The first few hours of the journey passed smoothly without incident as the route to the Fire Capital was one of the best maintained in the Land of Fire.
Ishida sat inside the carriage, one hand resting on the arm rest beside him.
At the front of the carriage, Katsuro walked alongside the lead horse, looking relaxed, but his eyes never stayed still for long, drifting from the road to the surrounding treeline and back again.
Years of escort work had made that instinctive.
Sumi rode perched on the back edge of the carriage, legs dangling slightly as she leaned against one of the posts.
From her vantage point, she could see far ahead down the road they've passed with forest gradually fading behind them.
"Hard to believe this is a mission," Katsuro suddenly said, glancing back. "Feels more like a paid vacation."
Sumi huffed. "You say that now. Let the road stop being kind and see how long that mood lasts."
"Relax," Katsuro replied. "This stretch is clean. Patrols run it twice a day."
As if on cue, they passed a pair of Fire Country guards stationed at a checkpoint, the men nodding politely as the carriage rolled by.
One even raised a hand in greeting to which Katsuro acknowledged with a smile.
These guards may not be shinobi, but they had their own merits.
Unlike Shinobi that were the country's military force, these guards were trained, disciplined and loyal to the daimyo and his government.
In times of war, they quell civil unrest within the borders which include bandits and petty crimes.
They were not weak though. It would be a mistake to compare regular soldiers for amateurs.
But against a shinobi? They'd be outmatched before they even drew a breath.
Unlike Shinobi that had chakra and Justus, they relied solely on human skill, training, and teamwork.
That is the reason as to why merchants still hire Shinobi escorts. Even on the safest roads, a single shinobi-level threat would shred these lines.
By midday, the sun had climbed high enough to demand a stop.
Katsuro had the driver guide the carriage off the road into a small clearing near a stream, where the sound of running water greeted them.
The horses were unhitched and led toward the stream to drink, and Ishida climbed down from the carriage with a small grunt, stretching his back before settling onto a piece of rock nearby.
"This part of the job never gets any easier." He muttered to himself.
"So," he said, eyes scanning the passing forest, "how long have you two been doing this escort work?"
Katsuro shrugged, crouching by the stream beside the drinking horses. "Long enough to know which roads are safe and which ones aren't."
Sumi didn't look up from her perch at the back of the carriage
Ishida chuckled softly. "Not exactly the answer I expected, but I suppose honesty counts for something."
A short pause followed, broken only by the stream and the occasional shuffle of hooves.
"Thank you both for your effort. Even an easy road demands attention, it's not a small thing to stay alert for hours on end."
Katsuro tilted his head curiously. "I've got to ask, why make this a C-rank mission?"
"Must there be a reason?" Ishida answered with a question of his own.
"Well, from the mission details, this is an almost insultingly easy mission to be ranked as C-rank."
"The road from Konoha to the Fire capital is one of the most secure roads in the country. There are minimal bandits, no shinobi interference."
"What are you getting at?" Ishida asked with a smile as he stroked his beard.
"Uh… Seems like a lot of paperwork for nothing."
Ishida gave a light chuckle, "Sometimes rank is more about the client than the danger. There's more to measure than just risk."
Sumi, finally breaking her silence, asked.. "Meaning?"
Ishida turned to face her. "Timing, logistics, contracts… perception."
"Timing," Ishida said, "for when a mission starts, how long it takes, and whether it clashes with other operations."
Katsuro nodded in agreement while Sumi remained silent.
"Logistics," Ishida continued, "for how resources move, who escorts whom, and making sure everything runs smoothly."
"Contracts for making sure the client's expectations are met, legally and formally."
"And perception for how the mission looks to the village, to other merchants, or even other shinobi."
"Rank doesn't always reflect danger. Sometimes it's about handling all of that without a hitch."
Sumi frowned slightly. "So it's less about the mission being difficult and more about you ensuring your safety?"
Ishida nodded with a smile. "Exactly. The shinobi world is in turmoil of war. While I trust our village's shinobi, my employer isn't paying me to test bravery, they're paying me to deliver results safely."
"You want the client satisfied and your fees secured. What does rank matter in the end?" He concluded with a question which none could answer.
Katsuro gave a slow nod, mulling it over. "Huh. I guess that makes sense. Still… rank difficulty or not, I'll keep my eyes open."
Ishida chuckled lightly. "That's the only way to do it. Good work so far."
…
The carriage creaked softly as the horses resumed their pace, the stream fading behind them and the dirt road stretching into a corridor of trees once more.
Seated in the carriage, Ishida couldn't help but began to revise his plans upon arriving at the capital.
An experienced merchant he may be, but influential was something he wasn't and that was a problem.
He had attempted to use the influence of the Lotus Store in the capital city but all attempts proved to be for naught.
The Lotus Store might be a budding business with a lot of prospects considering its location, but that very opportunity presented a fatal flaw.
It lacked actual stability.
While various families have long since established themselves in the capital city and other neighbouring cities and villages in the land of Fire, Konoha was not one of them and the reason was simple.
Shinobi.
These were a class of people prone to leaving destruction in their wake with their various Shinobi Arts.
They were walking natural disasters, politically protected, legally dangerous to cross and difficult to insure against.
To an old, conservative, and capital-rooted merchant group who thinks in risk exposure and not admiration, the instinct to avoid a shinobi-heavy settlement makes sense.
They may have all gathered themselves in one location to form a village with one Supreme leader watching over them, but that didn't mean any established merchant group or family were willing to set up there.
It held prospects, true, but its risks outweighed its usefulness.
A high upside doesn't matter if downside is catastrophic, so in this case, Stability outweighed potential
And Ishida knew this.
Currently, Konoha has established civilian districts with long-standing merchants who had learned how to coexist with shinobi and even the Daimyō business routes pass through or near it.
Money flowed through the village, goods moved and business was done.
But legacy merchant houses, aristocratic trade families and multi-generational firms with capital influence don't avoid Konoha entirely, they just refuse to anchor themselves there.
That distinction mattered.
In the capital, commerce was rigid and layered with history.
Influence had weight, contracts carried lineage, and mistakes echoed for generations.
Stability was not optional, it was the foundation everything else rested on.
Konoha was the opposite.
It was a frontier economy.
Fast growth. High volatility. Opportunity paired with constant risk.
It attracted new money rather than old, flexible traders instead of conservative houses, and businesses willing to tie themselves, directly or indirectly, to shinobi activity.
What it lacked was entrenched capital, dynastic merchant power, and the quiet authority that came from centuries of uninterrupted control.
And that imbalance explained everything.
It explained how the Lotus Store could rise so quickly in Konoha, gaining influence where others hesitated.
It explained why capital-based merchant houses dismissed the Lotus Store's expansion attempts outright, not out of hostility, but indifference.
It explained why Murakami was early, not wrong, and why the capital had no intention of taking him seriously yet.
Konoha was not a throne from which power ruled.
It was a launchpad.
And Ishida understood that any business born there would either adapt fast enough to survive its instability, or be crushed long before the old powers ever felt threatened.
He understood this. Hina understood this and he could bet on his life that Murakami did too, yet he pushed for this, which could only mean one thing.
He had a plan.
Ishida didn't know what the plan was, but he would make sure there was no hold up from his side. However, that still didn't diminish the difficulty of this task.
Eight families.
Eight walls.
He'd memorized them long ago, not out of admiration, but necessity.
Any merchant who dreamed of breathing inside the Fire Capital learned their names the way shinobi learned about chakra
The Hirano guild came first, always. Cloth and silk. Their imports kept the entire land of Fire clothed from civilian markets to daimyō courts.
No bolt of fabric moved through the capital without passing through Hirano hands, directly or indirectly.
That was how influential they were.
Then the Katsuragi family in hospitality. Inns, guest houses, estates for nobles passing through.
They didn't trade goods; they traded access to exclusivity.
The Fujimoto Family dealt in caravans, wagons, warehouses; every road into the capital eventually paid them tolls, openly or otherwise.
The Takeda Family handled credit, ledgers, and arbitration. Banking without calling it banking.
The Saionji Family handled luxury goods, noble tastes, and court influence. If Saionji didn't buy it, no noble would be seen touching it.
Ishida knew better than to knock on that door at all.
Prestige wasn't something you sold upward.
The Mizuno Family controlled food inside the capital, grain flow, ration permits, and warehouses.
The Kanzaki Family dealt in Weapons and armor for guards and caravans, civilian side only.
And the Amagiri Family handled the Bureaucracy's bloodstream.
Paper, ink, and scrolls production.
These were families with hundreds of millions to a billion ryo in net worth, why would they bother with a business still tettering below a hundred million?
Ishida exhaled slowly and let his thoughts drift where these major families never bothered to look, downward.
Because the foothold wouldn't come from the giants. It never did.
There were minor houses, brittle but hungry.
The Aoyama Storeholders, who supplied incense and lamps to less influential temples around the land of fire. The ones without wealthy patrons or sprawling estates.
Saionji leftovers constantly undercut them, since their products were cheap and plentiful.
But prestige meant nothing to Aoyama, survival meant everything.
Stable suppliers and reliable shipments was their currency.
There was the Nakamura Transport Kin, a second-rate wagon family locked out by Fujimoto.
They only went short routes and the city outskirts and were desperate for consistent contracts to prove reliability.
They didn't need glory, just the chance to move goods without shame.
Every stable client was a foothold toward their legitimacy.
The Ueda Grain Brokers, too small to threaten Mizuno but too large to vanish without notice.
They handled spillover storage, seasonal excess, surplus no one else wanted.
They were quiet and cautious, but resentful of the families that monopolized the main trade.
Their strength was discretion and their leverage, knowing the market's hidden corners.
The Shibata Ink Makers were the regional producers forced to sell raw products to Hoshino at humiliating margins.
They dreamed of finishing scrolls with their own seal one day, but for now they toiled, their ambition confined by contracts and necessity to thrive.
The Morita Lodging Line handled cheap hostels and inns, ignored by Katsuragi and the elite.
It was nothing prestigious, but it was always full. People needed beds to sleep and a roof over their head, even if the aristocrats looked the other way.
To them, business was measured in occupancy, not reputation.
That was the truth the elite usually forgot.
They may rule the center, but the city lives on its edges.
And if a merchant wanted in, he didn't need to push the gates, but grow roots beneath the walls.
Ishida's fingers tightened slightly on the armrest as he let out a dry chuckle.
Murakami understood this too well, and that more than the eight families combined, was what made the future dangerous.
And Ishida could only look forward to it.
_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_
A/N: I know this is coming later, but I wish yall a Merry Christmas Seasom and a wonderful New Year ahead.
I've been occupied like most of you with the festivities and finally managed to pull myself together to write this chapter after an extensive study into certain areas I hope this short arc will encompass.
As I've made mention before. Murakami's life won't be hedged on just being a shinobi, going for missions, experiencing life and death situations and somehow still have money without any common sense around it.
He has to have a foundation for whatever he would build in the future.
He can't build a labs, camps, schools, and other infrastructure I have in mind from just mission money and he's definitely not going to be a thief when he can build something that will generate him money.
The only flaw I might have is my inability to bring out the character's unique personalities properly as time go on, but I'm sure it will work out somehow.
Anyways, enjoy and don't forget to Vote for this story.