NOVEL NEXT An Uzumaki Clan Secret
'What in the world is even going on right now?'
Shikamaru Nara was confused. No, he wasn't just confused, he was completely incapable of understanding his current situation. He was currently peeling potatoes with his mother. That part was still fine. He would rather do something else, but he could at least understand why he was doing it. The problem was that a young girl with shoulder-length, crimson-red hair, that was interlaced with blue strands, was currently standing next to his mother as well and was skillfully peeling potatoes, too.
"Oh my, dear, you are really good at this."
"Yeah, I have been cooking for my little brother since we were three after all."
Shikamaru could feel anger burst out of his mother for just a moment before it was replaced with sadness.
'Why did mother get angry just now? Why did she suddenly get sad? No, wait! Why did Yuna have to cook for Naruto when she was only three years old?'
"Shikamaru, your hands stopped moving."
Although Shikamaru heard his mother, he didn't answer her. He only nodded his head and mechanically restarted peeling potatoes. He was still deep in thought, coming up with scenario after scenario of what might be the truth.
Yuna naturally also noted how the emotions of Shikamaru's mother changed. This immediately gave her quite a bit of information.
'As expected, this couple probably knows my true identity and they might even have wanted to adopt us or know some people that wanted to do so. Well, I don't need to be a genius to know who blocked that attempt. Hehe, just you wait Danzo, I will do all kinds of fun things with you when I can finally get my hands on you.'
"Now, now, no need to worry so much. It's not like I had a bad life so far."
Yoshino Nara, Shikamaru's mother, was rather shocked at how easily Yuna not only read her emotions but even interpreted them.
'Exactly how much does she know about herself. I have heard that she knows about the Kyuubi, but is there more? Does she know about her parents as well?'
Yuna could more or less guess what she was thinking but decided to not bother her anymore.
After they finished making and eating dinner more or less wordless, Yuna decided to finally get to the most important part of today.
"Shikaku, do you mind if we talk about something in private?"
Although it felt weird to him, that such a young girl was casually talking to him with his first name, he simultaneously felt that it was weirdly fitting for her to do so. Shikamaru on the other hand, had another bomb detonate in his head. He already spent their whole dinner pondering the situation, but before he could even finish thinking, another bomb was dropped. For some reason, Yuna wanted to talk to his father and she even addressed him casually. What the hell!?
Shikaku pondered over it for a moment and then nodded in agreement.
"Let's go into my study, we can talk there."
The two quickly stood up and left an utterly stunned Shikamaru behind. He quickly looked at his mother and asked the question that has been bothering him the whole time.
"What the hell was that all about?"
"You need to be a bit more precise about what you mean for me to answer you."
"I mean all of it. From start to finish. There was not a single part that made sense."
Yoshino pondered a while and then nodded her head.
'Indeed, if you don't know anything about Yuna, our interactions would probably feel weird. Oh well, not like I can tell any of that to Shikamaru.'
"Well, don't worry about it."
"…"
"…"
"I'm going to sleep, I have a headache."
"Good night~"
Shikaku and Yuna, meanwhile, climbed up a few stairs and moments later, arrived in Shikaku's study. Yuna scanned the walls of the study and immediately frowned.
"Do you mind if I upgrade the room a little?"
"Upgrade? What do you mean?"
"I am talking about this."
Yuna pulled out a small scroll and unrolled it onto a table. Shikaku immediately noticed that the seals are the same seals a storage scroll uses, but the scroll itself doesn't look like the ones sold in Konoha. Before he could ask any questions, Yuna pushed a bit of her chakra into the scroll and with a puff of smoke, 6 huge paper tags appeared. Every one of these tags had a size of 1 square meter. When Shikaku saw what kind of tags these were, his eyes almost fell out of their sockets.
'No way, is that a set of privacy seals? These are ridiculously hard to make and obscenely expensive. Where did she get them? Did she get scammed and bought a bunch of fakes?'
Before Shikaku could sort through his thoughts, Yuna had already accepted his silence as an agreement. In her opinion, there was no reason to reject such a nice offer. It was just a bunch of low-level privacy seals after all. There was no way she would ask for a favor in return for giving such a simple gift, after all.
Just like that, a weakness from her past life has shown itself: Yuna had no idea how to handle wealth or even what was considered worth a lot. She could produce the seals easily, so she assumed they weren't worth much. When she doesn't use a henge when shopping, she constantly gets scammed but doesn't even notice it. She notices that the shopkeepers have malicious intentions towards her, but that is pretty much the same for 90% of the village. If the price she has to pay for food is around 5-6 digits away from what she actually possesses, she doesn't even bother thinking too much about it.
A few seconds later, Yuna had slapped one of the 6 seals on each of the 4 walls, ceiling, and ground and a few moments later, the paper tags started to glow while the seals painted on them started to wiggle around. They started to move away from their paper tags and a few moments later, the walls, ceiling, and ground of the whole room were covered in seals. They glowed one last time and then simply vanished. Yuna lifted up a much smaller seal tag and gave it to Shikaku.
"This is the activation seal, put it wherever you can reach easily."
From now on Shikaku could activate the privacy seal whenever he wanted to. What Yuna didn't mention, however, was that she might have, completely on accident of course, slipped a few runes in to gather information.
Shikaku only stood there, still, completely dumbfounded by an 8-year-old girl that just casually used such an expensive seal inside his room.
"Where did you even get that seal from."
Yuna pretended to ponder that question for a moment and then quickly gave her prepared answer. She gave Shikaku a mischievous smile and answered him.
"Uzumaki clan secret."
Shikaku could only groan at that answer. Three simple words, yet there was a massive number of implications behind them. The easiest one to handle would be if Yuna simply found some Uzumaki clan scrolls somehow and the hardest one to handle would probably be that an adult from the Uzumaki clan has somehow survived and has secretly come in contact with Yuna.
He could already feel that he would, without a doubt, have a headache after this conversation was over.