Watanabe Ichiro stood where he was, watching Jiraiya walk off into the distance without once looking back.
Uh... I think I accidentally broke Jiraiya. Now he was seeing and hearing things.
Hallucinations were already serious enough, but this time Jiraiya had not even tried to reach out and touch him.
Maybe he had been disappointed so many times that he no longer had the heart to try.
He had probably grown used to a life plagued by hallucinations.
So how long had he been living like this, from the staged death of Leaf Dragon until now?
Watanabe Ichiro counted the days, and for a moment, it felt as though a lifetime had passed.
It seemed this emotional wound ran deeper than he had thought. He might have taken things a little too far.
He had never imagined that someone as loud and boisterous as Jiraiya would actually be more emotionally fragile than Kakashi.
An inn in the Red-Light District.
"Jiraiya, you came back all by your-self?"
Tsunade could not help asking when she saw a dispirited Jiraiya push open the door and enter.
"Yeah. I'm not doing too well."
He lay straight down on the bed and closed his eyes to rest.
His recent hallucinations seemed to be evolving, growing increasingly severe.
Before, "Big Brother Leaf Dragon" had simply watched from beside him, occasionally chiming in, and everything "he" said had been Jiraiya's own true, secret thoughts.
It had been easy enough to recognize them for what they were and ignore them.
But now, the hallucinations had plots and dialogue. They even tied into events from the past!
Everything felt so real that it was hard to tell the difference.
*If Big Brother Leaf Dragon hadn't appeared at the end, I really might have believed the person in front