He turned around, looked at Tsunade's almost unnaturally calm face, and smiled faintly.
"You're up early."
"I figured you'd sleep till noon."
Without making a show of it, Akira set the necklace down, doing his best to keep his tone natural.
Tsunade simply stood there in front of him. Beneath that eerie calm, something seemed to be churning, and the atmosphere in the room turned strange in an instant.
On the surface, Akira looked steady as ever.
Inside, though, he was anything but calm.
After a long silence, Tsunade picked up the necklace from his palm and lifted both hands, clearly intending to put it around his neck herself.
Akira instinctively tilted his head aside and gave an awkward smile. "Maybe don't. It's too valuable. I'm not sure I can carry something like that lightly."
Her hands froze for a moment.
Then Tsunade quietly withdrew them, sat down across from him, and shoved the necklace back into his hand.
From the moment she entered the room until now, she hadn't said a single word.
That silence was somehow even worse than if she'd started yelling.
Akira forced himself to keep smiling, pretending not to notice the tension hanging in the air.
Even though last night was technically over, the whole scene was still replaying in his head in perfect detail.
Tsunade had probably lived half her life without anyone handling her so bluntly, speaking to her that directly, or forcing her to face herself the way he had.
She stared at him for several full minutes, until Akira felt like his face was about to go numb from holding the expression.
At last, he couldn't take it anymore.
"Tsunade-hime... did you need something from me?"
Tsunade's expression was so serious it looked like she was attending a funeral. She spoke one word at a time.
"You're an idiot."
Under normal circumstances, Akira would've fired something right back.
Today, though, he knew he was the one in the wrong.
So he only rubbed the side of his nose and gave a dry laugh without answering.
Tsunade kept going. "I really didn't expect someone your age to have that kind of nerve. Do you know what happened the last time Jiraiya got out of line? I broke three of his ribs."
Akira lowered his head and stared at the floor, continuing to play mute.
"Not even Dan ever pushed me like that. Were you trying to get yourself killed?"
Akira leaned back in the chair with the expression of someone too stubborn to admit defeat, and if he was being honest, he felt a little wronged.
Yes, he had lost his balance last night.
That part was true.
But Tsunade had hardly been blameless either.
The whole thing had been a mutual lapse in judgment. It wasn't exactly fair to pin all of it on him alone.
Besides, at the very last second, he had managed to force himself to stop and pull back before crossing the final line.
Against someone with Tsunade's kind of presence, even managing that much restraint felt like an accomplishment he deserved a medal for.
He doubted Dan Kato would've shown more self-control in the same situation.
Seeing the calm, almost indifferent look on his face, Tsunade's temper flared.
"What? Do you think just because I'm over fifty, you can treat this like a joke and walk away from it?"
Akira thought for a moment, then raised his head and looked at her seriously. "I think the best thing would be for both of us to forget it. No one else knows, nothing truly irreversible happened, and I didn't actually do anything unforgivable. Besides, last night wasn't something I started on my own."
"If we're assigning blame, Tsunade-hime, yours isn't exactly light either. Right?"
That stopped her cold.
She just glared at him.
Tsunade had fallen in love before, yes, but even then, that relationship had been earnest and restrained.
Akira, on the other hand, had bulldozed straight through every boundary except the very last one.
Fortunately for him, his common sense had come back just in time.
Otherwise, there might have been a body in this room by morning.
And the truth was, by the time Akira had tried to leave the night before, Tsunade had already sobered up considerably.
She had been fully aware.
Maybe the alcohol had amplified her emotions. Maybe the trust and closeness that had been building between them over the past several days had reached a point where everything became harder to control.
When Akira finally regained his senses and prepared to step away, Tsunade had given him the necklace.
That in itself had been a silent admission that he mattered.
And ever since then, she had been asking herself how things had gotten that far with someone who was still only thirteen.
Maybe it had something to do with the genjutsu.
That illusion had been far too real. In it, she had watched Akira die trying to protect her, butchered by Orochimaru right in front of her eyes.
That pain had cut so deep that some part of her no longer wanted to risk losing him in reality.
Their relationship had already been unusual before.
After the illusion, it had become even more complicated.
Hearing Akira defend himself so bluntly, Tsunade took a deep breath and forced her emotions down.
"Fine. I won't keep pressing you about last night. But after we return to Konoha, you're going to serve as my personal guard."
Akira blinked, clearly resistant. "The Hokage's guard? That's not exactly appropriate. I'm still just a genin."
Her tone left no room for argument. "You don't want to?"
He truly didn't.
The whole situation was awkward enough already. Having to stand under her nose every single day after this would make things even worse.
No matter how calm he acted, he knew very well how shaky he felt inside.
Especially because every time he looked at Tsunade now, his mind insisted on replaying pieces of the previous night.
How was he supposed to deal with that?
If they were forced to stay together every day, who knew whether one day he'd lose his head again and do something genuinely impossible to take back?
What made it worse was the absurdity of the relationship itself.
A woman old enough to be from his grandmother's generation, and now things between them had become murky in a way that made even thinking about it feel dangerous.
Akira tried to appeal to reason. "It's not that I'm refusing on purpose. The village has rules. A genin serving as the Hokage's personal guard doesn't fit. At the very least, I'd need to be a tokubetsu jonin."
Tsunade smiled then, and the smile had more than a little fox-like cunning to it.
"That's the least of your problems. Once I'm Hokage, choosing my guard is my prerogative. Promoting you is just a matter of a sentence or two. Everyone's already seen your strength, and you just came out of the Chunin Exams."
"Based on your performance there, making chunin is already guaranteed. And if you really want it to look proper, making you jonin won't be hard either. I can attach your name to three S-rank missions and move you up. Who's going to challenge it?"
The truth was, jonin promotion had always been somewhat arbitrary.
Some people killed themselves working for years and only made special jonin.
Others completed a single S-rank mission and jumped almost straight to the top.
Neji would do it one day. So would people like Shikamaru.
If the Hokage believed someone had the ability, then the "rules" could always be adjusted.
Temari had once said the same thing, that if your record was strong enough, jonin was only a matter of time.
With Akira's current combat power, never mind an S-rank mission. He'd probably take a shot at something even higher if it interested him.
And in fact, he had already completed an S-rank mission on his own.
So Tsunade wasn't bluffing.
She genuinely could make it happen.
But that wasn't what Akira was struggling with.
If becoming jonin had really been his goal, he could've climbed there long ago just by grinding missions after graduation.
He looked at Tsunade and gave a bitter smile. "Why are you so fixated on me? I genuinely don't think I'm suited for that position."
Tsunade didn't answer.
She simply stared at him with the kind of look that said, If you refuse me, I'll just keep staring until you break.
After a while, Akira finally cracked. He let out a long sigh.
"All right, all right. Fine. I'll do it. Being the Hokage's guard does at least sound quieter than most assignments."
At last Tsunade smiled in satisfaction. "Relax. The job's easy. Most of the time you won't need to do anything. You'll only have to step in when it matters."
She knew exactly what Akira was capable of.
He wouldn't just be a bodyguard.
He'd be a hidden card.
Of course, there were other reasons she wanted him close too.
Those, she kept to herself.
"All right, then. Deal." Akira nodded.
"In that case, come outside with me for a while." Tsunade's mood improved visibly the moment he agreed.
Akira eyed her warily. "We're not drinking again, are we?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "You call yourself a man, and suddenly your nerve's gone?"
Akira kept a straight face. "Who said anything about nerve? I'm protecting my long-term health."
Tsunade didn't bother calling him out. The contempt in her expression said enough.
The truth was, last night really had scared him. Once the adrenaline wore off, he'd realized just how close he'd come to stepping off a cliff.
Thankfully, Tsunade had never actually wanted to kill him.
That alone was enough to count as a miracle.
What still puzzled Akira was that she hadn't truly been angry with him afterward. She'd even given him the necklace.
What he didn't realize was that, in its own way, that had been a form of quiet acceptance.
If Akira's body hadn't been right in the middle of adolescence, and if Tsunade didn't have such overwhelming presence, maybe his reason wouldn't have wavered so badly in the first place.
As for the bodyguard job, the more Akira thought about it, the more he realized it might not be so bad.
At least it was better than living Kakashi's life, running himself half to death on endless missions.
And most importantly, the Hokage's guard had access to portions of the Scroll of Seals and other restricted records.
That was the real temptation.
Tsunade smirked. "Then why do you keep bringing up drinking?"
Akira wisely shut his mouth.
Tsunade was clearly in a good mood now. "Relax. No drinking today. I just want to take a walk with you."
Akira nodded. "That's fine. As long as there's no alcohol involved, I'm good."
He'd only gotten through about a tenth of the medical scrolls Tsunade had already given him. The material was dense enough to make his head hurt, and there was no way he was digesting it all quickly.
Tsunade had no intention of taking any of it back, either. She might as well have handed over half her library in advance.
The two of them walked out of the inn together.
Hidden in a corner, Shizune watched their backs with a completely baffled expression.
"Why does Tsunade-hime feel like a different person lately? She looks... happier."
"Is it because of Akira? What on earth happened between those two while I wasn't looking?"
Over the past several days, Tsunade had deliberately kept Shizune from following too closely.
Even though Akira was only thirteen, he had developed far too quickly. He was already half a head taller than Tsunade, handsome, composed, and carried himself more like a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old than a child.
His physical condition had already reached a level most adults would kill for.
And his body was still evolving. He wasn't yet at Hashirama's monstrous level, but his chakra reserves were already comparable to a complete Nine-Tails.
That was why he could throw around massive jutsus as though chakra were free.
If he entered Sage Mode, he was basically a human tailed beast.
Walking side by side down the street, Akira and Tsunade drew every eye around them.
Handsome boy. Beautiful woman.
Their presence turned heads instantly.
And visually, there was none of the generational dissonance one might have expected.
If anything, they looked like a close older-sister-and-younger-brother pair... or perhaps like a very unusual teacher and student.
Tsunade, however, seemed to have changed her habits completely today. She didn't head for a tavern.
Instead, she switched into full shopping mode.
Snacks. Clothes. Jewelry.
In the past, that would have been almost unthinkable. She was a gambler and a drinker, and beyond her usual green haori, she barely changed what she wore at all.
Unfortunately, this was bad news for Akira's wallet.
Standing in a high-end clothing shop, watching his money vanish at terrifying speed, he felt like his heart was bleeding.
Of course. The moment a woman really starts spending money, it becomes a bottomless abyss. Especially when it's a beautiful woman.
Still, every time Tsunade stepped out of the fitting room in another outfit, Akira had to admit the expense felt justified.
Her figure was made for clothes. Everything looked good on her.
The endless parade of outfits left him almost dizzy.
And the envious glances from the store staff did a great deal to satisfy a man's vanity.
Unfortunately, that same vanity also forced Akira to keep reaching into his pocket and paying through gritted teeth.
It wasn't that he couldn't afford it.
It was just that this rate of spending was faster than a printing press.
By the time they had made their way through half the town, Akira still looked calm on the surface, but inside he was in tears. They'd burned through the equivalent of a full B-rank mission reward in one morning.
Walking beside him with bags in both hands, Tsunade looked delighted. "What's wrong? Feeling the pain yet?"
Akira forced a smile that looked more like a grimace. "Not at all. Spending money for you is my great honor."
Tsunade leaned in a little, grinning wickedly. "Really?"
At last, Akira dropped the act. Grinding his teeth, he muttered, "No. Absolutely not. It hurts like you're carving pieces off me."
Tsunade burst out laughing. "As a shinobi, your vision needs to be bigger. Never become a slave to money."
"One of the three great ninja taboos, you know."
Akira's mouth twitched. "I'm not the slave. At this rate, my wallet is."
He tapped the green necklace, which Tsunade had wound into a bracelet around his wrist, and joked, "Maybe I should just sell this and recover my losses."
Tsunade's eyes widened instantly, her killing intent practically visible. "Don't you dare."
Akira shrank his neck back slightly. "I was joking. Just trying to lighten the mood."
No matter how short on cash he ever got, there was no way he'd actually sell this thing.
At that point it wasn't even about money anymore.
It was about survival.
After wandering the town for more than an hour, they passed an elegant-looking hot spring inn, and Tsunade's eyes lit up. Without a second thought, she grabbed Akira and headed straight inside.
Akira didn't think much of it at first. He just followed.
Then she said:
"One private room with its own bath."
At that, Akira frowned.
Something about this suddenly felt very wrong.
And only when the two of them were sitting in the steaming room with a tray floating between them, holding a bottle of sake, did it finally click into place.
So that was the real point.
Akira thought to himself that Tsunade had clearly accepted him into a much closer circle of trust.
Otherwise, with her personality, there was no chance she would share a private room and let things become this relaxed and informal.
The two of them remained in the hot spring suite for hours.
When they finally came out, Akira's face was pink from the heat.
Tsunade, too, had a rosy flush to her face and a soft look in her eyes.
Most importantly, by now she had naturally slipped into walking beside him with no hesitation at all, completely at ease.
Outside, night had already fallen. Somehow they had spent the entire day there, from late morning until evening.
The outing had nearly bankrupted Akira, but in exchange, something between them had quietly settled into place.
He didn't pull away from that new closeness.
There were no spoken vows, no formal promises, but some things had already become clear without either of them saying them aloud.
As for the age difference?
Akira, in the back of his mind, still found the whole thing absurd enough to laugh at, but so long as Tsunade maintained the Strength of a Hundred Seal, she would probably still look like this even at a hundred.
And compared with immature girls his age, someone as composed, experienced, and overwhelming as Tsunade was simply more difficult to ignore.
Today, if nothing else, made one thing clear.
Whatever the exact label on their relationship was now, it had changed.
Neither of them had pierced that last layer of unspoken understanding, but Tsunade's attitude was obvious enough.
As they walked, Akira eventually got tired of being led along and turned his hand over, firmly taking hers instead.
Tsunade was caught off guard for a second and glanced sideways at him, only to see that he was looking straight ahead with an expression so proper and upright that it almost made it seem as though the small move hadn't been his at all.
She couldn't help teasing him. "Well. Didn't expect you to have that much pride."
Akira didn't answer. He only tightened his grip slightly, making his answer obvious enough.
A faint smile touched Tsunade's mouth.
For just a moment, she felt the strange flutter of something she hadn't felt in years.
But experience was experience, and she quickly steadied herself again. At the same time, she formed an even newer impression of how mature Akira really was.
This boy truly didn't feel thirteen.
Whether it was his height, his face, or the way he handled people, everything about him carried a strange, seasoned steadiness.
Still, the ninja world had never lacked precocious geniuses, so Tsunade didn't find it impossible to accept. Itachi had started brooding over life and death before he was even grown. Compared to that, Akira almost felt normal.
The two of them walked quietly through the bright streets, enjoying a rare moment of peace.
Akira himself hadn't expected things to develop this quickly. The whole thing had moved like a rocket.
At first, he'd only been interested in Tsunade's medical ninjutsu.
Then he'd started noticing how beautiful she was, how striking she looked.
Then her constant rambling had somehow become almost... endearing.
And before he knew it, the two of them had ended up here.
Strangely enough, it all felt natural.
There had been no dramatic twists, no grand inner struggle, no crushing sense of guilt.
By the time they neared the inn again, Akira suddenly stopped and said seriously, "I think it would be better if we wait until I'm eighteen before openly changing how people see our relationship."
Tsunade looked at him in surprise, not understanding why he would choose such a distant marker.
Akira explained, "I don't want people saying you abused your position and promoted some good-looking kid the moment you became Hokage."
Once they returned to Konoha, Tsunade was going to push major reforms.
Promoting Akira, pushing him toward jonin, and appointing him as her close guard would already be politically sensitive enough.
The Hokage's guard wasn't some decorative post. It carried weight.
If the Fourth Hokage had lived longer, Genma and the others around him would have ended up in very different positions.
If people knew Tsunade and Akira were unusually close, Danzo and all the old vultures around him would absolutely seize on it as proof of favoritism.
Akira himself didn't care about rumors.
But he had to think about Tsunade.
Being Hokage wasn't just about strength. Politics mattered too.
Once she understood, Tsunade felt warmth spread through her chest. She laid her other hand over his and smiled softly.
"All right. We'll do it your way."
Akira nodded. "Thanks for understanding."
Tsunade's eyes curved with amusement. "And that's it? Just words? Nothing more concrete?"
Akira coughed awkwardly. "Ahem. We're here. Let's go inside."
As he said it, he gently withdrew his hand and walked into the inn a little too quickly, almost like he was fleeing.
Standing outside the entrance, Tsunade watched his retreating back and couldn't help laughing softly to herself.
"This idiot... eighteen, then."