Chapter 96.5- One Thousand Hands

In the end, the answer to the question no one had asked was twenty-three and the competition had ended in a tie, with both ramen chef and customer loudly proclaiming they could keep going if not for the lack of ingredients. And indeed they had for a while. Nishiyoka had turned from making Pork ramen o whatever flavors he had the ingredients for on hand. Except Seaweed, of course. Kushina’s hatred of seaweed ramen could only be matched by the love she had for all other forms of the delicious meal.

“Thank you for having us Nishiyoka-san.” I said, before looking at the stock Kushina had just run through. Teuchi was attempting to paint the scene to immortalize it for some reason. Doing some quick mental math, I tapped my hand on the table, unsealing a few dozen thousand ryo.

“Oh no Hokage-sama. I said this one would be on the house” The chef said.

“And maybe I would have been fine with that if we ate one bowl each, but my cute little students seem to have conspired to try putting you out of business. Please accept the money, Nishiyoka-san”

“Kushina-chan is my best customer, Hokage-san. I knew how much she’d put away before I offered”

“Regardless. The money is out here and I can’t put it back in my seal and we don’t have any pocket space to fit it in” I lied,

“But the seal—“

“Ignore her” I cut in, hand reaching out to slam over Kushina’s massive mouth before she could say anything else.

Nishiyoka gave me a look that I met evenly as we stared off. Brave of him. I knew Jounin that wouldn’t dare meet my eyes. Of course, as a civilian, he had the privilege of not quite understanding just how dangerous of a man he was speaking to.

“Fine, Hokage-sama. But next time, the treat is on me, I promise.”

“Of course, Nishiyoka-san” I said, completing our usual song and dance.

“Come along, little monkeys” I said, turning to leave with Kushina still underarm and one hand over her mouth. Her attempts to scream for help were thoroughly muffled as the four of us walked down the street, heading back to my tower.

“Why did you lie?” Minato asked.

“Hmm?”

“He’s been trying to treat us for weeks now, and you never let him” He clarified.

“Can you tell us why, Mikoto?” I asked.

“Because he’d probably go out of business if he did treat us.” She said.

“What? No way. Nishiyoka-san has so many customers all the time” Kushina managed to bite her way out of my grip before saying.

“Sure he does. But his prices are so low that it doesn’t matter. He’s probably just doing only slightly better than breaking even on every bowl. So if he treats us to thirty bowls with no payment for that, his books go straight into the red” Mikoto said.

“Nishiyoka is going to go out of business?” Kushina almost screamed, turning about to launch herself back at the store.