Perfect Sage Mode?

"Konohamaru, calm down first. I'm not the killer you think I am. The real killer is my clone that escaped from Orochimaru's side!"

Ignoring everything else, Jiraiya suppressed his discomfort and quickly explained the situation in the simplest terms possible.

He had to prevent Konohamaru from continuing to struggle or doing anything else that might draw the others over.

After all, Jiraiya himself had said it before: a ninja was someone who could endure anything, wasn't he?

It was just that Jiraiya had shared that famous saying with Naruto, passing it on to him, and Naruto had in turn shared it with Konohamaru, passing it on to him.

So Konohamaru seemed to have been influenced by those words too. He...

"Konohamaru, what are you doing? Stop right now!"

Jiraiya had just breathed a sigh of relief when Konohamaru calmed down without shouting, only to discover that Konohamaru had actually resumed Sage Mode training. His vision went dark.

What the hell was he doing?

Jiraiya was still standing right here!!

It turned out Konohamaru had remembered a little trick Naruto had told him about—a shortcut for training Sage Mode.

Konohamaru had once asked Naruto how he was supposed to ease the embarrassment of using this Sage Mode shortcut in actual combat, where people were bound to see it.

After all, if he felt embarrassed, he would have no way to empty his mind and enter Sage Mode.

So how had Naruto answered?

Drawing on his extensive experience in committing crimes, Naruto had summed up a profound truth: if you stopped, then you were the embarrassed one. If you kept going, then the other person was the embarrassed one.

And as long as the other person started feeling embarrassed, you would no longer be embarrassed.

So, the instant Konohamaru learned that Jiraiya