City Planning with a "Random Dude"

This one takes place waaaaay back, it's been on the poll for like 6 months.
Remember when Sakura was constantly doing city planning research during Arc 3 and to a lesser extent Arc 5? That.

Thank you all for the support, and enjoy the side story!
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Rubbing her head, Sakura can’t help but groan. Reading books in the library used to be so stress relieving and now she just wants to burn everything and bury her face in the table she’s sitting at. It’s been weeks and she’s not making any real progress. She’s always been pretty good at book learning, she even has a Studying skill, but that doesn’t make the topic any less complex nor the books on the subject less dry. It makes sense Konoha wouldn’t hold a ton of ‘build your own country’ text just sitting around, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying that she’s stuck with three tomes that look like they were made before Konoha was and are written so dryly they make her need a glass of water. They’re huge too, the rereads are hell because she needs to reread the pointless chapters too just in case she missed something. It’s all one massive waste and she’d rather be doing literally anything else but here she is, breaking noise rules with her frustrated studying sounds. She tries not to be too rude about it but it’s hard.

“You’re here almost every day.” A man’s voice catches her attention, and she looks up just in time to see an older man with a cane pulling out a seat across the floor and sitting down. It makes a little bit of noise as it squeaks, but it’s not a normal chair noise, it’s one of those intentional ‘I didn’t have to make noise but I did for your benefit’ squeaks, which means he’s a ninja. She appreciates when adults do that kind of thing, it’s always nice to be respected and treated kindly. A lot of ninjas are either completely silent which causes her to get spooked - it’s really annoying having to pretend she didn’t just draw her sword in the library and try to rip out their throat - or so loud it’s disrespectful.

“I have important stuff I need to do that requires learning a lot of stuff,that I don’t even know where to start with,” She explains swiftly, “It sucks.”

“And it has to do with planning a district?” He asks with a snicker, “I’m sure it is quite unpleasant.” His laughter is low, kept quiet in respect for the rules and as someone who was just breaking them with her groaning she can appreciate the effort that takes.

“No, that's just this book, um, I guess? I need to know how to get a settlement out of debt and thriving.” She says with a scratch of her head and a little red to her cheeks at getting mildly called out. It’s not like she’s trying to hide Wave but it’s so awkward to try and explain. Konoha doesn’t do that whole lending out land thing, so the situation is complex enough people either think she’s lying or have no idea how to even grasp it.

So it’s very odd that a glimmer of recognition flashes before his eyes, as if he’s done it before. “Ah, that is quite the task for a girl as young as you.” He agrees with a wrinkled smile, he has quite a few small scars on his face but they make him look distinguished so he has no desire to hide them. His eyes are sharp and curious, there’s a warmness to them that she doesn’t trust.

“I know.” She responds after a stilted moment to get her bearings. “Believe me, I am super well aware it’s a big task, this sucks. It’s taken so much of my free time and it’s not even out of debt yet! Which-err-” She clears her throat, hand in front of her lips, and quiets herself at a glare she gets from a woman near the front. That hawk eyed stare is scary.

He puts his cane up on the table, his black hair is a bit spiky and messy atop his head. It’s not well groomed, but it was likely quite wavy and attention attracting when he was young. She wonders why the spiky look is so common in Konoha, is messy a fashion statement? She could enjoy that, she’ll ask Ino. “I’d need to know a little more about your situation, but at its core, you won’t find much about economics in a city district planning book.” He says, “let’s start with the basics, it’s hard to know what you know unless you go over everything.” She groans, but sits up to give him her full attention. “Exports are how a settlement makes money, imports are how a settlement spends money, this means that if you want to make a profit you need to make sure they’re exporting more than they’re importing. Simple.”

“But if that’s true wouldn’t every country want to do that?” She asks, “then how could anyone manage it?”

“Because it’s not that simple. You need certain items, you don’t get to choose to not import food if your settlement doesn’t naturally make it. You need wood, bricks, stone, for repairs. You need metal for tools, or tools themselves or what exports you do have can’t function.” He explains with a little bit of a focused narrow gaze, prompting her with a piece of paper and a pencil he’s seemingly drawn from his sleeve. He probably did, Sakura’s found Kakashi does that all the time. “Write down everything your settlement needs each week, and what they produce, and you should be in a much better understanding from there.”

“Uh, sure…” She’s a little taken aback. This is weird. Even as she gets writing down the data on her screen. Food needs, tool needs, product needs, it’s all there but why does he know that? More importantly, why isn’t he assuming she’s talking about a game like everyone else? Is he just humoring her to a crazy extent?

He patiently waits, looking over the paper even while she writes down the exact amount of wood they gather, the stone from the quarry, the amount of food they grow with the small farmland they have. They do have a pretty nice fishing network going on, that’s how she’s been making most of their money- ”Stop that.” He says out of nowhere, startling her in place.

“Stop what?” She blinks up at him, then down at the paper.

“That.” He points right to the fish, then the wood, and at her questioning gaze he continues. “You’ve written your wood gathering rate but not your regrowth rate. Trees take a long time to grow, are you over-cutting?”

“Err… I hope not.” She hadn’t thought about that before.

“Here are a few agricultural books you’ll find in the back of this library, you will read them and figure out exactly what kind of trees are there, followed by figuring out their growth rate, your replenishment ratio, and ensuring it’s positive.” He’s got a very fierce look to him.

“Right.” She gulps, having no idea why this man is so serious. He does think this is a game, right? “And what’s wrong with the fish?”

“You’re selling it.” He says, “you marked it in the export section.”

“I don’t see the problem, people pay a lot for it…” She looks down at it, scouring the paper to see the problem, before - “ah…”

“You’re paying for food while shipping out food.” He scolds her, “this only works if the upcharge for the fish is higher than the cost of what needs to be replaced. Fish will not capture every dietary need of a healthy people but it is quite a bit of what they need, you’re importing a whole array of things like it’s the leaf village, it’s not, the people do not need every luxury under the sun they are grabbing their dinner right out of the water.”

He does not think this is a game, she’s found a crazy person. Still… “I will look into that, you’re probably right.” The price to keep it fresh and cooled while shipping it out as well as the upcharge for food shipped in are probably not equaling out, but is wanting Inari to have an orange really that bad? She needs to look into things at least, maybe a diet book and see what everyone actually needs? Why is this so complicated?

“Here are a few more of that topic to look into…” She finds him scribbling, she’s going to be reading forever. “How urgent is all this?” he asks her, and that freezes her in place.

It’s odd she’s never thought about it before, but if they’re technically gaining, could she just leave this be for a while? Should she? What about the people whose lives could be improved? How many suffer while she sits in the lap of luxury here in Konoha? Is she being dumb trying to improve things too fast or is it selfish to wait? “It’s not life or death for me but I would call it urgent because it might be life or death for others.” She decides to say. The last time she was there she saw a lot of people at the end of their rope. Has she made things better enough that no one hurts themselves or worse? Is that further along? She should see if she can do a happiness census through her system. That’d be super helpful. If not, sending a messenger could help, a D rank messenger mission shouldn’t be that expensive.

He contemplates her answer for a long moment, tapping his chin with a palm held away from it otherwise. It’s an odd motion, almost looking like it’s subtly practicing something else but she couldn’t guess what, “then you should take drastic measures. Try looking into what they might have a lot of and exporting it, then use what remains after importing necessities to improve infrastructure so you have to import less next time. Then focus on gathering what you can sell that’s plentiful.”

“Wouldn’t that run the place dry and barren pretty quickly?” She asks with a bit of a bristle. He just told her earlier not to over cut the trees, now this crazy old man is contradicting himself.

“Only if you overdo it. Take measurement of what’s there, how long it takes to regrow resources if it’s renewable, or how hard it is to obtain more if it’s something like mining. Long term sustainability is extremely important, but any village being self-sustaining starts at the roots, you need to work your way up.” She listens to his firm tone as well as she can, ignoring how it makes everything seem so serious. This might be the most help she’s gotten so far on Wave, Kakashi was worthless.

“And the debt?” She asks him.

“Ignore it. A country’s debts only matter in national trade, or if who they’re indebted to is planning military action. Figure out if it matters, and pay just enough to stop the issue. It’s easy to see a negative number and get worried but if you can ignore it a little while and improve your ability to pay it, the interest won’t matter because you’ll pay it off faster anyway. Money isn’t a number, it’s an intake outtake resource road and the bigger you can make the roads the easier everything becomes simpler.”

“That seems like… hmm… I’m not sure if that’s good or bad advice.” She admits with a little giggle she’s sure sounds out of place. He looks like he hasn’t made anyone laugh for twenty years so, she’s sure he’s relieved to hear it.

“Think about it and decide for yourself. I frequent this library, so you should be able to find me easily if you need more advice.” He explains, grabbing his cane with both hands and setting it down on the floor once again in preparation for his leave.

“Why do you frequent here?” She asks, “shouldn’t you have access to the ninja library?”

“Orphans.” He explains, making her blink. “There’s a lot of orphans that frequent the library to get out of the cold or find something to occupy themselves. Remember, the most important part of any village is its roots, making sure they’re flourishing and properly taking in the resources around is important to our village, so it’s important to me.” He stands slowly, leaning on the cane in a way she knows for a fact is fake. Infirm old man? Sure, freaking ninjas always have a gimmick going on. She wonders what hers is…

“Ah, that’s sweet.” She wonders if Naruto ever received any help from this probably maybe possibly kind old man. He probably wouldn’t have mentioned it if he had, Naruto is grateful but rarely talks about his struggles, even the good parts. “I appreciate the help.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m very curious about how this turns out.” He leaves her with the paper he wrote the recommended books on. It looks like her next few days are taken.