Chapter 16: Itachi the Mascot
The first morning in the kitchen was rough.
Kenji and Sayuri stood behind the prep tables, staring at the massive piles of raw rice and vegetables with a mixture of resentment and awkwardness. They felt degraded. They were shinobi, trained to throw shuriken and track enemy movements, not to boil rice.
"You’re treating this like a demotion," Ren sighed, tossing a clean apron to Kenji. "Stop acting like you’re cooking dinner. Treat it like a high-speed logistics mission. I don’t care about your missing arm, Kenji. You still have your right hand, and you still have your muscle memory. Move."
Something clicked.
When Ren framed the work as a high-speed mission rather than menial labor, their attitudes shifted instantly. Sayuri propped her bad leg on a wooden stool and took over the wrapping station. Kenji picked up a kitchen knife.
It was a beautiful thing to watch. The raw efficiency of military conditioning applied to culinary prep was terrifying. Kenji couldn’t form hand seals anymore, but his right hand moved in an absolute blur. He chopped vegetables with millimeter precision, his blade rapping against the cutting board like a machine gun. Sayuri organized the assembly line, packing the rice and cured meats with brutal, economical movements.
By noon, fifty perfectly uniform bentos were stacked in the new Cold Storage cabinets.
God, I love exploiting military training, Ren thought, grinning as he watched the line out the door grow.
The launch of the Shinobi Lunch Boxes was a massive, unmitigated success. They were high-calorie, cheap, and easy to carry—perfect for soldiers heading to the front lines.
But the sheer volume of customers was becoming a problem.
Ren was stuck at the register, ringing up bentos and shaking boba tea simultaneously. The line was moving too slowly.
He had just handed two iced milk teas to a pair of exhausted teenage medical kunoichi, leaning over the counter to flash them a highly practiced, sympathetic smile, when the bell above the door chimed.
"Ren?"
Mikoto walked into the shop, holding a six-year-old Itachi by the hand.
She stopped dead in her tracks, blinking in absolute astonishment. She had expected to find him sweeping a dusty floor. Instead, she saw a line of paying customers, spotless counters, and when she peeked past Ren, she saw two disabled Uchiha working furiously in the back.
"Is that... Kenji?" Mikoto asked, her voice dropping into a hushed, amazed whisper. "He hasn’t left his house since his squad was ambushed. Ren, how did you get him to work?"
"Just giving him a new mission, Mom," Ren said, wiping a very conveniently timed bead of sweat from his forehead. He slumped his shoulders forward, looking up at her with large, exhausted eyes. "But managing the supply chains is completely draining me. I’ve been up since dawn."
Mikoto’s maternal instincts immediately overrode her shock. Her eyes softened, filling with intense sympathy as she looked at her ’struggling’ twelve-year-old son.
"My poor, hardworking boy," Mikoto cooed. She walked right behind the counter, opening her arms wide. "You don’t have to carry the whole world on your shoulders. Come here and let your mother spoil you for a minute."
Ren did not need to be told twice.
He dropped his rag and practically dove into the embrace, wrapping his arms tight around her waist. He completely bypassed her shoulders and buried his face directly into the deep, plush cleavage of her dress.
"It’s just so stressful, Mom," Ren whined, making his voice sound pitifully childish while actively nuzzling his cheeks against the soft, yielding weight of her breasts. "The overhead costs... the inventory..."
"Shhh, I know, sweetheart," Mikoto murmured. She wrapped her arms around his back, pulling him even tighter against her chest, effectively suffocating him in premium maternal comfort. She rested her chin on his dark hair, stroking it gently. "You’re doing so wonderfully."
He lingered there, soaking in the incredibly soft perks of his reincarnation, until he heard a soft cough from the other side of the counter.
Ren reluctantly pulled his face out of his mother’s chest.
He looked down. Itachi was staring at him. The six-year-old prodigy’s dark eyes were narrowed, deeply analytical, as if he was trying to calculate exactly why his older brother was whining about overhead costs while grinning like a bandit.
Ren quickly cleared his throat, stepping back and smoothing down his apron.
He reached under the counter and pulled out a tiny, perfectly tailored black apron. He tossed it to the prodigy.
"Put it on, Itachi," Ren ordered, pulling a thick stack of promotional flyers out from beside the register and handing them to the six-year-old. "This is a high-level covert operation. I need you to infiltrate the crowd outside. Hand one of these to every single customer. Study their foot traffic. Analyze their hesitation."
Itachi tied the tiny apron around his waist. He looked at the teenage kunoichi waiting in line, then down at the flyers. He treated the stack of paper like a freshly forged katana.
"Understood," Itachi nodded, his young voice crisp. "I will execute the mission flawlessly."
Ren watched proudly as Itachi marched out the front door.
The results were instantaneous.
The teenage kunoichi in the line literally melted at the sight of the serious, adorable Uchiha heir wearing a tiny apron. They took the flyers, pinched his cheeks, and immediately walked up to the counter to buy three times as much food as they had originally planned.
Out on the porch, Itachi moved through the crowd like an ANBU assassin. He perfectly predicted where people would step, tracking their eye movements and intercepting them with a flyer before they could look away.
He’s a natural, Ren thought, wiping a fake tear of pride from his eye as he rang up another massive sale.
This isn’t child labor, Ren justified to himself, pocketing the silver coins. This is an unpaid internship. He’s learning valuable macroeconomic skills.
Mikoto sat at a corner table, sipping a cup of boba tea and watching her two sons run a highly lucrative business operation. She just smiled, completely unaware that her eldest son was actively converting the deadliest child in Konoha into a ruthless retail manager.
Comments