Konoha Calendar, Year 53. Late winter.
The wind carried fine snow across the rooftops as Shimizu Kantsuki reached the entrance house. Dawn had barely begun to gray the sky.
The building itself was low and plain, its wooden walls darkened by years of damp and smoke. A faint smell of lye soap and wet straw drifted from the open doorway — the scent of places that scrubbed people clean but never quite removed the stain of arrival.
The manager spotted the chūnin flak jacket through the half-open door. His slack, habitually tired expression cleared at once.
"Sir. We've had everything ready since before first light."
Kantsuki paused on the threshold, scraping packed snow from his boot soles against the rough stone step. The crunch was loud in the quiet morning. Then he stepped inside.
Moments later two women were brought forward by female attendants. Their thin robes clung where melted snow had soaked through at the hems. Each breath left a small, fleeting cloud in the chill air inside the hall.
The manager's smile stretched wide and oily. Noticing Kantsuki's eyes move across the dim corridor and the all-female staff, he gestured with open pride.
"This work stays separated. Women process women. Men process men. No exceptions ever."
The rule had come straight from Kantsuki's mouth.
The manager kept rubbing his hands together as he spoke, the dry sound of skin on skin cutting through the low murmur of distant voices deeper in the building.
"Rest assured, sir. We follow protocol to the letter. No one has laid a hand on them. Women handled every step of intake. Even the guard dog chained outside is female."
Kantsuki took the words at face value.
The man would not dare lie to his face.
One curt order from him could shutter this place forever.
There was no avoiding it.
The Third Hokage had placed the duty squarely on his shoulders.
Now that he held direct authority over the facility, skimming personal benefit felt like the natural order of things.
Not for money.
For flesh.
The entrance house never turned a profit.
Housing, feeding, and processing women pulled in from other worlds demanded constant coin from the village coffers.
Most shinobi turned down the assignment the moment they heard the numbers.
In the eyes of the village Kantsuki had become the biggest fool of them all.
His gaze drifted back and forth across the pair standing before him.
Mother and daughter matched his preferences in every detail.
Mrs. Yukinoshita and Yukinoshita Haruno.
A meeting too perfect to be coincidence.
He accepted the month's payment slip. The manager immediately extended a folded document, edges already worn from handling.
"Sir, keep this close. It is the contract."
A contract. In plain speech, a deed of servitude.
With that paper secured the two could not run.
If they tried, they would be hunted down and returned.
From this morning forward the Yukinoshita mother and daughter were his private property.
His eyes passed over them again.
The robes were far too thin for late-winter Konoha. Fabric pulled tight across shoulders already hunched against the cold.
Kantsuki only smiled.
In the world of Naruto, chakra solved nearly everything.
Any problem that lingered simply meant the chakra had not been enough.
He set a palm on each shoulder. The contact was firm, deliberate.
Warmth flowed out of him in a slow, steady current — first a faint prickle beneath their skin, then a spreading heat that loosened knotted muscles and brought faint color back to pale fingertips. Their breaths, once shallow and visible, steadied and warmed.
His property needed care.
He had plans for them tonight.
Yukinoshita Haruno felt the cold retreat from her limbs like retreating fog.
She blinked, glanced down at the snow still heaped against the base of the wall, then lifted her eyes to the broad back moving ahead of them.
So this was the man who would own her and her mother from this day forward.
Since they had arrived in this world, warmth had become memory rather than sensation.
Without status or records, outsiders like them were permanent objects of suspicion in Konoha.
Haruno was sharp.
After those rough-handed women had seized them, she had begun quietly collecting every fragment of information she could reach.
In unknown territory, knowledge ranked above everything else.
This place shared nothing with the world they had left.
Supernatural forces and superhuman strength were everyday facts here.
People called ninja were superhumans by baseline standard.
Once the truth settled fully, Haruno buried any thought of escape.
Two ordinary women could not outmaneuver trained kunoichi.
Mrs. Yukinoshita reached over without expression and gave her elder daughter's sleeve a small, steady tug.
At least this shadowed figure had shown interest.
Taking both mother and daughter together meant he intended to keep them for himself.
That was the least bitter outcome available.
When the situation could not be changed, acceptance was the only road left.
Since stepping into this world she had repeated the thought like a mantra.
She still had skill. Competence.
She was certain she could serve this ninja well.
Her first task, then, was to leave an impression strong enough to last.
Haruno understood the stakes perfectly.
A good first impression would decide whether the days ahead stayed bearable.
She had no intention of returning to the entrance house for forced labor.
Inside those walls only women worked and mercy did not exist.
Inactivity brought the whip.
Even so, their current position ranked as fortunate by comparison.
The facility that processed male outsiders — the place everyone called the Human Pill Market — was far more wretched.
The Human Pill Market was the common name for the slave-trading district.
It lay distant from here.
Rumors still reached them.
Many had already died there.
The knowledge made Haruno quietly acknowledge how little mercy this world offered.
Without cunning, one ended up buried in it.
They reached the house.
A modestly built residence of dark cedar and gray tile, tucked away from the main streets. The faint scent of woodsmoke lingered in the narrow entryway; a single lantern burned low near the door, casting long shadows across worn floorboards.
For a chūnin to own property in Konoha's crowded, expensive land already counted as solid success.
Without the outsider intake duty weighing on him, Kantsuki's days would have passed in genuine comfort.
Now he managed only to stay afloat.
Responsibility for both male and female outsiders rested on his shoulders.
Had he not created the rule of no labor no food — assigning women to light crafts while working men to exhaustion as disposable labor — the accounts would have collapsed seasons ago.
Female outsiders earned almost nothing and still required upkeep.
They handled cleaning, mending, simple chores.
Male outsiders produced some return precisely because no one treated them as human.
The two streams balanced each other just enough to keep breathing.
His gaze returned to the mother and daughter.
The paper wife from his previous life.
He would beggar himself if it meant tasting her.
A quiet breath left his lips.
His wallet already felt too light.
More earning would be necessary.
He had already sunk one hundred thousand ryō into this — no small sum then, and no small sum now.
"Go bathe. The bathroom is down that hall."
"…Yes."
The answer came soft, compliant.
Both women belonged to the type that read reality and bent to it.
The alternative had already claimed most who refused.
Haruno felt a small tremor pass through her frame at the memory of certain overheard complaints.
She had listened while the entrance house manager grumbled about the latest batch.
Most were troublemakers — ignorant of rules, rude, leaving impressions that soured immediately.
As a result almost no one from her original world had ever earned even partial freedom.
The staff had been furious.
They had thought themselves lucky to gain so much unpaid labor.
Instead they ended up with defective goods that needed constant supervision even for basic tasks.
Fine.
Then work.
Work until the body broke.
If no value could be squeezed out, death followed.
What? You think your looks qualify you to be offered to Lord Kantsuki?
Spare us.
Who do you think you are?
Local women would line up to volunteer.
Every native carries at least some chakra refinement.
Every local beauty carries vitality in her skin.
What possible advantage do outsiders have?
Her shoulders gave another faint shudder.
Haruno shook her head and forced the memories aside.
She no longer had to labor in the dark.
No more beatings or curses.
At worst she would endure being used.
Mrs. Yukinoshita glanced at her daughter, who had drifted for a moment, but said nothing.
She simply continued washing her in silence.
Compared to native women they held little ground.
Worry therefore settled quietly in her chest.
A soft sigh escaped her lips.
She could only hope the lord would not find them lacking.
If they were sent back to the entrance house their future would darken quickly.