Naruto: Farming Emotions with Multiple Identities in Naruto — Chapter 203

Chapter 203: Obito Can’t Possibly Be This Cute

Stelle sat in the dusty courtyard, staring down at the unrecognizable, charred lump on her plate with a deep sense of existential doubt.

[System, how can the food I make be so unpalatable? This is unscientific. I’m a master who can manually weave all kinds of high-level ninjutsu, and I’ve cycled through so many aliases over the years. How could I have missed the basic cooking skill?]

The system’s mechanical voice echoed in her mind, accompanied by the distinct, hearty sound of digital laughter.

[Host, think about it yourself. Back when you were with the Senju clan, what you ate was either prepared by servants or by Senju Tobirama himself. Even out in the wild, whenever you declared you wanted grilled fish, your involvement stopped at tossing the fish near the fire and sprinkling salt before someone else took over.]

[With those aliases you used while wandering the ninja world, you stayed in high-end hotels every single time, claiming you were busy every day and needed to enjoy life whenever you had free time.]

[Later in Konoha, you ate gourmet meals prepared by the Uchiha clan’s private chefs, and when you went out on missions, you had your reliable teammates to handle the campfires. You’ve never actually cooked a proper meal in your life.]

Stelle frowned, mentally sifting through her experiences over the years, picking out the rare instances of culinary attempts to examine them.

[But when I was the Hokage, I cooked a few times! Everyone finished it, except for the Nine-Tails, who stubbornly refused to touch it.]

[Exactly,] the system retorted. [Uchiha Kagami and Minato Namikaze would eat without saying a single word, heads down, just shoveling it in. They stayed completely silent and specifically finished every last bite, wearing pained expressions that screamed, ‘This is delicious, so don’t eat any.’ And then you got the wrong idea, didn’t you?]

The system’s analysis was entirely logical and well-founded. Stelle was left utterly speechless.

Great. Now she had to forage for her own food and cook it herself, and her current output was a super unpalatable, rock-hard lump.

Beside her, Kikushi whimpered. The mentally unstable woman might have been starving, because she kept trying to stuff the awful, burnt food into her mouth. Stelle quickly snatched the plate away to stop her, prompting Kikushi to cry out in distress. Sighing, Stelle gently patted the woman’s back, humming a soft, melodic tune to coax her and calm her erratic emotions.

Turning around, she faced the ruined dishes on the wooden table, feeling a rare, heavy sense of helplessness settling over her shoulders.

“How about I give it a try? When I don’t want to eat at the Uchiha dining hall, I cook for myself too.”

Obito raised his hand enthusiastically. Without waiting for an answer, the young boy marched into the cramped kitchen. A few minutes of clattering later, he emerged having stir-fried another portion of wild vegetables and boiled a fresh pot of fish soup.

After Stelle took a cautious bite, she felt entirely defeated.

A six-year-old boy, with no adults at home to teach him, had figured out how to cook on his own. Although it wasn’t a gourmet masterpiece, it was at least well within the range of being edible—even if the leafy vegetables were noticeably undersalted and there was an aggressive kick of chili in the thin soup.

It wasn’t like the biohazard she had just produced, which was so hard to swallow that no one would touch it unless they were literally seconds away from starving to death.

Fine. She had zero talent for cooking. She admitted it. Anyway, it wasn’t a big deal; at worst, she would just start learning from scratch today.

“Obito, you’re amazing. Your cooking is much better than mine,” Stelle praised him sincerely, offering him a warm, appreciative smile.

Obito had never expected that one day he would be praised for a rushed meal that was barely edible. His cheeks instantly flared a bright, tomato red.

He really liked the feeling of being recognized, but such direct, genuine praise also made his usually boisterous self feel incredibly embarrassed. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.

“Haha, really? Then I’ll have to study culinary arts properly from now on!”

He scratched the back of his head, laughing with a bright, sunny brilliance that carried a distinct hint of adorable silliness.

[Ding! Mood value from Uchiha Obito +50,000]

Stelle’s gaze fell on the blushing boy, her eyes growing slightly warm. After working so hard for so many years, was she finally going to see the light at the end of the tunnel?

If everyone in this era was as incredibly easy to farm mood value from as Obito, she wouldn’t even need to wait for the Fourth Great Ninja War to pay off her system loans.

“Ah, why are you crying? Is it too spicy? This soup I made is also very strange. How about I treat you to ramen? I just received my living allowance!” Obito grew frantic, waving his hands as he noticed the moisture in her eyes.

Stelle shook her head gently, wiping away a fake tear. “I’m just a little happy because I met such a good friend like Obito.”

[Ding! Mood value from Uchiha Obito +50,000]

Ahhhhh, this is heaven.

In the following days, Stelle officially began her own hardcore survival journey.

She took a rusted kitchen knife into the dense forest, splitting thick bamboo stalks and carefully sharpening the pieces into lethal stakes. She also sneaked over to the Jonin training grounds, scavenging the dirt for discarded ninja tools like broken steel wires and bent kunai. With these scavenged materials, she constructed various simple, highly practical snare traps to catch wild game.

She dug her fingers into the damp soil to find earthworms for fishing. To maximize her catch, she even designed complex pulley traps on the thick branches overhanging the river, lowering earthworms wrapped in thin gauze into the rushing water.

When the river fish were inevitably attracted by the strong, fishy smell of the bait, Stelle would pull a hidden wire, triggering the trap. A volley of sharpened bamboo arrows would snap forward, skewering the fat fish right out of the water.

The system applauded her enthusiastically in her mind. See? The “Strong” and “Miserable” parts of her “Beautiful, Strong, and Miserable” persona were coming together flawlessly.

Once her scarred face was fully healed later, revealing the host’s naturally beautiful features, the tragic persona would be complete all at once. also, because she looked strikingly similar to the Fourth Hokage, there was an added ‘Substitute’ attribute—how could a single word like “miserable” even begin to cover the sheer angst potential?

Obito came to find her every few days. Whenever she finished assembling a crude, deadly trap, the Uchiha boy would squat next to it, exclaiming in wide-eyed wonder.

He felt this new friend was truly amazing. Even though A-Mu was about the same age as him, she seemed to know how to do absolutely everything in the world—except cook.

If he didn’t have money or adults to help, and had to take care of himself and his family entirely alone in this rundown house, he didn’t know how messy things would have become.

Obito was extremely energetic, seemingly unable to stay still for a single moment, and he talked constantly. If Stelle didn’t speak, he could easily ramble on for ten minutes straight by himself, only pausing to catch his breath before continuing the moment Stelle offered a tiny nod of response.

He just loved to cause accidental trouble. When Stelle was lucky enough to hook a massive river fish, he eagerly jumped in to help catch it. As a result, even though the fish was successfully caught, he slipped on the mossy rocks and fell face-first into the freezing water, still clutching the thrashing fish tightly against his chest for fear it would escape. Stelle had to wade into the waist-deep water just to fish him out by his collar.

When looking for wild vegetables in the brush, he would invariably pick similar-looking poisonous weeds and toss them into the woven basket.

If Stelle were an ordinary little girl, she would have been hospitalized for severe gastric poisoning after just two meals with him.

But despite his clumsiness, his cooking skills were improving at a rapid pace. Every time he came over, the flavor profile of his dishes was completely different, clearly showing he had been studying hard and practicing in private.

The only reason Stelle and Kikushi could eat normal, hot meals was entirely thanks to Obito.

The system laughed mischievously.

[See? A reliable teammate has delivered himself right to your door. Host, it really doesn’t matter if you can’t cook, because no matter what identity you assume, the people around you will automatically learn the cooking skill just to feed you.]

Stelle didn’t speak, merely rolling her eyes at the system’s teasing.

On the day before the Academy started, Stelle and Obito agreed to walk to school together the next morning. However, when she returned home from the river that afternoon, she immediately noticed something was wrong.

The large string of dried small fish she had carefully hung in the courtyard to cure was completely gone.

Opening the battered refrigerator, she found the wild game she had trapped and the frozen meat were also missing.

Although Kikushi was mentally unstable, she still understood who treated her well. Knowing their precious food had been stolen, the frail woman sat on the dirty floorboards and wailed inconsolably.

After Stelle hummed her calming tune to quiet Kikushi down, she caught the faint, sour scent of cheap alcohol lingering in the stale air of the house. Glancing at the door to Kobayashi Isamu’s bedroom, she noticed fresh scratches on the wood—traces of it being opened with a key and then hastily relocked. Case closed.

That despicable man who exploited the loopholes in Konoha’s welfare system had returned. He had likely hit Kikushi and stripped the kitchen of all the ingredients Stelle had painstakingly stored, undoubtedly intending to trade them for booze.

[Host, kill him! I fully support you! Tonight, use a Transformation Card to change your appearance and go straight in there to snap his neck. He actually dared to steal the wild game you caught yourself and the fish you trapped. He’s simply looking for death!]

Stelle hadn’t reacted much yet, her expression remaining eerily placid, but the system was about to explode with digital rage, wishing it could immediately drop a “reduced to ashes” premium package on Isamu’s head.

[Isn’t this the exact tragic persona you set for me? I’m not even angry; what are you so worked up about?]

[But he stole the Host’s things! How dare he! He’s so annoying!]

[It’s fine. At most, I won’t hoard food in the future; I’ll just catch it and eat it fresh.]

Stelle kept the system’s surprisingly protective reaction in mind, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.

The next day was the official reporting day for new students at the Konoha Ninja Academy.

Early in the morning, Stelle took off the clean clothes Obito had given her and changed back into her modified, worn-out orphanage uniform. Before she could even step out the front door, Obito rushed into the courtyard, panting heavily. Without a single word, he grabbed Stelle’s hand and started running.

He was terrified she would be late. The reasoning was simple: reporting late on the very first day would leave a terrible impression on the Academy instructors.

Stelle clearly remembered that in the original timeline, Obito was late on his first day of school because he had stopped to help an old lady cross the street.

As it turned out, because he was so focused on rushing to get her, he hadn’t encountered the old lady at all and wasn’t going to be late.

“This route is equivalent to passing by the Ninja Academy without entering, crossing the entire eastern side of the village to the very edge, and then running all the way back to the school,” Stelle pointed out, easily keeping pace with him. “Aren’t you tired?”

“Not tired!” Although Obito was panting from the dead sprint, his dark eyes were shining brightly.

“Because I wanted to go report with A-Mu! That way, neither of us will be alone.”

Stelle’s footsteps faltered slightly as sudden understanding washed over her. On the first day of Academy reporting, the vast majority of students were personally escorted by their proud parents. Only orphans like her, and neglected clan kids like Obito, would be forced to walk through those gates by themselves. Little Obito wasn’t just rushing for time; he was afraid of being lonely in a sea of happy families.

Her gaze softened. “Then in the future, for things that require family to accompany us, I’ll go with Obito.”

“Really?”

Obito skidded to a halt, his eyes crinkling as a massive, beaming smile overtook his face. “That’s great! Then A-Mu and I can be together forever and ever!”

[Ding! Mood value from Uchiha Obito +50,000]