Jiraiya explained why he had come.
Now retired, Jiraiya had settled into a peaceful life. He and Tsunade had stepped down from their Hokage posts around the same time, with him leaving first and her following soon after.
After retiring, Jiraiya slept until he woke naturally, soaked in hot springs, and ate dumplings. He still wrote now and then, but no longer anything like Icha Icha Paradise. Instead, he wrote essays about his travels when he was young.
The person who retired alongside Jiraiya was Tsunade, who had once served as his Hokage Assistant.
The demands of being Hokage had made Jiraiya give up peeping without him even realizing it. Perhaps the only thing that could have cured him of that habit was a job that sent him to sleep whenever he had a spare moment. He was exhausted every day. Where would he have found the energy for anything else?
Gradually, with Jiraiya no longer peeping, Tsunade made her choice. Perhaps one day she had suddenly realized that she had not beaten up the white-haired old man over his nonsense in a long time. Then she discovered that she actually missed it a little.
Now the two retired elders, companions from the same era, had chosen to share their lives. In practice, that meant little more than living under the same roof. Jiraiya lived next door to Tsunade.
They were not in that kind of relationship yet. Neither had said it aloud, and neither had taken the next step. Jiraiya had decided to let things happen naturally. They were old, after all. The two of them had more than a hundred years between them. A grand, passionate confession at their age would be embarrassing to talk about.
But before they crossed that line, Jiraiya still wanted to make sure