Click.
Jiraiya-sensei pushed open the doors to the meeting room.
The lights cast his shadow onto the wall, along with the figure behind him.
"Tsunade."
Jiraiya-sensei suddenly halted, turning to look at the woman behind him with a bitter smile. "You didn't actually have to come. The old man didn't even summon you..."
Tsunade's pale face was still marked by exhaustion and dazedness.
Her right arm was still wrapped in bandages and suspended from her neck, making her look utterly unlike her usual decisive and forceful self.
"This is a jōnin meeting, right?"
After hearing Jiraiya-sensei's words, Tsunade seemed to snap back to herself. She raised her eyes to glance at him and said calmly, "Am I not allowed to attend now?"
Feeling as though he had said something wrong again, Jiraiya-sensei scratched his head in frustration.
Still, he did not dare say much more to the sensitive Tsunade in her current state.
Tsunade looked exhausted, as though she had not slept in a long time, but in reality, she spent fourteen hours out of every twenty-four asleep.
Even so, she still felt utterly drained. That could only be blamed on mental exhaustion.
Already shaken by Nawaki's death, she had suffered another heavy blow at such a time. She kept reliving that day in her dreams, often jolting awake in the middle of her sleep.
A healer could not heal herself, and one who ferried others across could not ferry herself.
That was Tsunade's current state.
"You two actually came as well."
Just then, a broad, hearty voice reached their ears, and a round figure walked over.
Hearing that voice, Jiraiya-sensei quickly turned around and respectfully said, "Senior Torifu."
The first person to approach and speak with them after they entered was Torifu Akimichi, the current head of the Akimichi