Chapter 7 - Living with Tsunade

Yuta waited motionless for nearly two hours, thinking Danzo was watching him, sometimes making strange noises like a baby who doesn't know how to control his vocal cords.

He was actually imitating a person he had seen in a previous life. He had seen in a movie that someone who had suffered severe brain damage after a car accident would make a monotone sound in response to people's words and look at them in surprise.

It was during this period of waiting that Yuta realized that those men were behaving like newborn babies. Babies, like that one, would not close their mouths for long, causing saliva to drip from their mouths onto the floor. The only difference between the sounds they made was the tone of their voices.

Realizing these details, Yuta opened his mouth occasionally, made an "aaaaaaa" sound, and looked around blankly.

Unfortunately, what Yuta was doing made no sense because he had not been captured by Danzo as he had thought. It was Sakumo Hatake himself who locked him in this basement when he turned into an egg.

Sakumo had spent a long time learning A-level ninjutsu in case anyone approached him while he was away. The effort Sakumo had put into learning this trap-type ninjutsu, which was far removed from the ninjutsu he normally learned, showed how much he had grown attached to Yuta in the month they had spent together.

As Yuta waited there, a suspicion arose in him that no one was watching him. If no one was watching him, wouldn't it be foolish not to take this opportunity to escape?

Luckily, before Yuta could act, the door to the room he was in opened and a powerful beam of light hit him in the face.

Yuta immediately focused and reacted as he had just planned. Yuta was actually planning to cry as if the light was hurting him, but after a second he realized that the exposure to the light really made him feel bad.

When Yuta opened his eyes to see what kind of light was causing this feeling of weakness and disgust, he locked eyes with Hatake Sakumo standing in front of him.

"AaaaAaaAaaAaaAaaaaaaa?..."

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At first, Sakumo thought that the boy must have come here by chance, but when he looked at the black pieces of bark a little behind the boy and the boy's dark eyes, he realized that it was not at all as he had imagined.

Yuta was unable to come up with a new plan due to the suddenness of the situation and continued to pretend as he had planned to do when he met Danzo.

Sakumo stood there for a while, shocking Yuta's heart, and then in one swift move he bent down, released Yuta, and pressed him to his chest.

It took almost an hour for Sakumo to cry and hug Yuta like that. Finally, Sakumo calmed down again and tried to analyze what had happened.

Somehow Yuta had been trapped in an egg and aged almost five years in five months. The problem was that he still had the intelligence of a baby. If Sakumo had brought him back home like that, the Hokage and Danzo would have immediately realized that something was not right. And it would have been impossible to explain the situation to Kakashi.

"I take this as a joke, Sakumo-senpai. You don't really think I'd be a stepmother to a child, do you?"

Yuta watched the conversation between Tsunade and Sakumo with his mouth open. And he wasn't even acting.

"I'm not asking you to be a stepmother. Just treat him like a little brother and make sure he quickly reaches the level of his peers mentally..."

Sakumo was about to continue when he felt a powerful surge of chakra and looked up to see Tsunade looking at him with reddened eyes. He no longer needed anyone else to tell him what he had done wrong.

"Please don't misunderstand. I'm not asking you to be a big sister to him. Ahem... I mean, just be his teacher for a while. I will definitely repay you."

Tsunade was a little angry that Sakumo reminded her of her dead younger brother and told Sakumo to be more respectful if he was going to ask her for something. Only a few seconds after Tsunade said these words she regretted them because Sakumo really did not hesitate to kneel before her.

When Tsunade saw her Senpai, who had helped her so many times, bowing to her in this way, she hurriedly picked him up. With Sakumo's strength and seriousness, Tsunade respected him even more than the Hokage.

"Okay, I'll take care of him, but you have to pay a hundred thousand ryo every month."

Well, not as much as money...

Sakumo coughed up a little blood when he heard the words one hundred thousand ryo, but he didn't hesitate to accept the offer.

And so Yuta found himself living with Tsunade.

------ As time went on, Yuta began to act because he did not have the body of a baby and was being fed random meals by Tsunade.

He looked at Tsunade walking and began to walk and run as if he were a genius baby. He learned whatever words Tsunade said and started to speak.

Tsunade continued to teach him to write, thinking that he was not a genius but an ordinary baby. In just a month, Yuta became a child who could speak and write fluently and even throw shuriken at a level that would qualify to enter ninja school.