Disclaimer: First Chapter
Story Start!

Mikan Yuuki
Cooking, Laundry, House Cleaning

Naruto Uzumaki
Family Protection, Budget Planning, Yard Work

Rito Yuuki
Homework Assistance, Trash/Recycle, Bathroom Cleaning

"Would you say Lala is good at school work more, or household chores..." Rito stated as he wrote Lala's name down on the family chart for the house. It was about time that Lala started to pull her weight around the household, and contribute to the family dynamic in his eyes. Before now, they each had something that covered for each other in a rather fair way.

Mikan was great with cooking and most household chores, so on the Family Schedule that was what she was assigned for. That wasn't to say that they could not help her when she asked or they felt she needed it, but it was her household duty to do that. She liked it and overall didn't mind it either, since they were the skills that she had gotten over years of living with her brothers.

Naruto was the family muscle, who would protect Rito or Mikan when they went out grocery shopping, and would do all of the intense physical labor around the house. Surprisingly enough, he was also the most street smart and the best with money overall. Instead of going to big grocery stores, usually Mikan would take Naruto to local market stalls in order to find the best deals and haggle down the prices of food items while also doing great money management.

Rito was the one who helped Naruto (who was bad at studying) and Mikan (who was younger than him) out with homework since he had the advantage there. While Mikan was smarter than he was, Rito had more experience in school than she did so he could help her with her work. After years of living with Naruto, he also knew what it took to get Naruto to remember things that he would try to learn.

They each had a place in the household.

"Oooooh, I can do laundry! I have never-"

"Nope, I'm not having a girl who wears a robot as clothes do the laundry. You don't know the differences between sorting fabrics by type, and then by type and color. There are 4 categories to sorting laundry, and I would rather by panties not get damaged because you mixed them into with Naruto's pants. Not to mention pre-treating stains, since Naruto gets covered in blood a lot." Mikan had to regularly treat Naruto's clothes for blood stains. Not to mention some things needed to be dried in a dryer and other things needed to be hung in the backyard for better clothes quality.

"Family protection-"

"Mine, no touchie that one." Naruto crossed his arms.

He didn't need a reason, that was his and nobody was taking that job away from him.

"Ooooh..." Lala pouted, since she was still learning the written language, so she couldn't help with homework. "Oh! I should finish my new Soapy Soapy Dish-kun!" Lala cheered herself up with a wide smile. She still needed to add the finishing touches to that device, so she could help Mikan out with the dishes.

Rito looked at the stubborn siblings, Naruto and Mikan, who would naturally refuse to share their house tasks with Lala.

"Ah crap, speaking of household stuff... Mikan, we need to go do that thing." Naruto stated as he gestured to the door. They needed to hurry if they wanted to get any good deals.

Mikan gave a sly smile at Lala.

"Yeah, we'll need to go alone if we want to get done faster. Hey Lala, why don't you have Rito show you how to sort recycle from trash?" Mikan asked with a growing smirk. This was nearing the time of the week and the time of the day that certain things could be made to happen. She was a small girl, and though she could get discounts from kind, older people, she couldn't haggle with those who were able to take advantage of her size and age.

This was a tradition between her and Naruto, because Naruto had a reputation for helping people around town, beating up gangs that caused trouble, and being a nice guy. His looks promised most people didn't mess with him, and when the two of them went together his reputation and her looks would promise they could always get the most out of their deals.

This was the best combination for cheap, good quality food, that was both healthy and semi-fresh.

"Okay!"

-Later On-

"Come on now, you can't be serious... only a 10% discount? Look at this, the quality of this shrimp is great and all... but I know it's about to become unsellable. You're going to have to either sell it by tomorrow, or lose it... the quality has gone down with age." Naruto stated as he looked over the jumbo shrimp, with a smirk on his face.

"Naruto-kun, you know I can't go much higher than 10%..."

"Ah, but how about 15% and we will buy even more than usual. You see, when people see others buying a lot of something, it makes them want to buy it... and if people see a cute girl like her-" Naruto gestured to Mikan, and after that he pointed to himself. "-and a handsome foreigner looking guy like me, buying from you... I bet you can sell the rest of your stock without having to waste any... and you might even sell it at full price." Naruto whispered to the man as he wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

Mikan was just smiling.

This was like watching magic.

"You drive a hard bargain, but you make a good point... 12%..."

"I'll go back down to 10%... if you throw in some of that tobiko." Naruto stated to the man, who nodded his head and started to pack up some of the fish roe for Naruto and Mikan. He looked around, before he secretely passed Mikan the bag so that potential customers didn't see him giving away anything for free.

Mikan gave the man money equal to the amount of shrimp they were buying, and they packed it up in their portable cooler and got ready to visit the next spot on their list.

"You're devious... you were after the roe the entire time." Mikan nudged his side as they walked out of hearing range. Because of Naruto, they had all they needed to make some high quality sushi for dinner soon. She didn't know where Naruto became so good at haggling, but his ability to talk to people and get them to come over to his side of things was always amazing to see. Just the way he could convince others to do what he wanted was a treat.

1/10th of everything they would be taking home today, was absolutely free of charge for them. They had gotten between 10 and 20% discounts on everything that they had bought, and he had managed to do that without causing any financial stress on those selling the products to them OR creating any bad blood. Even now, Mikan could look back and see that the man they just bought from, was getting even more business than before by a small amount.

Seeing people buy in bulk, would always get people with lower impulse control to want to buy as well, which was why Naruto always visited stalls that had a good number of people in the general area.

"Of course I was... now watch this..." Naruto looked out of the corner of his eye, and he wrapped his arm around Mikan as they walked.

...

"Oh Naruto-kun! Come over here, I have something for you!"

Just as Naruto and Mikan walked by a stall that was selling eggs, a voice called out to them. Naruto feigned surprise, and Mikan showed actual surprise when they were called. She followed Naruto as he walked over to the stall. The woman running the stall was elderly, very much so, but she had her younger daughter (in her 40s) with her.

"Sorry that last weekend we had you harvest out garden for us, our chickens laid some oddly shaped eggs, to thank you for the last minute work, do you want to take the eggs we can't sell?"

"Oh don't worry too much, I'm always happy to help-" The truth of those words was real, Naruto was always happy to help those around him. "-but you don't need to do that, we can't take those from you." The lie, the fact was that Naruto knew that they were going to insist that he take them. They couldn't sell their B-Grade eggs next to their higher grade eggs, without making their stock look worse as a whole. You always put your best stuff on display, or sold the lower quality stuff for a discount.

"Oh no, we insist, you're always so helpful to us, and the twins absolutely love when you come over."

"Okay then, you know where to find me if you ever need more help." Naruto stated to them as he accepted the 2 dozen eggs that were offered to him. Mikan had only seen him use a trick like this a couple of times before, where people just offered him free stuff because he had helped them personally in the past. She just packed the eggs away in the cooler that Naruto was holding for them, and she could barely hide her smile.

"Thank you so much." Mikan gave a polite bow.

Feeding 3 people on a limited budget had always been a challenge, but with money-smart Naruto around they never struggled before. Even with 4 people to feed, Mikan knew that coming up with food was not going to be an issue thanks to how pro-active Naruto was in the community.

-Much Later-

"Well this is the biggest haul yet, how much did you spend on it all?" Rito asked when he saw just how stuffed the fridge and freezer were. The cabinets were also stuffed full, to the point that they wouldn't have to worry about going grocery shopping for a more than a week. He had to wonder just how much was spent on all of it.

Not because he thought a lot of money had been spent, but because he wanted to be surprised by how little money it had all come to.

"All of this, for just under 12,000 yen." Mikan puffed her chest out in pride.

They had gotten 35,000 yen worth of food for around a third of the total price of it all, thanks to all of the free stuff and the constant discounts. People underestimated how much you could get out of a discount, or how much they would add up and how quickly. Not to mention with the constant flow of tiny extras here and there, meant that they were getting an abundance of food.

This was the reason why the siblings three could go out to eat whenever they didn't want to eat home cooking, because their food budget was always well managed. Whatever was left they would send back to their parents, who would often show pride at how well they managed to take care of themselves without them.

It was kind of a game for Naruto and Mikan.

"If the next time we go shopping, we only spend 10,000 yen then we will have beaten the monthly record for using as little of our budget as possible." Naruto bragged to Rito, while Mikan did a small fist bump.

That would mean that for the month, they would have spent less than half of their total food budget even with the addition of Lala to the group. That would be cause for a small celebration, meaning they could go out to eat at a very fancy place to reward themselves.

"... What is going on?" Lala asked Rito, since she had never seen Naruto or Mikan acting like this with each other.

Rito just smiled.

"Our parents send us money to use, but Naruto budgets the money, and he set a food budget out of that money. He and Mikan like to see how little of the food budget they can spend each month, without lowering the quality of the food we eat." Rito explained. It was stupid to him, since he would eat anything put in front of him. Their parents gave them the money to take care of themselves with, it was all Naruto who decided to see if there was a way to spend as little of it as possible. "I don't complain though, since Naruto buys the food, and Mikan cooks it... and it is always delicious." Rito had no problem with whatever Naruto set the food budget as, or how Naruto decided to budget their expenses.

He was just happy Naruto and Mikan were having fun doing this with each other.

Chapter End!
Please Leave Me Lots of Nice Long Reviews, But No Flames Please!

Sometimes, you just need a chapter to give you some details about the lives of the characters before the story started.
These chill chapters are nice to write sometimes as well.