As he watched Tsunade leave, angry and worried...
"What did Dan Katō do to you? Cause trouble over his treatment?" Akaseki asked Orochimaru in bewilderment.
Previously, Akaseki had only known that Tsunade had gone to Orochimaru when she could do nothing about Dan Katō's injuries.
After all, although Orochimaru was nowhere near as proficient in Medical Ninjutsu as Tsunade, he had plenty of unorthodox methods.
Unfortunately, Orochimaru's methods had proved unsuitable too.
After that...
For certain reasons, Orochimaru's impression of Dan Katō had become extremely poor!
"'Trouble over his treatment'... a nice phrase. Of course, I wasn't the one he caused trouble for. Otherwise, he would already have been put out of his misery," Orochimaru said calmly.
Although Orochimaru offered no detailed explanation, by this point... Akaseki could already guess what had happened.
If Orochimaru wasn't the target, who else could it be?
Presumably, Dan Katō's severe injuries had left him essentially unable to work as a ninja anymore, so... his personality had grown erratic, and he had started taking his frustration out on those around him. The person closest to him was undoubtedly Tsunade.
That sort of displaced anger was, admittedly, human nature. But in Orochimaru's eyes, being like an ordinary person made someone "trash"-just as he had described Dan Katō to Akaseki before.
"I see..." Akaseki could only shake his head. It even extinguished his desire to visit Dan Katō.
It wasn't that Akaseki looked down on him for it, but...
Akaseki didn't want to ruin the reasonably good impression he had of Dan Katō.
"Aren't you training your Taijutsu today, Akaseki?" Orochimaru didn't linger on the subject of Dan Katō.
"Just my regular workout today... mostly training-well, developing ninjutsu," Akaseki said with an air of importance.
By "training Taijutsu," Orochimaru meant going to the training grounds to