Orochimaru froze.
"Now? Here?"
He looked at Tsunade for confirmation, his voice slightly hoarse.
"At the moment, we don't have any suitable eyes to transplant into him."
"You can't just make do with an ordinary person's eyes, can you?"
Tsunade looked at him and said only, "Use mine."
Orochimaru's hand trembled slightly.
His golden slit pupils suddenly contracted, as though something had struck him.
In the corner, Nagato, who had been silently hugging his knees, jerked his head up, his pale purple Rinnegan filled with disbelief.
He thought he had misheard, but there wasn't the slightest trace of a joke on Tsunade's face.
"...Use yours?"
Orochimaru slowly repeated the words, his voice sounding as though it had been scraped with sandpaper.
"Are you sure?"
Tsunade didn't repeat herself.
She walked up to Orochimaru, raised her hand, and pointed at her own eyes, enunciating every word:
"I have both the Senju bloodline and the Uzumaki bloodline. My eyes are more suitable for this child than anyone else's."
Orochimaru didn't answer immediately.
He watched her in silence. Complicated emotions churned in his golden slit pupils, as though countless thoughts were frantically jostling and colliding.
He had a vague idea of what Tsunade was thinking.
The Rinnegan, the legendary eyes of the Sage of Six Paths.
What Tsunade wanted wasn't this child, but the eyes residing in his sockets.
Orochimaru stared at her in silence for a long time, but in the end, he asked nothing more.
He exhaled heavily through his nose and said quietly:
"Can your body withstand the Rinnegan? These aren't ordinary eyes."
"I know," Tsunade said. "That's why I have to try."
Nagato looked at Orochimaru, then at Tsunade, his gaze finally settling on her face.
Fear and confusion receded, layer by layer, from his pale purple eyes.
All