7
"What do ya' know about Tokusei, stranger?" Daigo asks.
"Listen," Naruto says. "If I want to make town by nightfall, I need to get going soon. So maybe cut the interrogation and just tell me what you know, okay?"
It's bad form, letting the shopkeeper see his irritation like this. Five weeks away from other nin have apparently blunted his instincts. Ah, well—Naruto never has been much for subtlety. Even now, his favorite forms of misdirection involve tits and explosions.
All the same, every second Naruto spends in this place magnifies a marrow-deep desire to go scrub with steel wool.
Somewhere outside, a gust of wind throws grit against the shop's walls. A sound like the scurrying of hundreds of hidden insects. Ghost flames dance within their globes.
At last, Daigo blinks slowly and says, "No need to get sandy, stranger. Difficult to know what to tell a man when he ain't forthcomin' about his intentions."
Naruto inhales, road dust and rotten lumber thick in his nostrils. He says, "Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Guess I'm just tired. Sick of the trail."
"Gets to the best of us, stranger."
Though Naruto sincerely doubts that the shopkeeper is counted among "the best of us," he nods and says, "Honestly, most of what I know about Tokusei I've picked up from rumors I heard on the road. I know the whole region's a colony of the Earth Daimyo—"
"On paper, at least," Daigo says. Something about this pleases him to a degree that Naruto finds unpleasant.
"Right. And it's run by a bunch of mining companies or something."
"Just two, really."
". . . And that it's cursed."
One of Daigo's eyebrows rises like a curious centipede. "Well, that there is debatable, stranger," he says. "Lots o' folk believe that. Then again, lots o' folk believe the stars are the gods' spilled festival rice. Don't make it true."
This is pointless. Whatever this guy's angle is, Naruto isn't interested in playing into it. He scratches at the oily beard running riot over his chin. He says, "Guess I better find out for myself, then."
He pivots on his heel, eager to scurry back out into the sun that was bedeviling him just minutes before. Naruto hesitates. He turns to the impassive shopkeeper and says, "You got any food in this place? I'd punch a nun for some decent grub."
"Oh, plenty. Take your pick," the little man says. He waves a hand across the shop, to a set of shelves half-cast in shadow. Sitting upon them are rows and columns and feckless piles of cans. Most are accessorized with thick coats of dust. One label reads—in grand, bold characters—"CATFISH IN SPECIAL GRAVY!"
Naruto's stomach trembles, flops, and turns in on itself.
He's no stranger to canned food, of course. Early in his journey, Naruto sustained himself almost entirely on canned peaches—at least until the resultant diarrhea left him so dehydrated that he lost two days recovering at an alpine way station. Further proof that even S-ranked jōnin make mistakes.
"Yeah, I'll pass," Naruto says. "You sure you don't have anything else? Like instant noodles or something?"
The little man gazes at him blankly.
Before the shopkeeper can try to sell him anything else, Naruto says, ". . . Right, then. Well, I really should get going. Thanks for the, uh. The . . . information?"
As Naruto again turns to leave, Daigo hops closer and—with a voice like a sibilant nail file—says, "Are ya' certain that there ain't any . . . other needs I might help you in fillin'?"
"Naw, I'm good. You take care or whatever."
"There are items in our stockroom that might interest you, sir. Why, anything might be back there and available to you. Anything at all."
The hustle—and perhaps the continued thought of processed catfish—pours bile into Naruto's gorge. Just as he prepares to give Daigo Shimura one final brush-off, he hears voices through the open front door of the shop. A pair of satisfied chortles wafts in with the hot breeze.
The sound of boots resounds on the planks outside.