Finders - D Rank:

Juyo sauntered through the streets of Kumo, as per the usual, but this time he was on a mission.  Not anything too important, he was told to meet some guy and find his shoe, so Juyo didn’t feel like he needed to hurry or anything.  He enjoyed slow walks anyways, and the feeling of being on a mission, no matter how simple it was.  Juyo took out the mission note from his pocket and read the directions to the man’s house.  The note said the house should be just down the street on the left.  Putting his hands back into his pocket, Juyo trudged on.

As Juyo approached the door to the man’s house, he felt a hand grab his shoulder and stop him from knocking on the door.  “Wait! Please, don’t knock on that door.” a man’s voice whispered loudly from behind him.  Juyo turned to see a middle aged man with glasses on, wearing a chef’s uniform.  Raising his eyebrow at the man, Juyo lowered his arm and waited for the man to continue.  “I see you’re a shinobi, please, please help me.  My wife is inside and it’s our anniversary, you see?” the man explained in a rushed, but lowered voice. “Earlier today I took my month’s earnings that I’d saved up to go buy her some nice new shoes!  But when I got home I realized I must have lost one of the shoes… now I can’t just go back and get them, my wife will think I forgot our anniversary! No, no, no, I can’t let that happen again!  You’ve got to help me!”

The man’s story and the desperation in his voice while telling it actually stirred something within himself.  Juyo mostly felt the guy was an idiot to have lost a shoe he had just bought for such an important day, but yet he did have a small feeling of sympathy because of the man’s demeanor. "Alright, I’ll get it,” he sighed. “What did the shoe look like?”

“Um, let’s see, it’s a shiny blue, high heeled shoe.  I remember I was trying to figure out what my wife’s shoe size was when I was buying it, so I had a woman that happened to be walking by try it on.  Her feet were just the same size as my wife’s.  So most likely the shoe is still at the stall where I had the woman try it on” the man said, with one finger on his chin as he recalled the
event.

Juyo was dumbfounded at the man’s words. “You don’t know your own wife’s shoe size?!  You seriously just asked a random lady to try on the shoe?! You realize that they might not actually have the same feet and the whole thing is ruined?!”
“AHHH, please, please, please be quiet! You must forgive me, but shoe sizes never really came up before in any of our conversations, so I never knew, and anyways I really need that shoe” the man pleaded with Juyo, begging from his knees.

“I said I’ll get it,” Juyo muttered. “Now I’d better get on it.”  He walked around the desperate man, who followed him with his eyes in relief.  “The stall was just down the road a bit further, it had a red canopy” the man said just before Juyo got out of earshot.  Good thing, too, because Juyo forgot to ask just where the stall was.  He continued down the road, and like the man said, it wasn’t too far.  Cheap skate, Juyo thought as he approached the red canopy stall, couldn’t even go to a decent store, huh?  Juyo went straight up to the old lady behind the stall, “Hey, I’m here to get a blue high heeled shoe for a guy that left it here, he said it was shiny.”  The old lady smiled, pointing at a single high heeled shoe laying on the ground next to the stall.  “Thanks,” Juyo said, picking up the shoe.

He walked slowly back to the man’s house, hoping the guy would be sweating in his fears and learn from this.  The trip from the man’s house to the stall only took about two minutes, but going back Juyo took up 10, stopping and looking at other stalls and shops as he slowly made his way back.  Finally, he got back to the man’s house, where the man was desperately searching through the street for his face.  Delighted at seeing Juyo with the lost shoe. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you” he cried, grabbing Juyo’s free hand and shaking it a tremendous amount.  “Just take your shoe,” Juyo muttered.  The man did so immediately, bowed in gratitude, and then scampered back to the house.  Juyo turned around to go home, and as he left muttered, “and happy anniversary, cheap skate.”