Chapter 11: Fugaku’s Punishment
The absolute bliss of being officially medically unfit for the draft lasted for exactly three hours.
Ren was lying on his futon, tossing a rubber ball in the air and admiring the framed failure notice hanging proudly above his bed. He felt lighter than he had in a decade. The anxiety that had gripped his chest since the day he was reborn had completely evaporated.
I did it, he thought, catching the ball. I survived the meat grinder. Now I can just coast through the war, maybe pick up a quiet hobby like woodworking, and wait for the timeline to stabilize.
CRACK.
The sliding wooden door to his bedroom didn’t just open; it was violently ripped off its track, splintering against the doorframe.
Ren shot up.
Fugaku stood in the doorway. The Uchiha patriarch was not just angry; he looked like he was vibrating with a lethal, barely contained rage. The man was covered in a thin layer of battlefield dust, having just returned from a high-command strategy meeting regarding the escalating casualties.
His dark eyes immediately locked onto the wall above Ren’s bed.
He saw the framed failure notice.
Fugaku crossed the room in a single, terrifying blur. He tore the framed failure notice down in a blind rage, furious that his son wouldn’t bleed for the clan. He threw the frame onto the floor and crushed it beneath his sandal, shattering the glass into a hundred pieces.
Ren scrambled backward against the wall, pulling his blanket up like a shield.
Okay, maybe framing it was a slight miscalculation in optics, Ren thought, sweating nervously.
"You think this is a joke?" Fugaku roared, his voice shaking the paper walls of the compound. "Our borders are collapsing! Children half your age are dying in the mud to protect this village, and you frame your own cowardice like a trophy?!"
"It’s a medical condition!" Ren defended automatically, pointing at his perfectly healthy chest. "My pathways rejected the chakra! The instructors said I’m a liability!"
"Do not lie to me!" Fugaku snapped, stepping closer, his Sharingan blazing bright red in the dim room. "You have played the fool for twelve years, Ren! You have disgraced this family! You have shamed the Uchiha name!"
Fugaku took a ragged breath, forcibly calming himself down. The red faded from his eyes, replaced by a cold, hardened disgust.
"If you refuse to be a shinobi, you will not sit here and leech off the clan’s resources," Fugaku declared, his voice dropping to a harsh, unforgiving tone. "Since you will not fight for the clan, you will work for it."
Fugaku reached into his flak jacket and pulled out a heavy iron ring holding a set of rusted brass keys. He threw them onto the futon. They landed in Ren’s lap with a heavy clink.
"The old teahouse on the eastern edge of the compound," Fugaku said.
Ren blinked, looking down at the keys. He knew the building. It had been boarded up for years, a relic of a bygone era.
"You will open it. You will clean it. You will run it," Fugaku ordered. "You will earn your keep with a broom and a ledger. From dawn until dusk, you will work until your hands bleed, since you refuse to let them bleed in battle."
Fugaku turned his back, pausing in the broken doorway.
"I intended for you to lead this clan," Fugaku muttered bitterly. "Now, I am making you its servant."
He walked away, his heavy footsteps echoing down the hall.
Fugaku had intended this as a harsh, back-breaking humiliation. He expected Ren to suffer under the menial labor. He expected his son to crawl back in a week, begging for a kunai and a second chance at the Academy.
Ren sat in the silence of his bedroom. He looked at the broken glass on the floor. Then, he looked at the rusted keys resting in his palm.
A massive, greedy grin slowly spread across his face.
You fool, Ren thought, barely able to contain a maniacal laugh. You absolute, financially illiterate fool. You didn’t just punish me. You just gave me prime, tax-free real estate.
Ren looked at the keys and didn’t see punishment. He saw freedom, property, and customer flow.
He jumped off the futon, threw on a dark blue tunic, and sprinted out of the house.
The old teahouse was exactly as Fugaku had described: a complete disaster.
Ren unlocked the heavy front door and pushed it open, coughing as a thick cloud of dust assaulted his lungs. The inside of the shop was dark, badly laid out, and covered in a decade’s worth of cobwebs. The wooden chairs were stacked haphazardly in the corners, and the counter was warped from water damage.
But as Ren walked through the space, his modern, thirty-year-old brain was already doing the math.
He walked to the front window, rubbing away a patch of grime to look outside.
The location was incredible. It was situated right on the border of the Uchiha compound and the civilian sector. It was located near major patrol routes but was currently completely ignored by the clan.
This is a goldmine, Ren mapped the traffic patterns in his head. Academy students pass this street every afternoon. Off-duty patrols walk right by here on their way to the police station. Wounded genin and tired medics use this road to get to the hospital without dealing with the main market crowds.
"Look at this," a mocking voice called out from the street.
Ren turned around. Two Uchiha youths—Genin, wearing their shiny new headbands—were leaning against the front frame of the shop, sneering at him.
"The disgraced heir," one of them laughed. "I heard Fugaku-sama made him the new clan janitor. Try not to break your back sweeping, Ren!"
The passing Uchiha clan members laughed at his new ’job’ cleaning floors.
Ren just stared at them. He didn’t yell. He didn’t argue. He just picked up an incredibly old, bristly broom from the corner and calmly started sweeping the dirt toward the door. He specifically refused to use chakra to clean, wanting to feel the physical layout of his new property.
"Keep laughing, kids," Ren muttered under his breath as the youths walked away chuckling. "You get paid pennies by the Hokage to risk your lives. I’m going to take those pennies in exchange for sugar, and there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop me."
He spent the next three hours sweeping, scrubbing, and dragging broken furniture out the back door. His arms ached, his civilian muscles burning from the unaccustomed labor, but he didn’t stop.
As he wiped the last layer of grime off the front counter, he finally took a step back, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
He placed a blank ledger on the counter, uncapped a pen, and wrote his name on the first page as the official owner.
Ding!
A mechanical chime suddenly rang out, echoing directly inside his head.
Ren jumped, dropping the pen. He looked around the empty shop. "Who’s there?"
Ding!
Right in front of his eyes, a semi-transparent, glowing blue screen materialized in the air. Text began to scroll rapidly across the interface, burning itself into his retinas.
[REQUIREMENTS MET.]
[BUSINESS OWNERSHIP CONFIRMED.]
[INITIALIZING: SHINOBI TYCOON SYSTEM...]
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