Tsunade's kiss

Yūto opened his eyes to a half-obscured sky and a full moon as white as snow.

"I'm back?"

He thought he had returned to Blue Star, but then he caught a familiar fragrance, along with a faint smell of blood.

Damn!

I didn't die again!

The Transmigrator Administration Bureau definitely tampered with things!

My heart was pierced clean through!

Could Tsunade have healed me?!

But she had hemophobia!

Yūto was about to get up when someone pressed him back down.

Tsunade's delicate face, smudged with traces of battle, appeared in the obscured half of the sky.

"Don't move, Yūto. You've just been badly injured."

Yūto shuddered, not from the cold, but because Tsunade's voice sounded completely different from before. It was a little affected, even softer and higher than a young girl from southern Fujian.

Only then did Yūto realize he was lying on Tsunade's thighs, enjoying a service known as a lap pillow.

The sky was also blocked by Tsunade's peaks, which towered above all others in the shinobi world, leaving only half of it visible.

The corners of Yūto's mouth twitched into a wry smile. "Lady Tsunade, you're blocking the whole sky..."

The tender, bashful expression on Tsunade's face instantly froze. The guy in front of her definitely wasn't talking about her head blocking the sky.

"You little pervert! You've finally shown your true colors!"

Despite her fierce words, Tsunade didn't resort to violence against Yūto.

In fact, she was rather happy. If Yūto still had the energy to run his lewd mouth, that meant his injuries were almost no concern anymore.

Yūto recalled the entire battle. Not long after Kakuzu pierced his heart, he had lost consciousness.

In his last moments of memory, Yūto remembered urging Tsunade to hurry and escape.

But judging by the current situation, Tsunade didn't seem to have fled. Instead, Kakuzu had either escaped or died.

Could someone from Konoha have happened to pass by?

Or had Tsunade's hemophobia...?

The moment that thought surfaced, Yūto dismissed it himself.

Impossible. Tsunade's hemophobia had lasted for well over a decade. How could she recover so easily?

In the original story, Naruto Uzumaki had risked his life to block Kabuto Yakushi's attack. Moved by Naruto's resolve, Tsunade had overcome her hemophobia.

Although he had done something similar, he wasn't the protagonist. How could he possibly accomplish the same thing as the protagonist?

Then someone had probably helped, someone like Minato or Fugaku.

Apart from those two, Yūto couldn't think of any other Konoha Ninja nearby who could defeat Kakuzu.

Kakashi and Obito might be able to, but that was in the future.

Yūto sat up... and his forehead bumped into those magnificent mountains. Their boundless might stopped him, forcing him to lie back down.

Looking at Tsunade's cheeks, which had somehow grown a little redder, Yūto asked:

"Lady Tsunade, who saved us? Was it Minato or Clan Head Fugaku?"

Tsunade froze at his words. She didn't understand why Yūto would ask that. Had Minato and Fugaku said something to Yūto before they left?

Had Yūto fought with his life on the line because he knew Minato or Fugaku would come to help?

Tsunade was a little angry. Those two were far too unreliable. Yūto had nearly died in battle, and neither of them had shown up.

Back at the Konoha Camp, Minato and Fugaku shuddered in unison, feeling as though something terrifying had set its sights on them.

"How could those two possibly have shown up to save us? It was me, Konoha's Princess Tsunade, who defeated that strange bounty hunter!"

Yūto's eyes widened at her words.

Tsunade defeated Kakuzu!

This...

For a moment, Yūto didn't know where to begin.

There were only two ways Tsunade could have defeated Kakuzu.

One was that Tsunade's strength had reached the pinnacle of the shinobi world, allowing her to push through the effects of hemophobia and pound Kakuzu into the ground.

But that was probably impossible.

If she had that kind of strength, Yūto wouldn't have needed to protect her throughout the earlier battle.

With the other options eliminated, even the most unlikely option had to be the final answer.

Tsunade's hemophobia had actually been cured!

Yūto could barely keep it together. He now rejected any factor that might make him stronger.

That included getting the protagonist treatment.

How had something only Naruto Uzumaki could accomplish ended up being accomplished by him, Uchiha Yūto?

The corners of Yūto's mouth twitched. He still wanted to confirm whether his theory was correct, so he asked Tsunade, "Lady Tsunade, didn't you have hemophobia? How could you possibly defeat Kakuzu?!"

Tsunade heard the agitation in Yūto's voice, and it displeased her a little.

What did he mean, how could she possibly defeat Kakuzu? Was she that weak in his eyes?

It was only hemophobia. She simply hadn't bothered dealing with it. Overcoming it at a critical moment was easy, okay?

"Hemophobia is nothing. I'm the strongest Medical Ninja in the shinobi world. How could an illness of that level possibly stump me?"

Her tone still carried some displeasure in the first sentence, but her next words somehow took on a hint of bashfulness.

"Hey, kid, you don't need to call me 'Lady' anymore. Just call me Tsunade."

"But don't get any ideas. It's only because you saved my life!"

On the battlefield, where the smell of blood had yet to fully fade, this sudden invitation to address her so intimately left Yūto momentarily speechless.

"Lady... Tsunade?"

He repeated it tentatively, his voice rising at the end without his realizing it.

"I told you to drop the 'Lady'!"

Tsunade suddenly grabbed his collar, only to jerk her hand back when she touched the boy's freshly healed wound.

She turned her face away, her two golden ponytails swaying gently in the night breeze. "In the report for this mission, I'll write that you drove Kakuzu off on your own."

Yūto propped himself up on his elbows, carefully avoiding that pair of impressive obstacles this time.

The wound that had pierced his chest was mostly healed. Only the vicious tear in his flak jacket served as a reminder of how close he had just come to death.

Something suddenly occurred to him. "You're not planning to hide the fact that your hemophobia is cured too, are you?"

Tsunade nodded. "Battles between ninja are contests of intelligence."

"Wasn't intelligence what allowed you to hold your own against that ninja named Kakuzu earlier?"

"Since the information about my hemophobia has already leaked, I might as well keep its cure a secret. It might come in handy someday."

"For instance, to catch an enemy off guard."

Yūto blinked. It seemed he had learned something new.

He stood up and moved his arms and legs. The wound still hurt a little, but it no longer hindered his movements.

He walked over to the medical supply crate. It was completely intact. He wondered if some sort of luck buff had been carved onto it, given that it hadn't been damaged even in a battle of that scale.

Yūto picked up the crate and turned to Tsunade. "Lady Tsu... Tsunade, let's get going..."

In that short sentence, Yūto paused twice.

The first time was because he had added "Lady."

The second was because Tsunade's moist lips pressed against his forehead.