Chapter Text
Kenneth Adeth stared suspiciously at the moon. Formerly Hatake Kakashi, Kenneth didn't think his karma was good enough or bad enough to justify reincarnation with all his memories, but here he was. That, unfortunately, left the possibility that he kept his memories for a specific reason, and there weren't that many good reasons for needing the memories of a former military dictator and war veteran - reasons like an impending invasion from moon people after a long period of peace that the country wouldn't be ready for.
Seeing as he was leaving for school tomorrow, he thought some degree of hostility was warranted. There was a reason he graduated ninja academy in just a year in his first life. Now he was set to attend the Kingdom of Sorcier's Magic Academy, which had every sign that it was going to be worse. At least when he went to ninja academy the students hadn't hit puberty yet. Now he was going to be surrounded by hormonal teenagers. The very idea made him shudder. If it was the fault of the moon, then he would relish waging war on it.
Kenneth sighed. That was a sentence that sounded incredibly unhinged out of context. He was looking at a month-long carriage ride to his aunt's home in the morning. He needed all the sanity he could keep if he wasn't going to be a raving maniac by the time he arrived. At least they had met once when he was much younger, so he didn't have the awkwardness of showing up at the doorstep of a complete stranger.
Kenneth's impression of his aunt's home was that he might have fit in better if he was a raving maniac. His aunt and uncle, Millidiana and Luigi Claes, had impeccable manners befitting nobles with experience in the court… in public. In private, they acted like a set of lovesick teenagers, and Kenneth was unfortunately family and therefore he didn't count as part of the public. Actually, it was worse than lovesick teenagers, because the confidence that came from years of marriage meant that- well, let's just say that Kenneth was confused that they only had one biological child - very, very confused.
His cousins Katarina and Keith seemed fine to begin with, with the mild exception that Katarina seemed a bit dim in terms of intelligence and excessively bright in terms of extroversion, but when their friend group showed up, well, he became extremely concerned about the future of the country.
"Aunt Millidiana, please tell me if I have this straight," Kenneth said as he and his aunt were on the balcony, watching the future of the kingdom squabble in Katarina's "garden," which, while it probably wasn't big enough to feed the manor by itself, it was still big enough that the word "probably" was needed. "We have my cousin Keith, heir to arguably the most powerful duchy in the kingdom and who would gleefully burn down half the kingdom to protect Katarina…, and the only reason he would limit himself to half is because he is afraid how she would react if he burned down any farmland."
"Perhaps closer to forty percent of the country - you forgot bakeries and confectioneries - but largely correct," his aunt murmured in response.
"Then we have the third prince, who, despite his age and-" What's the diplomatic way to phrase "black hearted and sadistic?" "-his tendency to ignore soft power concerns, is currently the most favored to take the throne in the future, purely on the sheer weight of his talent."
"Something that won't be decided for a few years yet."
"And his brother, the fourth prince, who has very few people in favor of him ascending the throne, but his army of music fans demonstrate quite clearly the etymology of the word fan from the word fanatic, and is only slightly less talented than his twin in the realm of politics."
"I would say unruly mob rather than army, but also largely correct."
"There's also Mary Hunt, who is also developing a reputation - in this case as my generation's mistress of rumors and character assassination, to the point she is the one person my age that my mother said I shouldn't insult while I am away from home."
"Astrid always did have good sense, if terrible taste in men."
Kenneth didn't bother to point out that his aunt was insulting his father. He was sure she was well aware of that fact. Besides which, it was hard to take it seriously. It made some sense that a sister would find romantic interest in her brother to be somewhat baffling.
"Then there's Sophia Ascart, who, while she doesn't possess a national reputation yet, still strikes me as a young woman with an uncommon amount of intelligence and a rather vicious imagination." To the point where she would have gotten along great with Anko and Ibiki. "But that's complicated by her brother, who does have a national reputation for talent and, despite this being many years away, is considered likely to take his father's place as prime minister. This young man is devoted to his sister and has the talent to bring about her various devilish imaginings."
"Devilish is perhaps a strong term, but she seems likely to achieve that when she reaches her full potential."
"And they're all in love with Katarina, so the only thing standing between us and a messy civil war is her ability to pretend to be oblivious."
Aunt Millidiana arched a brow at him. "Pretend to be oblivious?"
Kenneth sighed. "Not counting our encounter a decade ago, which I barely remember, I've known Katarina for three days now, and in that time she's greeted every single person she's met by name. This has included servants, shopkeepers and random people on the street, and in almost every case has involved asking about health problems, how relatives are doing and so on. She clearly cares about what motivates other people and it's inconceivable that she wouldn't apply the same attention to her own friend group. The only exception to that has been you and Uncle Luigi." Kenneth considered that for a moment. "Suddenly I'm terrified of Katarina meeting the king and calling him Your Majesty, Geordo and Alan's Dad."
Aunt Millidiana closed her eyes. "It was 'Your Majesty, Geordo and Alan's Father,'" she said in a pained voice.
Kenneth would have been appalled at Katarina's idea of formality, if it wasn't for the fact that Naruto was worse and still managed to lead the village without causing too many diplomatic incidents. "At least she was trying to be polite."
"You can see why I'm slightly skeptical of your belief that Katarina is merely pretending to be oblivious."
"This reminds me of a military leader I read about." This was technically true, because Kakashi had read far too many reports about Naruto's antics back in the day. "He was essentially told, by people he trusted, from a young age that he would never learn the rules of polite society, so he didn't bother. He instead leaned into his brash personality so as to impress upon people his sincerity. He still inadvertently insulted people left and right, but it was usually apparent that it was inadvertent, and that took the bite out of things."
A pained look crossed Aunt Milidiana's face, one Kenneth associated with Tsunade having to debrief him on anything related to Team Seven. "A successful military leader?" she asked.
Kenneth nodded. "Known for his unconventional tactics. Much like how Katarina has such unconventional thinking that she seems to have devoted her life to the idea that one day she'll be killed or exiled because she looks rather villainous and therefore would make a convenient scapegoat."
"Is that what that's all about?" his aunt asked thoughtfully.
Kenneth began ticking points off on his fingers. "Farming to feed herself if she becomes exiled. Swordplay to defend herself against crimes of passion if she's falsely accused of some heinous deed. Tree climbing to evade potential pursuers. There's also something about throwing snakes in case someone turns her fiancé against her."
Aunt Millidiana frowned. "I hadn't realized there was a unifying theme. When she started her farming hobby-" She gestured at the teenage gardeners. "-she said that she was trying to get in touch with the source of her magic."
"Well, that's taking things rather literally." Though, Kenneth was sure that Naruto would have tried the same thing. "Hmm. While Katarina doesn't seem to care much for propriety, she does care about people's feelings. It could be that she didn't want to sound like she didn't trust you to protect her from death or exile."
"I see," Aunt Millidiana said in a tight voice. "That is something to think about. Nevertheless, you need not worry about a civil war. They are still friends after a fashion."
"Auntie, if looks could kill, Miss Hunt would be currently burying the Third Prince in that compost pile. I'm not entirely sure that she'll let the fact that he isn't dead at the moment stop her."
"I'm sure they'll grow out of it." Kenneth had to give her credit, if he hadn't had a lifetime of experience ferreting out deceit, he would have believed that she meant that. "I notice that you don't have worries about Katarina being queen."
Kenneth shrugged. "She may not be the brightest spark, but she has heart and that counts for quite a bit. If nothing else, she would smooth over the prince's rough edges by letting people say he can't be that bad of a person if she's willing to be married to him." Some people thought she was only a few steps below a saint. He liked her, but honestly that much goodness in one place was almost giving him an allergic reaction. She didn't even pull any pranks.
Thankfully he was moving into the dorms in a few days and after that he'd only need to deal with Nicol regularly and he seemed tolerable when he wasn't enabling his sister.
Dammit, Kenneth had been so happy to get away from his cousin's harem drama that he had forgotten about generic school romantic drama. Unlike his past life, he couldn't get away with wearing a mask all the time, and Kenneth was fit and unfortunately pretty - not handsome, pretty. He wasn't as pretty as Nicol, who could make a woman faint with a smile (and as a consequence smiled very rarely), but that just made things worse because that made Kenneth the approachable one (which was just evidence that bad karma was part of why he was reincarnated).
Kenneth was able to shield himself from most of the problems by staying around the unapproachable Nicol as much as possible. (Granted, that meant that whatever the equivalent of yaoi fangirls were called here had fuel for their madness, but if he had learned anything about yaoi fangirls, it was that they didn't actually need evidence.)
Kenneth wished he had taken time to set up a fake relationship with one of the girls from a noble family back home. He was sure that there was someone that would have been happy to have a fake long distance relationship with him. Unfortunately, due to prejudices against relationships with commoners, claiming to have a commoner as a girlfriend wouldn't shield him at all, and there were enough students from his home duchy attending that if he tried claiming a relationship with a noble, someone would just write home and check.
He could claim to be uninterested in romance in general, but the fact that he was the "author" of the Kiss Kiss series had leaked, so that would be greeted with rightful disbelief. (Jiraiya's books were actually better when you stripped out the gratuitous sex, and now he had proof that people would be willing to read them just for the plot.) Judging from his cousin's harem, same sex relationships were acceptable enough that if Kenneth claimed that he was interested in boys that would only change the demographics of his problem (and give the yaoi fangirls far too much ammunition). Plus that might make Nicol uncomfortable being around Kenneth, and he needed all the protection from fangirls that he could get.
He wasn't looking forward to the day when the girls acclimated to Nicol's blinding beauty.
As Kakashi, he would have just trolled everyone into leaving him alone. (He had tried the cool, aloof attitude when he was younger and that just made things worse.) Unfortunately, with the distinct possibility he was here to be a war leader, Kenneth couldn't afford to alienate so many members of the future ruling class without having proved himself in combat first. (Considering how hard he fought for a peaceful world in the past, it was unsettling how inconvenient living in one now was.)
Sakura would have spouted some nonsense advice about politely saying that he wasn't interested and she definitely would have ignored the fact that when an unwanted suitor (Naruto) had asked her out, she generally responded by punching him through a wall. Naruto wouldn't have noticed the problem and thought all these girls just wanted to be friends, and Sasuke's advice wouldn't be worth the breath he spent on it considering how badly he had done at getting his fangirls to leave him alone.
Gai avoided the problem by being so him that no one in their right mind would want to date him. Asuma- Actually, Asuma's approach of being obviously in love with Kurenai since they were twelve might work (obvious to everyone but Kurenai that is).
"I'm sorry-" Kenneth mentally inserted 'Random Female NPC 43' here, but wasn't rude enough to say it out loud. He didn't even know why he thought something so condescending, but for some reason it just felt right. "-but I'm hopelessly in love with another woman and it wouldn't be fair to either of us if we tried dating before I got over her."
As a side note, Kenneth had tried to avoid standing out too much in the entrance exams and aimed for the seventy-fifth percentile. Good enough to seem smart but not outstanding. Basically he had heard that the top six students would be placed on the student council and he had wanted to avoid the extra work. Either he had severely overestimated the intelligence of his peers or they were just as motivated to avoid the student council as he was, because he ended up placing second.
This was important because, through a series of events that he wouldn't have believed if he hadn't known Naruto, and would have made him lose all faith in the inherent goodness of the human race if he had any to begin with, seven out of the ten members of the student council found themselves either dismissed from their positions or expelled, including all the upperclassmen. That left just Kenneth, Nicol and Sirius. Thankfully, Sirius was the first place scorer for their year, so he got the job of president, but they were woefully undermanned for their jobs. As annoying as the work was, Kenneth was far more annoyed that this happened after his lie about being in love in Katarina had been spread around. Now he was legitimately too busy to date.
Unfortunately, as the prospective future leaders of the country, the student council was given actual legitimate work to do for the running of the school, so if Kenneth quit, he'd be seen as unable to hack it even under the extenuating circumstances of there only being three members of the student council. More to the point, he wouldn't abandon his comrades to such tortures alone. Sirius would also probably snap and murder him.
Trying to find replacements for the dismissed members turned out to be futile. Basically, the mess happened in the first place because Nicol was just far too pretty, and there simply weren't replacements available that would remain functional in Nicol's proximity.
"Have you considered wearing a mask?" Kenneth asked. Realizing that they might think he was joking, he added "I'll wear one in solidarity."
Nicol sighed. "Sophia wouldn't approve."
Sirius muttered something under his breath, probably whatever the local equivalent of siscon is, something Kenneth was happy to have not found out in this life. Nicol took it with good grace, though. The two of them had been friends or at least acquaintances for a while now, but not so well acquainted that they had in-jokes that excluded Kenneth. Of course, there was also a possibility that he didn't mind being called whatever it was. Nicol seemed to dote on his sister.
Not seeing any future relief in terms of replacement student council members, Kakashi took out the soroban that he had custom made.
"What is that?" Sirius asked.
"Arithmetic helper," Kenneth explained. "These beads represent fives and these beads represent ones. You move them to add numbers together." He demonstrated a few simple sums.
Sirius frowned. "Is that any faster than doing it the normal way?"
"Not for a couple of numbers, but for ten added together like these expense reports?"
"So I can send all the expense reports in your direction?"
"I will set you on fire," Kenneth said flatly.
"Either way I'd get out of processing the expense reports," Sirius said in a reasonable tone of voice. Sadly, that did make sense for the situation they were in.
"I wonder if Katarina could use one," Nicol said. Kenneth wasn't sure if he was trying to change the subject from the use of fire as an instrument of murder or if he was just that obsessed with Katarina. It was possibly both if Katarina was his first thought for changing the subject.
"Does she have problems with doing arithmetic the usual way?" Kakashi asked.
"She's not dumb…," Nicol said, not defensively, but in an explanatory tone.
"She has trouble sitting still and often just doesn't see the point behind her lessons."
"Precisely."
Kenneth sighed. It was often said there was no such thing as bad students, only bad teachers. This was a lie. Shikamaru, for example, absolutely was a bad student, because he didn't want to learn. He was just talented enough to get away with it… until Asuma died. Team Seven may have been a nightmare, but they all wanted to learn. Granted, in the beginning, Naruto had only wanted to learn cool jutsus, Sakura had only wanted to learn things she could without getting messy and Sasuke concentrated only on things that would help him be an adorable murder machine, not that he would admit that he was adorable at that age.
"I take it she also has trouble with history and similar subjects that rely on memorization?"
"Keith has complained about that," Nicol admitted.
Kenneth did a quick calculation about the chances that the country would burn to the ground if Katarina didn't manage to pass the entrance exams to the Academy. Getting a number that, while small, was still very much not zero, he sighed and kissed sleep goodbye.
"And then what happened?" Katarina demanded. "Did he live happily ever after?"
Kenneth resisted the urge to sigh. "Well, I think that's up to you."
"I thought this was a real story."
"Katarina, whose story was I telling you?"
"Luigi Claes."
"And what's your father's name?"
"Luigi- Wait, this was about dad the entire time!? Plot twist!" Katarine frowned. "I suppose I should have figured it out when he adopted a boy named Keith."
"Now let's see if you can do any better on the quiz about the drought that your tutors gave you last week."
As Kenneth had observed, Katarina was the type to care about people not countries or organizations. Humanizing her history lessons were clearly key to getting her to retain information. Saying things like there were increased tensions with the neighboring kingdoms wouldn't stick in Katarina's head, but relaying the specific insults given to her father probably would. He didn't think that Katarina would ever have a head for things like dates, but once she saw how events were tied to human consequences, she might develop a feel for sociopolitical impact of events like the tariff games that had happened during the drought, and that would help with the essay questions in the Academy entrance exams.
Nonetheless, Kenneth was extremely happy that Keith was the heir to the duchy, because he had apparently overestimated Katarina's intelligence by quite a bit.
Still, Katarina did demonstrate that she had finally absorbed material that her tutors had been trying to teach her at lunch as she pestered her father for details and his take on events.
"-and did he really call you an empty headed pretty boy with terrible taste in women?"
Of course, lesson retention was a double edged sword.
"He was still annoyed that I had rejected his sister when we were younger. I know it might sound surprising, but I was considered quite the catch back in the day."
Katarina made a face. "Ugh. Was his sister an idiot?"
You could practically see an imaginary kunai strike Uncle Luigi's heart. That was an assassination worthy of anything Kenneth had witnessed back in ANBU.
"Anyone with a brain can see that you have eyes only for Mother." That statement allowed light to return to Uncle Luigi's eyes.
"Not everyone with a brain thinks to use it," Aunt Millidiana said in what most people would think was a placid tone, but Kenneth could hear some tension in it. It shed some light on some comments his other aunt had made about her sister. If he hadn't witnessed Naruto's obliviousness to Hinata, he never would have believed that it was possible to be that dense, but reality really was that strange at times.
After lunch it was time for math tutoring. Kenneth was a lot less confident about this. Between Naruto in his last life and his own sister and some of his other cousins in this life, Kenneth knew that tying history to people was fairly effective for certain kinds of learners. He was much less confident about introducing a soroban to someone with no familiarity with the concept.
He was proved wrong about that in a completely unexpected way.
"Oh, a soroban! I haven't seen one of those in forever!" Katarina exclaimed in a language he hadn't heard before in this life.
"What was that?"
"It's been forever since I've seen a soroban."
"I'm happy to have jogged your memory."
Katarina suddenly realized what language they were talking in. "Er. Uh. Did you get your memories from a past life back after hitting your head too?"
"Something like that. I suppose I should reintroduce myself. You can call me Kakashi."
"Oh, like Naruto's sensei?" It warmed his heart to think that someone thought of him in terms of his relationship to Naruto instead of as a killer or as having a job he never wanted. "I never did get to finish that series before I died."
"You never finished the series before you died?" Kakashi repeated dumbly, his genius clearly having left him.
"Yeah! The last episode I watched Naruto did the reverse sexy jutsu and then-" Katarina then began describing the fight with Kaguya as if she had seen it as an episode of a television program, complete with absurd sound effects and fake martial arts moves from a civilian who had never even seen real combat training. All that said, what she did describe was completely accurate and not anything that had made it into the history books.
"-and I hope she was the final boss, because all the reveals got really old."
"It did, it really did," Kakashi said with feeling.
"Actually, just tell me what the final pairings were like!"
"Well, Sasuke married Sakura and they had one girl." Katarina squealed at that revelation. "And Naruto married Hinata and they had a boy and a girl."
"Yes!" Katarina pumped her fist. Okay, Kakashi had seen enough fangirls in his life to know that this was not the reaction to a historical figure. She really had seen their lives as a television program. It was slightly disappointing, but only slightly since it was obvious she had been a civilian in her past life so he didn't have very much in common with her to begin with.
It might have also done bad things to his sense of his place in the universe if he hadn't had twelve years of being Hokage under his belt. The gods had obviously already been playing with his life for the sake of their amusement.
Katarina sighed. "I've forgotten so much already. Can you believe I've forgotten what tamagoyaki tastes like?"
"They taste like eggs?"
"Ugh. You know what I mean."
He actually had no clue. Kakashi had always regarded food simply as fuel. Still, it wasn't a hard dish to make and common enough that it came up in infiltration training. "If you do well on your next math quiz, I'll make tamagoyaki for you."
Her eyes lit up with unholy determination. It wasn't quite to the level of mentioning ramen to Naruto, but it was close. "Give me that," she said while reaching for the soroban.
Kenneth visited the Claes manor every other week after that to tutor Katarina. This was accompanied by using various home style foods as bribes. Though Kenneth suspected that Katarina was actually less food obsessed than she appeared. It's just that what everyone thought was her native language was actually a foreign language to her and so sometimes the first thing to come out of her mouth was a food item because those words were the ones she knew best. (He wasn't saying she wasn't food obsessed, just less obsessed than commonly believed.)
He did try teaching their cooks how to prepare the foods, but he soon reached the conclusion that Katarina was nostalgic for crappy comfort foods, because the cooks clearly were better at it than him, but she still preferred the dishes he made. For example, when making sheets for tamagoyaki they didn't have the same lumps that he did.
This made sense from his standpoint, because clearly Katarina's mother in her last life had not been the greatest cook. From an outside point of view? Well, there were jokes from the cooks that the difference was that Kenneth's versions were filled with love, which wasn't a narrative he wanted to encourage. Normally, if Kenneth was in a situation where the focus of a harem was showing interest in him, he would milk it for all the mind games that he could. That did not apply when the love interest's fiancé was the probable future ruler of the country.
Okay, that would not have stopped him in his past life, because he could have gotten away with it then. He knew his limits, and back then he had practically no social limits. The only things he couldn't get away with were things he wasn't interested in doing.
Still, it was nice being able to talk to someone about things from back home, even if their worlds didn't match up exactly. By unspoken agreement, they avoided talking about personal things like family and instead focused on things like foods and books. Strangely, a lot of the classics were the same between their two worlds. Kenneth did wonder if the lack of more up to date common literature was due to the books being missing or if they just had different tastes. Katarina admitted that she only read the classics due to school. Music was more ambiguous, as neither of them could carry a tune well enough to get more than a sense of vague familiarity.
Though Kenneth did wonder why she kept mentioning some game called Fortune Lover.
In any case, the end of the school term and a visit home was quite welcome. The trip had taken entirely too long and it felt like he immediately turned around to head back, but it would give time for any inconvenient rumors to die down.
Kenneth should have remembered that the reason they were called inconvenient rumors was because they didn't go away when logic dictated they should.
His first hint something was amiss was Keith's death glare when Kenneth returned to the Claes manor before his second term started. (The enthusiastic hug Katarina had given him that prompted the death glare wasn't a warning sign because it was Katarina.)
His second hint that something had gone horribly wrong was his Uncle Luigi taking him aside and asking about Kenneth's intentions towards Katarina.
One of the first lessons Kakashi had learned as a shinobi was to hide his emotional reactions. It took a long time to figure out the value of showing genuine surprise. That said, it was particularly easy in this case. "Pardon? Isn't that something you say to someone courting your daughter. Like the Third Prince?" Or really any of her friends. Actually, he'd put Mary Hunt at the top of the list, but, really, it was a close contest.
"So you aren't trying to win Katarina's heart?"
Kenneth deliberately blinked twice, and then said slowly as if pointing something out to a small child, "She has a fiancé."
"That hasn't stopped any of the others," Uncle Luigi pointed out.
"Well, I'm less insane than they are."
"Less insane?"
"Have you met your in-laws?" Kenneth loved his family in this life, he really did, but you could have dropped Gai into a family dinner and he would have fit right in. (Thankfully spandex had yet to be invented and neither he nor Katarina knew enough about textiles to change that fact, assuming spandex was a man-made product and not the result of demon spiders or something similar.)
Uncle Luigi inclined his head. "I see your point."
"Can I ask why you're asking about this?" There was a chance it was gossip from school, or Nicol had mentioned something.
"Katarina was pining for you while you were home."
"Are you sure she wasn't pining for my cooking?"
"Not to be insulting, nephew, but I've seen your cooking. There isn't a single sane explanation for why she would be pining for your cooking that doesn't involve a strong emotional connection to the cook."
Unfortunately, there were several insane explanations that happened to be true: missing her mother's cooking despite the fact that Aunt Millidiana probably never touched a frying pan in her life, missing being able to talk in a language that actually made some sense, not having to be constantly on guard about her past life, and so on.
"So you didn't do anything to encourage her affections?"
Kenneth shrugged. "Only in a familial way: repackaging her lessons in a way that appealed to her interests and bribed her with food for good performance."
Uncle Luigi nodded. "So you took the time to understand her when no one else did and materially improved her life?"
Kenneth frowned. "I suppose you could phrase things like that."
"That's exactly how Katarina attracted most of her admirers."
"What."
"It seems to run in the family."
As if he hadn't inherited enough curses in his last life. He didn't need to pick up any additional ones from his new family. "I was just trying to make sure she passed the entrance exams so the princes didn't burn down the school or worse."
"I'm sure that never would have crossed Prince Ian's or Prince Alan's minds."
Kenneth regarded his uncle carefully for a moment. "Do I want to know why Prince Geoffrey wasn't excluded as well?"
Uncle Luigi tilted his head thoughtfully. "No, I can't say that you do."
Kenneth added the prince to his list of potential creepy old men that might be perving on Katarina.