The dense stench of blood mixed with dust from shattered bricks, churning violently through the cramped, stuffy hospital room.
Baishi could clearly feel Kushina's palm, sliced open by a Flying Thunder God Kunai, trembling slightly against his cheek. Scalding blood seeped through her fair fingers, dripped onto Baishi's pale chin, then slid along his Adam's apple and into the deep, bone-exposed wound piercing his collarbone, bringing with it a searing pain.
It was a touch that was both intensely invasive and filled with the utmost tenderness.
Amid the ruins of the doorframe, Namikaze Minato maintained the posture in which Adamantine Sealing Chains had thrown him back. His usually immaculate blond hair was now disheveled by the raging currents of air.
Outside in the corridor, several ANBU and medical ninja who had hurried over after hearing the commotion stood frozen in place, not even daring to breathe too heavily. Every one of them stared dumbfounded at Konoha's most dazzling Yellow Flash—and at his hot-tempered fiancée, who was currently shielding an obscure low-ranking ANBU beneath her like a lioness protecting her food.
"Kushina..." Minato's voice was dry, as though it had been rubbed across sandpaper. He stared fixedly at the bloodstained left hand cradling Baishi's face, the venomous fire of jealousy burning wildly through his reason. "Do you know what you're doing?"
Kushina did not turn around.
Her dark golden slit pupils remained locked tightly onto Baishi's face, while her thumb gently rubbed the bloody foam at the corner of his mouth. The red chakra of the Nine-Tails roiled wildly behind her, scorching the air in the hospital room until it warped and twisted.
"I'm protecting him." Kushina's tone was surprisingly calm—so calm that it made people's scalps crawl. "Just as he protected me without regard for anything back then..."
"Absurd!"
Minato could no longer suppress the fury in his heart. He suddenly stepped forward. The broken bricks beneath his foot were crushed to pieces with a sharp, explosive crack.
"He protected you? He's just an ANBU cannon fodder who might not even have Chunin-level strength! At the border yesterday, if I hadn't arrived, he would have died at Iwagakure's hands long ago!" Minato pointed at Baishi on the hospital bed, the veins at his temples throbbing violently. "Kushina, wake up! You were deceived by his disguise. The wounds on his body and the traces at the scene were all fabricated to conceal the truth!"
Minato tried to use the tactical analysis and logic he took pride in to tear apart this absurd situation. He invoked the dignity of a Hokage Candidate, attempting to overwhelm this unreasonable woman on moral grounds.
"I'm your fiancé!" Minato emphasized his words, his blue eyes filled with anguish and confusion. "We're about to get married! And now you're attacking me for a stranger who's full of lies? You're drawing a weapon against a fellow member of Konoha?"
Fiancé.
The moment those three words came out, the ANBU in the corridor lowered their heads one after another, wishing they could cut off their own ears. This kind of scandalous romance between high-ranking figures was something they had no business hearing.
Baishi lay on the hospital bed, his eyelids drooping slightly to conceal the mocking chill in his eyes.
Namikaze Minato, Namikaze Minato... You're still too naive. You're trying to talk logic in front of the obsessive and fanatical Uzumaki? You're putting on the airs of a fiancé in front of a woman who has been forcibly infused by the Simulator with a "bond of life and death"?
Utterly foolish.
Sure enough, when she heard the words "fiancé," Kushina's shoulders stiffened slightly. But in the next instant, not only did she fail to release Baishi, she slowly turned her head instead.
There was no guilt on that breathtakingly beautiful face, only an indifference that made Minato feel as though he had fallen into an icy abyss.
"Fiancé?" A mocking curve tugged at the corners of Kushina's mouth. "Minato, when I was despairing in the darkness, when the blades of Cloud Hidden were pressed against my neck, where were you?"
Minato froze. "What are you talking about? Back then, I..."
"Shut up!" Kushina suddenly raised her voice. Her red hair whipped wildly behind her like the tail of a furious fox. The brutal memory from the Simulator collided madly with her perception of reality in her mind, and in the end, her obsessive emotions completely overwhelmed her reason.
She only remembered that in that storm-lashed forest, it had been the man beneath her who descended from the sky with Max-Level Lightning Release. He had used his chest to block a fatal ninjutsu, then fallen into a pool of blood after leaving behind the words, "I'm willing to die for you."
"I only believe what I see." Kushina pointed at the hideous wound piercing Baishi's collarbone, left by an Iwagakure poisoned kunai. Her voice trembled from extreme restraint. "This is the wound he suffered for me! He was willing to give up his life for me, but what about you?"
Kushina's gaze was like a blade, viciously scraping across Minato's face.
"As Konoha's commander, as the perfect genius in the eyes of the higher-ups, all you can do is look at him with suspicion. All you can do is point a kunai at a gravely wounded man on the verge of death!"
"You aren't my salvation, Minato. You're merely Konoha's tool."
Boom—
Those words struck Minato's heart like a heavy hammer. The perfect image he took pride in and the Will of Fire he had painstakingly cultivated were torn to shreds by his fiancée's ice-cold judgment.
Minato's face instantly turned deathly pale. His lips trembled slightly, but he could not say a word.
He had lost. In this battle to assert dominance, he had lost completely and utterly. He did not even know where he had lost.
Baishi secretly adjusted his breathing on the hospital bed. He knew the situation had reached the right point. If he let Kushina continue provoking Minato, Minato might erupt outright. A Kage Level powerhouse who had lost his reason was still an enormous threat to him in his current state.
He had to seize back control of the situation.
"Cough, cough..."
Baishi abruptly turned his head and began coughing violently. Large amounts of blood surged from his mouth, dripping from his chin onto the white bedsheets in a shocking display.
He weakly raised his unpinned left hand and used all his strength to seize Kushina's bloodstained wrist.
"Lady Kushina... enough."
Baishi's voice was extremely hoarse, carrying the dying weakness of someone barely clinging to life. He breathed with difficulty, looking at Kushina with a gaze filled with pain, pleading, and even a hint of self-mockery.
"Lord Minato is right... I caused the wounds on my body myself." Baishi gritted his teeth and forced back his cough, intermittently hurling dirt onto himself. "I'm just a cowardly waste who's afraid of dying... To evade Iwagakure's pursuit and steal my captain's credit... there's nothing I wouldn't do."
Outside in the corridor, the ANBU exchanged bewildered glances. A flicker of astonishment passed through Minato's eyes, immediately followed by even deeper suspicion.
But Kushina's reaction was entirely within Baishi's calculations.
"Don't talk!" Kushina seized Baishi's cold fingers with her other hand, tears finally bursting from her eyes. "Do you think I'll believe you just because you say that? Do you think you can push me away by making yourself sound so despicable?"
She understood that feeling too well. When she had been brought to Konoha as the Nine-Tails Jinchuriki, she had also resisted everyone with that same thorn-covered attitude. In her eyes, Baishi's self-denigration was all for the sake of protecting her—for the sake of preventing her from breaking with Minato and Konoha's higher-ups!
"I won't let you die." Kushina bit through her lip, a trace of crazed resolve flashing through her dark golden pupils.
Clang-clang-clang—
Amid the ear-piercing scrape of metal, five thick Adamantine Sealing Chains suddenly shot out from Kushina's back. They did not attack anyone. Instead, they formed a huge golden cocoon, firmly shielding the entire hospital bed—and Baishi upon it—at the very center.
Absolute defense.
The Uzumaki Clan's highest-level sealing technique was now being used by Kushina to protect a suspect in the eyes of the higher-ups.
"Minato." Through the gaps between the golden chains, Kushina coldly looked at her fiancé outside the door. "From this moment on, anyone who dares take even half a step into this hospital room, anyone who dares touch a single hair on his head, is an enemy of me, Uzumaki Kushina."
"Even you are no exception."
A deathly silence descended.
Minato stood where he was, watching the hospital bed heavily protected by golden chains and Kushina's posture of swearing to defend it to the death. His hands slowly clenched at his sides.
His nails pierced his palms, and blood dripped onto the broken bricks, yet he did not feel the slightest pain.
After the extreme frustration came an icy killing intent unlike anything he had ever felt before. He was no fool. He absolutely did not believe that a low-ranking ANBU could make Kushina develop such a frenzied obsession. There had to be some kind of conspiracy here that even he did not know about. It might even be genjutsu—or mental control!
He could not delay any longer. If this continued, Kushina would completely destroy herself, and she would also destroy the village's balance.
"Since your mind has already been clouded by the Nine-Tails..." Minato slowly raised his head. The gentle blue eyes that had once filled his face now held only the ruthlessness of an ANBU commander. "Then as your fiancé and as a shinobi of Konoha, I have no choice but to offend you."
"Whoosh!"
Minato's hands instantly became a blur. This was not an ordinary sealing technique, but the prelude to his deadliest killing move.
He abruptly threw a specially crafted Three-Pronged Kunai. Rather than stabbing toward Kushina, it traced a bizarre arc and embedded itself directly into the crumbling ceiling above the hospital bed.
Flying Thunder God: Second Step!
With only one-thousandth of a second, he could cross the defense of the Adamantine Sealing Chains and appear directly above Baishi, snapping the strange ANBU's neck.
Killing intent, almost tangible, locked onto Baishi's brow.
At that critical moment, just as Minato was about to activate Flying Thunder God, Baishi—who had been pinned beneath Kushina and acting unbearably weak—suddenly moved.
He did not form hand seals to defend himself, nor did he try to evade the lethal killing intent.
He made a move that no one present could have imagined—
Baishi suddenly rolled over, disregarding the tearing agony in his collarbone. He seized Kushina, who was blocking him, and forcefully pulled her into his arms. Then... with his own back, he directly faced the Flying Thunder God Kunai gleaming coldly in the ceiling!