Only then did Akira come back to himself. He turned and glanced out the window, surprised to realize just how late it had gotten.
He rose to his feet and stretched hard, his joints cracking all the way down. "I can't believe that much time passed. But tonight was absolutely worth it. So many things I could never quite wrap my head around before suddenly make perfect sense now."
Akira looked down at his hands, eager to test himself. "I almost want to find a living patient right now and try a few things."
He thought with quiet confidence, At my current level, injuries like the ones Kakashi and Sasuke had before... I should be able to deal with them pretty easily now.
After a full evening of Tsunade's personal tutoring, Akira felt his medical ninjutsu had jumped to a whole new level.
Lowering his gaze, he looked at Tsunade slumped over the table without the slightest hint of dignity and could not help laughing. "That alcohol tolerance is honestly terrifying. After drinking that much strong sake, she only just now passed out?"
Akira himself never drank at all. Alcohol was the kind of thing that made people sloppy, and even shinobi could black out if they drank enough. Chakra was not going to cure alcohol poisoning.
Otherwise Lee would never have accidentally invented something as bizarre as Drunken Fist.
Looking at Tsunade dead drunk on the table, Akira felt a headache coming on. He turned to the counter and asked, "Do you have any guest rooms here?"
The owner froze, leaned out for a look at Tsunade, then rubbed his hands apologetically. "Sorry, sir. We're a respectable tavern. We don't offer lodging."
Akira rubbed at his temple with a sigh.
Honestly, part of him wanted to just leave Tsunade here and let her sleep face-down until morning. It was not as if this would be the first time she had done something like that.
He had heard she used to spend entire nights collapsed in taverns, only to wake up the next morning and start drinking again.
For a member of the legendary Sannin, she really did have more bad habits than anyone ought to be allowed.
Heavy drinking. Terrible gambling luck. A temper like a powder keg.
Sometimes she looked even more ridiculous than Jiraiya.
Standing beside her, Akira muttered under his breath, "How is it that not one of the Legendary Sannin seems mentally well-adjusted?"
Since she was passed out cold, he felt free to say what he wanted.
He stared at the back of Tsunade's head and muttered to himself, "Maybe I should just let her sleep here till dawn."
The moment the words left his mouth, though, Akira noticed she still had not put her coat back on. Under the lights, the outline of her figure was impossible to miss, and at the nearby tables, several customers who were still drinking had their eyes practically bulging out of their heads.
That made Akira frown.
Surely nobody's stupid enough to try anything with one of the Sannin... unless they're tired of living.
But then another thought occurred to him. What if it really was some idiot? Or just some drunken creep who did not recognize her and only saw an opportunity?
If anything actually happened, the trouble would be enormous.
And when Tsunade sobered up, Akira was certain he would be the first person she took it out on.
Back when Tsunade drank herself senseless, Shizune had always been there to look after her. Now Shizune was nowhere around, which meant this mess had landed squarely in his lap.
Left with no better option, Akira let out a long, suffering sigh. "Fine. I'll call it tuition and take you back myself. Better than having you blame me later."
Once he had made up his mind, he paid the bill and casually sealed away the three boxes of money into a storage scroll.
Storage scrolls could be bought on the market, but the price was outrageous. A decent one could cost more than a million ryo, about the same as the reward for an S-rank mission.
If the Third Hokage had not gifted him one, Akira would never have paid that kind of money himself.
Once the money was put away, Akira walked over to Tsunade, crouched with the weary resignation of a man accepting his fate, and lifted her onto his back.
The moment Tsunade's soft body settled against him, Akira froze.
Since meeting her, he had never paid much attention to her figure, but now, at zero distance, all he could do was silently recite calming thoughts to himself and reflect that, yes, he was still very much an ordinary man.
After taking several deep breaths and steadying himself, he finally carried Tsunade out of the tavern.
But the entire walk, his heartbeat pounded like a war drum.
Inside his head he could only complain, What is wrong with me? So even I can lose my composure like this. Tsunade's figure really is a tactical-level threat.
No wonder she's considered the most beautiful woman in the shinobi world. That reputation isn't exactly baseless.
As he walked, he deliberately let his thoughts wander in order to distract himself.
Akira stood about five foot nine, while Tsunade was around five foot four, so slung over his back, she seemed almost small by comparison.
That meant the people on the street did not look at them too strangely.
If anything, the men they passed looked at Akira with enough envy and resentment to set the air on fire.
After a few minutes, perhaps because the position was uncomfortable, Tsunade stirred hazily and adjusted herself. She rested her head against his shoulder, and her arms naturally slipped around his neck.
That one small movement made the sensation at his back even clearer, and the panic in Akira's chest doubled on the spot.
Fortunately, Akira had spent years cultivating self-control, so he managed not to lose his footing right there in the street.
What he did not realize was that Tsunade had actually opened her eyes just a little, her gaze blurred by drink as she looked around.
After taking in the situation for a while, she made no move to pull away. Instead, she buried her face deeper against his shoulder and tightened her arms around his neck.
For the first time in years of drifting from place to place, she felt something she had almost forgotten.
Warmth. Security.
Akira noticed that Tsunade seemed to have woken up, but what he did not know was that she was not nearly as drunk as she looked. At the very least, her mind was still clear. Otherwise she could not have spent the whole evening teaching with such structure and detail.
For some reason, though, Tsunade did not want to break the silence.
If anything, she found herself reluctant to let go of that brief feeling of peace.
Akira did not dare think too deeply about it. He had been flustered at first, yes, but after a while he managed to settle himself down.
After about fifteen minutes of walking with Tsunade on his back, he finally reached the inn where they were staying.
Once he found her room, he carefully lowered her onto the tatami. When he straightened up again, he discovered that he was carrying a thick cloud of sake fumes himself now.
He wrinkled his nose in disgust. "In private, this woman really is a mess. She lives like a drifter."
The instant the words left his mouth, he saw that Tsunade, who had been lying on the bedding, was now staring straight at him with both eyes wide open.
The sudden eye contact caught Akira completely off guard.
He scratched at the back of his head awkwardly. "Oh. Tsunade-hime, so you were awake after all? Ha... well... the wind must've carried that the wrong way."
Standing by the bed, he felt so awkward he practically wanted to dig a hole in the floor and disappear into it. There were few things in life worse than getting caught talking behind someone's back seconds after doing it.
Tsunade ignored his embarrassment. Stretching lazily, she sat up on the bedding. Her face was still flushed, but her eyes were strikingly clear.
Her tolerance for alcohol really was absurd. Even after that much, she had only gotten lightly drunk.
Tsunade said nothing. She simply stood there in front of Akira, her gaze calm and unreadable.
Akira felt a chill crawl up the back of his neck under that stare. He wanted to get out of there as fast as possible, so he laughed awkwardly and said, "Well then, Tsunade-hime, get some rest. Thanks again for the guidance tonight. I'll be going."
The moment he finished speaking, he turned and fled the room like something was chasing him.
Tsunade did not call him back. Only after the door had closed did she slowly walk out onto the balcony and lean against the railing, looking into the night.
There was still a trace of drunkenness lingering in her body, but her mind had never felt clearer.
She stood there in the breeze for a while, and then, quietly, she laughed.
All she could think about was the image of Akira carrying her through the streets.
That broad back had reminded her, against all reason, of childhood days when her grandfather, Hashirama Senju, used to carry her around the village.
She could not explain why, but a woman in her fifties, who had seen far too much and lost even more, had somehow found that long-lost sense of safety in the presence of a thirteen-year-old boy.
As a child, Tsunade had been closest to Hashirama. Her parents had died young on the battlefield, so most of her early life had been spent in the care of the older generation.
After she grew up, no one had ever carried her like that again.
Of course, with her personality and her strength, she had never needed anyone to.
But now she stood at one of the hardest crossroads of her life, torn apart inside, and that was why she had been drowning herself in gambling these past few days, trying to numb everything away.
And yet what Akira gave her tonight had felt strangely different.
Part of it felt like the comfort of a younger relative.
And part of it, impossibly, carried the steadiness of someone older, someone dependable.
The feeling was contradictory, but in that moment, she really had let go of all her defenses and all the weight she had been carrying and simply wanted to rest against his back for a while.
If Akira ever found out Tsunade was mentally putting him in the role of an elder presence, he would probably be dumbstruck.
The generational logic of it was so broken it circled right back around into nonsense.
Then again, technically speaking, Akira really was from the generation below hers in terms of shinobi lineage. He was Kakashi's student, Kakashi had been Minato's student, Minato had been Jiraiya's student, and that chain stretched a long way.
Leaning on the balcony, Tsunade let the night wind move through her golden hair, a faint smile touching her lips.
"That kid is interesting. I wonder if he'll really be able to digest everything I taught him today."
"Then again... he probably will. Judging by that look in his eyes, he's already halfway there."
Before today, Tsunade's impression of Akira had stopped at a gifted kid with incredible talent.
But after spending the day with him, and especially after what had happened tonight, she found herself feeling an odd sense of closeness toward him. Without realizing it, she had already started classifying him as one of her own.
But the moment her thoughts drifted back to the cursed agreement with Orochimaru, her brows drew together again.
"Nawaki... Dan... if either of you can still see me from somewhere, you probably wouldn't want me helping that monster just to bring you back. But... I want to see you both again so badly."
For Tsunade, the deaths of her little brother Nawaki and the man she loved, Dan Kato, were the worst nightmares of her entire life.
They were the reason she had become what she was now, a broken woman with a crippling fear of blood.
For the strongest medical ninja in the world to develop hemophobia was the cruelest kind of irony. It had been, in every practical sense, the end of her life as a shinobi.
Thinking of those two people, Tsunade unconsciously closed her hand around the necklace at her chest.
It was the relic the First Hokage had left her.
Nothing ever happened when she wore it herself. But the moment she gave it away, first Nawaki died, then Dan died too.
There was no denying it. The necklace truly felt cursed, some ominous thing steeped in misfortune.
"This was the most precious thing Grandfather ever left me..."
"Maybe... maybe it ought to belong to someone like you."
Without warning, Akira's face surfaced in her mind.
The image of the boy smiling under the light did not resemble Nawaki or Dan at all.
Akira had no desire to become Hokage, and his personality was far too calm. He was nothing like those two hot-blooded fools.
And yet, somewhere deep in Tsunade's subconscious, his image seemed to overlap with them anyway.
Her hand tightened around the necklace as she stared at the distant lights.
After a long sigh, she murmured, "That kid is nothing like them... and yet he has this strange pull to him."
The warmth she had felt on Akira's back was a kind of steadiness even Nawaki and Dan had never given her.
It was not romantic.
It was gentler than that.
Something closer to pure family.
Tsunade was certainly not entertaining inappropriate thoughts about a thirteen-year-old boy. Her mind had not gone that far off the rails.
It was just that, after recognizing Akira for who he was, the feeling inside her resembled the way she used to place all her hopes in Nawaki.
After spending this day with him, she had even felt an impulse to give him the necklace.
If Akira ever learned that, however, he would shake his head hard enough to sprain his neck.
That necklace was basically a death note in jewelry form. Anyone who wore it seemed doomed. Even Naruto, with all the protection a protagonist's fate could give him, had nearly been killed more than once with that thing around his neck.
Akira certainly did not think his luck was strong enough to tame it.
Early the next morning, Akira was sitting on the balcony, soaking lazily in the sun, when Tsunade appeared behind him like a ghost.
He did not even bother opening his eyes. He had sensed that familiar chakra long before she arrived.
"Tsunade-hime, up this early? More lessons for me today?"
He made no mention whatsoever of the awkwardness of carrying her the night before.
Only a fool would bring that up. The smartest thing to do was pretend nothing had happened.
Inside the room, Jiraiya was currently racking his brain over another draft of his adult novel. Seeing Tsunade walk in, he blinked in surprise.
He tried carefully, "Tsunade? Have you made up your mind?"
He thought she might finally have decided to return to the village and take the mantle of Hokage.
Tsunade shot him a sidelong glance and said coolly, "I said no such thing."
Then she turned toward Akira, grabbed his hand without warning, and started dragging him outside. "Enough talking. Come with me. I want to see how much of last night's lesson you actually absorbed."
Akira, who had been enjoying a perfectly good sunbath moments before, found himself hauled away with a bewildered expression.
As they walked, he complained bitterly, "Tsunade-hime, come on. I may have made a couple of comments last night, but this feels like a pretty fast revenge cycle."
He was still under the impression that she was settling the score for calling her a mess.
Tsunade said nothing.
She dragged him all the way to the forest in the hills behind Tanzaku Town, where she promptly flattened an unlucky giant bear with a single punch.
Then, with practiced efficiency, she inflicted several extremely complicated injuries and pathological symptoms on it.
Once she had finished, she dusted off her hands and pointed at the groaning bear.
"Go on. Heal it."
Akira stared at her in speechless disbelief. "You dragged me out here first thing in the morning... for this?"
Tsunade folded her arms and glared down at him. "What? Do you think I'm the kind of petty woman who'd get back at you over something so trivial?"
Akira immediately put on an apologetic smile. "Of course not. You're magnanimous. Obviously."
It was not that Akira did not want to do it.
He just thought the whole test was a little ridiculous.
Tsunade stood to one side and watched as green light flared from Akira's hands and he began examining the bear's body.
She had deliberately set up a number of difficult overlapping injuries. If it had been the Akira of a few days ago, it really would have taken him some work.
But after Tsunade's all-night crash course, those same problems were child's play in his eyes.
Once he identified the causes, Akira spent only ten minutes cleaning up the bear's condition as if by magic.
And many of the methods he used were direct copies of jutsus Tsunade had only shown him the night before, except now he was already using them smoothly and naturally.
Watching from the side, Tsunade felt her heart skip. This kid really is a monster. I taught him those things last night, and by this morning he's already internalized them to this extent. That kind of talent is terrifying.
She even started to feel that Akira's talent for medical ninjutsu might have surpassed her own. All he had really lacked until now was a true master to guide him.
If she passed on everything she knew, then one day this boy might genuinely become the greatest medical ninja the shinobi world had ever seen.
Once the bear was healed, the poor thing realized it no longer hurt, scrambled to its feet, and bolted into the woods as fast as it could, clearly terrified of taking another punch from the female tyrannosaur.
Akira dusted off his hands and walked back to Tsunade. "Tsunade-hime, does that count as passing?"
Tsunade stood with her arms folded, looking at him.
Because of their height difference, it was unfortunately difficult for Akira's gaze not to drift toward certain parts of her.
That awkwardness returned immediately, dragging with it the memory of how she had felt against his back the night before.
Akira mentally slapped himself twice. Can you please keep your thoughts clean for five seconds? Stop thinking about weird things.
He had to admit, a growing body sometimes had reactions the brain could not fully control.
Tsunade, for her part, had no shame about letting him look. She only smiled and said, "Nicely done. Looks like you weren't exaggerating after all. Jiraiya told me you learned Rasengan after seeing it once. I believe him now."
With that, she turned and walked toward the river nearby.
Akira stood there for a few seconds, baffled, unsure what she was doing. After a moment's hesitation, he followed.
At the water's edge, Tsunade kicked off her shoes without a trace of self-consciousness, sat down on a huge river stone, and slipped her bare feet into the clear water.
The stream was shallow and transparent, with little fish darting between the rocks. It really was the kind of place that made a person's whole mind feel lighter.
Akira did not dare go too close and stayed standing some distance away.
After soaking her feet for a while, Tsunade glanced back at him. "Why are you standing over there like a post? Get over here."
Akira scratched his head and stepped closer. He did not take off his shoes. Instead, he simply stood on the surface of the water with chakra control and stopped beside her.
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