Legacy [ Naruto Reader-Insert ]

Nothing much happens today.

The new routine that's probably going to become your norm goes a bit like this;

The first thing that you do after getting ready for work is gathering the fresh crops in the royal garden, planted specifically for the consumption of the noble family, then transporting them to the kitchen with the rest of the servants assigned to help you.

You don't know their names yet, there's not really enough time to stop and make small talk when you're working in a castle. Always too many things to do and too little helping hands but they paid wages daily, about 50 ryo per day. Just enough for a bowl of ramen that Naruto likes so much. Wait, will this be counted towards the total percentage of money you'd have to surrender to the clan as a tithe? You hope not, you're still trying to pay off the repairs on your house (You don't think Mother is going to).

Also you've calculated, you'd be earning at least 1 200 ryo before food and living expenses but if you scrimp and save maybe you'd be able to bring back 800 ryo. And if you add that to the money you earned from that stop at Tanzaku Gai, maybe you'd have enough to pay it off and have a little extra bit of savings! Honestly that very thought made you feel happy for once. Happy that you're one step closer towards a goal. Your very mundane goal to pay off repairs on your house.

The castle is way too big for the current amount of servants to maintain but the jobs are menial enough that to children of the townsfolk can easily do them. It's a tradition, all the kids on Izema would have worked at the castle one time or another and would be a social outcast if they didn't.

You have extra duties in the kitchen being an apprentice cook, since you have basic culinary skills.

Being a shinobi makes you proficient with a blade after all. So even if you aren't doing the main cooking work, there's still plenty of other things to do. Like julienning various leafy greens into thin slices to be arranged in a salad. Apparently the current fad in the castle is eating clean (a thinly hidden fact that they're running out of meat to eat. The import ships don't seem to be coming anymore. The cooks talk).

If this was an assassination mission, you'd have hit the jackpot for snagging the best place to do it from. The Yamanaka clan's botanical knowledge is one of the best in Konoha and if Keirai is still teaching you, he'd probably have taught you some recipes for a slow-acting poison. Odorless, tasteless and causing the person who've ingested it to go into a severe anaphylactic shock in eight hours. Perfect for lacing into their dinner. They'd die in their sleep, having no servants to attend to them.

Not that you need him to teach you said recipes of course, you'd nicked it off one of the greenhouses. It was just laying there, ready for you to commit to memory. You did, leaving it where you found it after you memorized each and every page.

And with various thoughts like that, you go on about your day.

____

A silver of soft moonlight streams through the wooden window by Mayu's feet and her quiet breathing fills the dark room. She falls asleep much easier than the three of you combined, which is another thing you find strange. Is it easier to force yourself to sleep when you're an adult? Is she not worried that she'd be caught?