Chapitre 222: CH_7.4 (222)
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to Patreón @
[ https://www̧̧.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]
The link is also in the synopsis
———
.
A horse-drawn carriage trundled along a wide road towards the enormous defensive walls surrounding the Spring City of Yu. The brick wall was actually an earthen wall erected forty years ago with the help of shinobi adept at using earth-style ninjutsu and afterward covered in baked bricks as another layer of fortification.
The main gates to Yu were indefinitely closed, with only the smaller commercial gates used by merchants and traders still open as access points into the city.
The carriage driver slowed down the horses as they approached the gates and joined the short line with him at the front after five minutes.
"What's your business?"
It was around lunchtime, and the gate was being guarded by the local civilian guards with only one enemy shinobi sitting in the little cabin. There were four guards stationed at the gate. Two of them stayed near the gates, keeping a vigilant eye on the queue of carriages. The other two checked the carriages.
The carriage driver motioned the guard toward the carriage.
Before the guard moved, the carriage opened, and Gaku stepped out. His scruffy stubble was shaved clean, his rough hair with gray strands were cleaned, dyed, and tied in a silky ponytail, and his face looked thoroughly moisturized. On top of that, he was dressed in an exquisite silk robe.
"Good day, gentlemen," he said.
"What's your business?" the guard said, looking Gaku up and down.
Before Gaku could answer, Daiki stepped out of the carriage, towered behind Gaku, and stared down at the guard, who had the expected reaction of nervousness.
Gaku smiled. "The enchanting courtesan Chinatsu is returning to Yu. She and her three maids are inside. The five of us request entrance into the city."
"Oh? I have to verify that," the guard's face brightened up.
He walked past the Gaku and Daiki and looked inside the carriage. The inside was dark, casting a shadow on the passengers. The guard naturally looked at the woman talking to him and was instantly enthralled at the first sight of the bodacious woman. Despite being dressed in a full robe, her sensuality couldn't be hidden. She was the courtesan Chinatsu. Other than her, there were three more women in the carriage dressed simply and had veils covering their faces just like Chinatsu.
The scent of her fragrance tickled the guard's nose, and he was left without words. He gazed into the eyes that seemed to focus on only him and him alone.
"… You're beautiful, my lady. I must check you and the other ladies for illegal contraband."
The guard stepped closer and reached for Chinatsu, but before he could grab her, a hand that could completely cover his whole head grabbed his wrist. The guard looked back and saw Daiki staring down at him, and the guard felt a shudder shoot through his feet. The guard tried to pull his hand out of tight grip but couldn't even move Daiki's arm one centimeter.
"U-Unhand me, you brute!"
"Forgive him; he's just doing his job. I'm afraid the courtesan doesn't like being touched by unclean hands," Gaku said and gave Daiki a nod.
Daiki released the guard's hand but put himself between the carriage and the guard, then closed the carriage door.
"I appreciate all the hard work you do to keep the city safe, and I want to make sure you get awarded plenty for it." Gaku flicked his wrist, and the note bundle slid into his hand. He pressed the thick roll into the guard's hand.
The guard smiled, but when he glanced at his hand, he was surprised by two bundles resting in his grip. He looked up at Gaku, who smiled.
"The second is something extra just for you."
Alerted by the commotion and the guard's loud sound, the second guard came to see what was happening.
"What's happening here?"
The first guard quickly pocketed one of the rolls. "Nothing much, just this," he said, tossing the second roll to the other guard.
"Ah, I see, so it's all good," the second guard smiled. "Well then, let's get moving."
It didn't matter if their home was occupied by the enemy; not everyone felt loyal or patriotic to their country. Their only allegiance was to the ones in current; as long as their lives weren't disturbed, they didn't care who sat in the ivory towers. Greedy people were still enthralled by coin, power-hungry men's appetite for control over others was just as intense, and the self-centered ones who only thought about themselves were still interested in only themselves.
The guard was grinning at getting his bribe, but then he saw Daiki boarding the carriage after Gaku and remembered how Daiki had grabbed his wrist. His happy expression soured as he moved along.
He saw the carriage driver and scoffed.
"Hey, take off your hat."
The carriage driver sighed and raised his hand, but apparently, it was too slow. The guard raised his staff and flicked the straw hat off the driver's head, revealing the face of one tired Takuma.
"Dear god, when was the last time you slept," the guard said, forgetting the humiliation he had felt.
"They wanted to get here quickly. They paid extra, boss," said Takuma.
"Oh, extra? How about your share, kid?"
He used his staff to poke Takuma in the leg, strong enough that it would've hurt a civilian.
Takuma slowly turned his head to the guard. Their eyes met, and the guard froze up as he felt as though a kunai had pierced through his neck. He gripped his staff until his knuckles were white and took a step back. His hand went to his neck like he was scratching an itch, but he was checking his neck.
"W-What? You… got a problem?"
Takuma put his hand into his pocket, which scared the guard, but Takuma took out a few loose, crumpled, dirty notes and held them to the guard, who hesitated but stepped close to snatch the notes out of his hand.
"Good… now move on, you're blocking the line," the guard tried to sound tough.
Takuma softly urged the horses and headed inside the city. As the carriage passed through the gates, he glanced at another carriage inspected by the other guard, who was ripping jute bags full of the merchandise, spilling a considerable amount on the floor. When the merchant begged him to stop, the other guard roughly pushed him to the ground and threatened him to stay there as he continued his 'inspection.'
Takuma then glanced into the guard cabin, where a lone shinobi was leaning in his chair, puffing smoke.
He put his straw hat back and entered the Spring City of Yu.
———
.
The carriage stopped in an alley before a building's back entrance. Takuma stepped down from his seat and looked around to see if someone was peeking from the windows. He opened the door, and Gaku and Daiki stepped out first.
"I thought I was never going to get out of there," said Daiki.
"Why were you the only one outside?" Gaku spat, a cigarette already in his hand.
"Because I'm the only one who knows horses," Takuma said. He had learned how to ride horses because shinobi didn't use horses—they ran everywhere—which was why he learned it because it made for such a great cover. And today, he had gotten the return on his investment.
Gaku went ahead and unlocked the building while Daiki went to the back of the carriage for Chinatsu's belongings, the only luggage not sealed away in storage seals.
Takuma held out his hand to help Chinatsu down the carriage
"Thank you, sweet boy," Chinatsu smiled, winking at Takuma.
He nodded and extended his hand for the next one, only to get it slapped away.
Kameko pulled off her veil and pushed Takuma's straw hat up to see his face.
"Ugh, I couldn't believe they could get worse," said Kaneko, commenting on Takuma's worse than usual bags under the eyes that were ever-present on his face.
"Sure, let's do this in the street," Takuma sighed.
The preparation time was shorter than Takuma anticipated despite the mission being delayed. Between team meetings and his personal preparations, fourteen days passed in the blink of an eye. And because of the stakes involved, he hadn't been able to sleep properly due to being busy and stressed. His usually tired face had gotten worse than usual.
Anko kicked Kameko from within the carriage to move the latter out of the way.
"What—!"
Anko looked at Takuma and Kameko and spoke in a no-nonsense voice. "Shut the fuck up, and move along."
Rikku and Iori stepped outside the carriage and followed the other women into the building through the back entry.
After Daiki unloaded the luggage, Takuma patted the horses and returned to his driver's seat.
"Thank you for your service, fellas… But it's time for us to part."
Now, he had to get rid of the horses and the carriage and familiarize himself with the city and its roads.
———
.
Takuma returned with food for the entire group.
The land and the building was owned by a company Gaku owned under a fake identity. He had made quite a bit of money in his time as a shinobi and had invested a portion into real estate. The building was a two-story residential house with a full basement floor.
"You were great out there, Chinatsu," Gaku said to the woman whom the guard had tried to lay his hands on.
"It was all you, my brave Gaku," Chinatsu smiled flirtatiously.
Chinatsu was the reason why the mission was delayed. Gaku had recommended her as a potential asset to Takuma. Chinatsu was a high-end courtesan with connections in the city's high society and had agreed to help them as a plant that could collect intellect. Takuma agreed to recruit her if only for the cover to get into the city. He wasn't sure how much helpful information she could get for them.
She was the reason the mission was delayed from seven days to fourteen days. Everything from doing a background check on her to contacting Chinatsu to have her to agree and then getting her transported was done extremely quickly, but it took time to coordinate and execute, which delayed the mission.
The group sat in a circle on the dirty floor with the food Takuma had bought for them.
"Rest for today," Anko addressed the group. "We start from tomorrow. Gaku and Chinatsu will spread the word about her return…"
Chinatsu was their cover. Gaku was the pimp, Daiki was the muscle, and Anko, Rikku, Kameko, and Iori were Chinatsu's maids. Chinatsu had returned to the city and would be conducting her business, reconnecting to her past clients/lovers, and the team was actually going to help her do her business.
The entire team except for Takuma. He didn't have a cover and thus wasn't connected to Chinatsu's group. If he got in trouble, it wouldn't connect back to him; if he got into trouble, it wouldn't get tracked back to Chinatsu.
Anko continued. "While they do that, Iori and Daiki will get the stuff for the house. Kameko and I will do the cleaning. Takuma will set up the other place. We start the initial recon after everything is set up."
The plan was to put a distance between Chinatsu's house and the place where the team was planning to make their base of operations. They had brought a lot of stuff that would feel very out of place in a courtesan's place of residence.
"Remember to stick to your roles, everyone," Anko said. She turned to Takuma, "And get some sleep; your look like a ghoul."
"I will," Takuma sighed.
It was their first day behind enemy lines, but Takuma felt that it was his chance to get some decent sleep because once he started doing recon, his head would be filled with information, goals, and plans that would keep sleep away from him.
.
———
Chat with me and the rest of the community on our DISCORD server.
The link is in the synopsis!
Chapitre 223: CH_7.5 (223)
Want to read ahead of schedule? Head over to Patreón @
[ https://www̧̧.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]
The link is also in the synopsis
———
.
Takuma wandered the streets of Yu alone, observing the city on foot.
He had completed his task of setting up the base in the abandoned factory handpicked by Gaku. The cleaning took the majority of time as he wanted a thorough job because, unlike the others, he was living in the base. The furnishings of the base were pre-prepared and brought from the outside, sealed in scrolls; setting them up was a quick couple hour job.
The others were still busy with their jobs, and Takuma decided to explore the city independently.
He put on civilian clothes that would allow him to carry a concealed weapon pouch and took off to roam the central part of the city. He didn't have any specific objective and simply wanted to take in the city's atmosphere.
The city was still very much functional, with people continuing on with their lives, but as he looked around, he could see the weight of the enemy's presence bearing down on the town. The streets were emptier than what Takuma would expect from a city of Yu's size. As he passed through a bazaar, many shopkeepers weren't calling out to the customers like one would expect from a bustling center of commerce. He passed a mother who had dressed herself and her two children in plain clothes that covered them from head to toe and was keeping them close as though in fear that they could be stolen from her at any moment.
He even hid in the shadows and watched two young men harassing a woman in the middle of a noticeably busy street, but not one passerby stopped to help the woman who had been pushed to tears.
Takuma guessed that the reason why the fruit shop owner, with hate in his eyes, wasn't already swinging the machete in his hand was because of the red armbands on the two young men. He had seen them on the gate guards and others while driving through the city.
According to Gaku, the city police wore armbands. Since the enemy had occupied the city, they had put the people who turned to support the new powers into the police to keep the population in check. They were using the people of the city against themselves. It was a classic tactic to maintain control.
"Hey, what are you two doing?!"
A middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair, wearing the same armband, came running, and the young men immediately stopped and stepped away from the woman. Unlike the young men wearing casual clothes, the new middle-aged man wore a proper uniform.
He tried to help the woman pick up the bag she had dropped but got his hand slapped away. The woman bowed to him despite looking thoroughly livid and ran away. The man stared at the woman, looking depressed, before immediately ripping into the two men with harsh words. They looked displeased but stood there in silence, listening to the scolding, though it looked like they weren't really listening to the older man.
Takuma moved on and continued roaming the city when he noticed red posters plastered on the walls. Looking closer at one, the notices were propaganda about how the occupying shinobi forces weren't enemies but liberators who were rescuing them and giving them an opportunity to live a better life.
He looked around, ripped one of the posters, and folded it into his pocket.
Takuma then saw a roadside stall manned by an old man selling shaved ice.
"The pink one," said Takuma, paying upfront.
"Coming up," said the old man with a balding head. As he shaved the block of ice, he asked, "So where are you from, young boy?"
Takuma titled his head. "Down west. How did you know I wasn't from here?"
"You passed by one of those traitors and had no reaction. No hate, joy, fear, you didn't look away to avoid their eyes. Everyone in this city would have a reaction, but all you had was indifference," the old man laughed.
"Huh," Takuma was impressed. "Tell me, boss. What's it like living here?"
"It is what it is." The old man looked around. "This city is the grain storage for all the farming villages in the region. Every season, the farmers sell their hard-grown crops in the city. That hasn't changed. The farmer doesn't care if we're occupied by the enemy; they have mouths to feed, and city folk need food. Ever since those shinobi arrived, suddenly there's no food, and the price of everything shot up."
Yu was the hub for the farming villages selling their produce in the big city. The city had built infrastructure to store grains, and mills to grind them, among other things that the smaller farm villages lacked, and having a central hub made more logistical sense. Many farmers sold their entire harvest to the city itself, who would sell it to whoever needed it. Everyone from big businesses to small vendors bought from the city.
"You mean they're holding back the food?" said Takuma.
"Of course, what else could it be? They have been forcing the farmers to only sell to the city. They're forcing anyone who needs food to buy it from the city because there's no other choice." The old man then whispered, "I asked one of the farmers who came here after harvest season—he said that this year's harvest was abundant."
Takuma glanced at the shuttered restaurant behind the old man's stall on wheels. He looked around and didn't see any other stalls. The old man himself was selling shaved ice flavored with bottled syrups.
"Here you go," the old man handed him a shaved ice on a stick.
"Thank you, old man," Takuma gave him a smile and continued his walk.
Gaku was in Yu during the enemy invasion. He continued to stay in the city for months before he was contacted by the Hidden Steam to come out to help with a mission. According to him, the shinobi lived in an affluent part of the city. And as Takuma walked toward that part of the city, he noticed how empty the city got. He didn't see anyone for a good few minutes; it seemed the population was staying away from the shinobi.
Then he saw a group of shinobi laughing as they came down the street. Takuma jumped into tall grass and lay there watching them as they passed by. They passed him by quickly, but Takuma continued to lay in the tall grass for a few more minutes before getting up and walking away, deciding that he had done enough exploring for the day and that the next time he wanted to explore the area, he would do it at night with darkness as his ally.
———
.
When Takuma returned to the base, some of the team members were waiting for him. He noticed that Gaku, Daiki, and Iori weren't present in the group.
"Where were you?" Anko had her arms crossed.
"Out, I left a note," said Takuma. He pointed at the small note which said: 'Out, will be back in the evening.'
"You weren't supposed to be out… So, what did you find?"
"Where are the others?"
"Iori and Daiki are at the house. Gaku is out spreading the word," said Rikku.
"Are we sure he's doing that?" asked Takuma, pulling out a MRE (Meal, Ready-To-Eat) from the stock of rationed pre-prepared meals they had brought from the outside. He was hungry after his walk and hadn't eaten since morning. He sighed as he looked at the MRE—with the food prices in Yu, he wouldn't be eating fresh food a lot.
"You really don't trust him, do you?" said Kameko.
Takuma shrugged. He had tried to apologize to Gaku and start anew with a positive attitude, but Gaku wasn't receptive, and unlike the duty clone, Takuma couldn't see anything good about the guy. The sound of Gaku's voice and his stupid face was irritating. They had done satisfactory work during the preparation period, but Takuma did not trust Gaku.
"They have done a good job at maintaining control over the city," he said, telling the team what he had seen. "I think I have the first course of action… I found these plastered around the city." He pulled out a few different red propaganda posters he had ripped off the wall and put it on the sheet metal table for the team to see. "They're controlling the amount of food the city has access to, artificially raising the prices. They blame the Land of Hot Waters for forbidding the villages to sell their harvest to the city because it has been occupied—trying to spread the impression that their nation has abandoned them.
"But I heard something interesting," he said.
The team looked up from the posters to Takuma.
"An old man told me that most farmers continue to sell their produce directly to the city. And he gave me the impression that the farmers sold without much resistance, which tells us that the enemy bought at a fair market price—but that means they spent money—where is that money coming from? I doubt they're using military funds; it's a lot of produce…"
Kameko's eyes lit up. "They're selling the produce somewhere else?"
Takuma snapped his fingers and nodded. "Yes, they're exporting the food to the Land of Frost… I read in a report that Yu has stopped all exports to other cities, but they're continuing to buy produce, and seeing that they're keeping the city hungry, they must have a lot of inventory—"
"It would be a waste to let it all go to waste," Anko completed his sentence.
"Right. They're keeping the population hungry to control them while also using it to spread misinformation. But most importantly, they're making it so that the farmers don't need to look elsewhere to sell their crops. By simply maintaining the existing relationship, the enemy got control over the entire region. They targeted Yu for this very reason."
It would be bad for the Land of Frost if the farmers selling their produce to Yu suddenly took their business elsewhere. They needed to keep the population fed, and if the farmers turned away, they would have to import food into Yu from the Land of Frost, meaning that another area in the Land of Frost would have less food.
The war wasn't just about land and territory; it was also about the people. By keeping it all the same as before, the farmers were kept happy, and the Land of Frost also got an additional food supply that they could sell into their territory. And that was likely to continue as long as Yu was under the Land of Frost's control.
"I think we need to shake this propaganda they're trying to spread before it's too late," said Takuma.
"Too late?" asked Rikku, confused
"I believe it's only time before they start ramping up the food available in the city, returning to normal. It will create the impression that while the Land of Hot Waters has abandoned them, the Land of Frost has embraced them as their own. We must disrupt the plan by revealing the truth before the entire city switches sides."
"And how do you say we do that?" asked Anko.
Takuma held up one of the red posters. "We copy the enemy," he said. "We make similar posters debunking the propaganda they're trying to push and plaster our posters around the city for the people to read."
"Okay," said Kameko with hum. "When Gaku returns, we have him find a printer to make prints."
"No, that won't work," Anko shook her head.
"Yeah, I thought of that first, but that's not suitable. When the enemy sees our posters, they will visit every printer in the city to find who printed them. We will be burning a civilian," Takuma sighed, but he had an alternative. "I know how to use woodblock printing. We carve a piece of wood as a template, dip it in ink, and stamp it on paper like a… stamp. The quality won't be as good, but I think it'll work."
He could carve wood, and they had a fuin-nin on the team to handle ink.
"No, we don't need that," said Anko, staring at the posters. "We can have the posters brought in from outside."
"How?" asked Takuma, furrowing his brow.
"Like we brought everything in here," Anko said, pointing to everything in the base.
"In a sealed scroll? But who will send the message and bring them in?"
"My babies, of course," Anko smiled.
.
———
Chat with me and the rest of the community on our DISCORD server.
The link is in the synopsis!
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
200+ Classement
Power Stone 
109 Power
stone Vous aimerez peut-être aussi
Commentaire de paragraphe