The night in Konoha was as gentle and tender as ever, like the unguarded looks Tsunade occasionally let slip.
In the courtyard of the Uchiha Residence, the evening breeze carried the freshness of newly turned soil and the faint fragrance of tuberose from the flower beds, slipping quietly through the half-open window.
Inside the bedroom, candlelight flickered over two figures nestled together.
Tsunade had changed into comfortable nightclothes, her long golden hair cascading over her shoulders. She looked less like the commanding Hokage and more like a wife, languid and softly alluring.
She leaned against the headboard with a thick medical text in her hands, but her mind was elsewhere. Her gaze kept drifting toward the man standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back, apparently staring blankly at the crescent moon.
Shinichi wore his usual, unchanging loungewear, his naturally curly silver hair gleaming softly in the moonlight.
He was looking at neither the moon nor the stars. His perpetually half-lidded, dead-fish eyes seemed to pierce the barriers of time and space, gazing at some distant place beyond an ordinary person's reach.
"Hey, you. You've been staring out the window ever since you got back, like your mind's somewhere else." Tsunade finally gave in and closed her book, her voice carrying a hint of reproach and a barely perceptible trace of worry. "Are those 'gods' in Takama-ga-hara really that troublesome? Did they scare you that badly?"
At her words, Shinichi slowly turned around, a lazy, rather punchable smile appearing on his face. "Scare me? Lady Tsunade, you're seriously underestimating your husband's nerves. A few narrow-minded old fossils aren't worthy of that."
He strolled over to the bed, unceremoniously nudged Tsunade aside, and lay down beside her. Drawing her into his arms, he rested his chin on her soft hair