of profits in exchange for early adoption and distribution cooperation.
Moving through plans to use certain warti conditions to build the dicine’s reputation. Working through each stage thodically.
Arai listened and found himself unable to keep up with so of it. In his view, dicine this effective would sell itself. Why give other villages a share? Why pay them anything at all?
"It takes ti for the ninja world to accept sothing new," Yuji said, not pausing. "Things aren’t as smooth as they look. Once the value of these dicines becos understood, we beco a target, sabotage, hijacking, interference. So we make sure everyone profits alongside us.
We use local forces to ensure market stability. The money we give them is small. But over ti, they grow accustod to receiving a windfall for doing essentially nothing.
Once that habit is established, the chain of interest binds them to the Hidden Sand Village. They can’t leave without losing sothing they’ve co to rely on. And if they dare oppose us, we cut the supply." Yuji smiled. "The deterrent value of a monopoly is no weaker than military force."
Arai exhaled sharply. A chill moved down his back.
"How is it? My plan?"
"I... don’t know what to say."
Arai ant it sincerely, though his emotions were tangled.
"To truly make a fortune, we still need a war to drive demand," Yuji said, with a sigh that sounded almost wistful. "I keep wondering when the next one will co."
He paused, then looked at Arai directly.
"Arai Sensei, if this plan succeeds, how significant would my contribution to the Village be?"
Arai was quiet for a mont.
"If it truly succeeds, your achievent wouldn’t just affect the Village. It would change the structure and ecology of the entire ninja world."
"It’s not quite that dramatic. This is just another form of leverage and economic developnt. The Five Great Nations will still fight, their grudges run too deep for that to change. What this does is raise the Hidden Sand Village’s status and influence among the Five Great Nations and beyond. That’s what I’m actually aiming for." Yuji set down his tea.
"And the window isn’t unlimited. Over ti, other villages will reverse-engineer what we’ve made. Once their technology catches up, they’ll produce copies. That’s one of the reasons I haven’t allowed any of the research participants to share even a fragnt of information outside the lab."
Arai sat with that.
"dicine is only the first step in changing the Village’s economy. There’s more after this."
"Yuji..." Arai said, and for once the words ca without ceremony. "Having you in the Hidden Sand Village is a blessing."
He ant it completely.
Yuji looked at him for a mont. Then, almost casually, he asked, "What if I die before the plan is finished?"
Arai blinked. "Uh..."
Arai stared at him.
"Is my value greater, or the Kazekage’s value greater?"
"You... what do you an by that?"
Arai’s breathing had gone slightly uneven.
"Hahaha, nothing at all. Just a joke." Yuji waved a hand with easy laughter. "As ninja, everyone aims to beco the Kage of their village eventually. I won’t pretend I have no interest in it whatsoever, even if it’s not sothing I think about obsessively."
Arai let out a quiet breath.
"If your plan succeeds, becoming the next Kage would be completely natural," he said, and found he ant it. "The Third wouldn’t have grounds to object.
In a few years you’ll have military rit, concrete achievent, strength, and reputation all at once. Even Rasa, if you beca a genuine competitor, I think he’d step aside on his own."
"So you support , Arai-sensei?"
"Of course," Arai said.
They talked for another fifteen minutes before Arai stood to leave. At the door, Yuji asked him several tis to say nothing to anyone about the finished dicines, not out of distrust, but because what was sitting in those jars and tablets concerned the village’s entire future.
The implications of a premature leak were obvious. Arai understood the weight of it and agreed without hesitation.
But walking away from the hospital, the dicine wasn’t what occupied Arai’s thoughts.
He was replaying the conversation.
Every exchange, every question Yuji had asked, every small shift in tone or expression. The emotional arc of the past few hours had moved him through elation, then alarm, then sothing that hadn’t fully resolved into either. It sat in his chest like pressure with no clear direction to release.
He had walked in carrying suspicion. He was walking out carrying sothing more complicated, and he couldn’t decide if that was because the suspicion had been relieved or because it had been expertly managed.
"Is my value greater, or the Kazekage’s value greater?"
The words wouldn’t leave him.
Yuji had laughed them off imdiately as a joke. And perhaps they were. The explanation that followed had been natural, the laughter genuine-sounding.
But Arai had spent years in environnts where people said one thing and ant another, and the question had landed sowhere specific inside him that the laughter hadn’t fully reached.
"Yuji," he said quietly to no one.
His mind was a tangle he couldn’t imdiately smooth out.
...
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