"Going out of the tower for a walk? I can move around freely? I don't have to worry about the Nine-Tails anymore!?"
"I'm willing!"
Her crisp, excited voice brimmed with undisguised joy.
"When!? Now? Right away? This instant? Let's go for a walk already!?"
Firing off one impatient question after another, little Kushina bounced excitedly on the spot. If she had had a tail behind her, who knew how wildly it would have been wagging!
Hiroki laughed.
"Yeah, now!" Hiroki said.
"Where do you want to go?" Standing by the window, he looked at the newly completed face of the Fourth Hokage outside and turned the question back on Kushina.
"—Uh—" Kushina lowered her head. Perhaps she had waited too long, because she had almost forgotten why she had wanted to go out in the first place—
"Mm—"
After thinking for a long while, she slowly raised her head and gazed into the distance, a hint of nostalgia and longing in her eyes.
"I want—I want to see the fields outside the village. Back in the Land of Whirlpools, there was a huge wheat field stretching as far as the eye could see right outside my home. Whenever the wind blew, the golden waves of wheat were so beautiful, and the air was filled with the scent of grain. Ever since I came to Konoha, I—I haven't seen that in so long."
A trace of sorrow quietly crept onto her brow.
"It's okay. Then we'll go to the wheat fields!" Hiroki patted Kushina's little head and said with a smile.
"Mm~!" That trace of sorrow seemed to be instantly smoothed away, and Kushina smiled again.
The setting sun dyed the sky a warm orange-red, like spilled orange soda. Even the clouds had turned into sweet cotton candy.
Hiroki and Kushina