Chapter 586: The Hot Spring Inn
The hot spring inn the proprietress recommended was not some place pushed by an acquaintance purely for the sake of a commission.
The setting genuinely was something. The inn sat on a gentle slope at the edge of town, surrounded on all sides by bamboo groves, its buildings done in traditional wood construction. The corridor floors were laid with soft grass matting, and the air carried a faint mixture of sulfur and the clean, particular fragrance that only bamboo has. Together they produced something that shouldn't have worked but did -- not unpleasant at all, but quietly relaxing in a way that settled into the bones without announcing itself.
The complimentary kaiseki dinner that came with the room was not quite as good as what they made themselves. But it was unquestionably at the level of a serious high-end restaurant. Every dish was plated with care -- small plates, small bowls, small cups, small dishes arranged in a spread of colors across the entire table. Not the kind of thing that looks impressive and leaves you hungry. The real kind. The kind that fills you properly, satisfies you completely, until you set down your chopsticks and breathe a long, contented sigh.
Naruto and Satsuki sat together and ate. Ordinary conversation. Ordinary food. Ordinary, in the way any ordinary couple in the world was ordinary.
After dinner, they went to look at the room. When the door swung open, the scent of tatami reached them first.
The room was not large, but whoever had arranged it had put thought into it. An ink painting hung in the alcove. On the low table by the window sat a teapot and two cups, with a small dish of sweets to the side. The bedding was already laid out, the white quilts soft and full in the warm amber light.
To one side of the room, a small door opened onto a private courtyard enclosed by a bamboo fence. At the center of the courtyard, built from stone, was a small hot spring pool. A thin layer of steam drifted from the surface. This was not a communal bathhouse. It was private, exclusive, belonging to them alone.
Naruto stood at the edge of the pool and let his mind wander into the possibilities it offered. But more than that, there was something else that had been sitting in his thoughts, heavier than any of it.
What on earth had Satsuki bought at that clothing store?
The question had lodged itself there from the moment she walked out of the back room with all those bags and had not moved since.
It was out of character. Normally, whatever Satsuki bought, she would hand it over to Naruto to carry, or at the very least let him take a look so he knew what it was.
Not this time. After Naruto sealed everything into the storage scroll, Satsuki hadn't handed him the scroll. She kept it herself, holding it against her chest like someone afraid it might be taken from her.
He hadn't even managed a glimpse.
When he had asked directly, she refused with visible distress.
For Satsuki, who had always been practically indulgent toward him, this was extremely unusual.
Her attitude toward him had always been -- you want to see it, go ahead. Tell me what you want. Whatever you do, I support it. That entirely unreserved quality, the kind that made you feel held by the whole world, was one of the things about Satsuki that moved him the most. And today she had said no.
So Naruto's state of mind had become something like Rohan Kishibe struck by Cheap Trick -- no matter what, he absolutely had to see.
What kind of clothes were they? What kind of clothes could make Satsuki that embarrassed? What kind of clothes could cause her to refuse him, completely out of character? Were they the cute kind? Were they the other kind? Were they the kind that... his throat moved. Those images began spilling out again, entirely past his ability to stop them.
A clothing store, when all was said and done, sold clothes. If Satsuki planned to wear them for him, it was only a matter of time.
She couldn't buy clothes and never wear them. She couldn't keep them in a storage scroll forever. So Naruto had chosen not to try to sneak a look, even though that particular impulse kept scratching at him, and decided to wait for Satsuki to show him in her own time.
He had decided, in that spirit, that since they were staying at a hot spring inn, the obvious first move was to--
"Naruto, go in first."
Satsuki's voice drifted over from nearby.
"...Huh?"
"Naruto go first, then I'll go after... I need to... anyway, Naruto just go soak first!"
Her voice jumped sharply in volume at the last few words, the way someone's does when they're using sound to cover something up.
And so Naruto ended up in the hot spring alone.
It was pleasant. The environment was quiet. Only the soft rustling of bamboo in the wind and the gentle gurgling of water pushing up through the gaps in the stone. But underneath all of it, a quiet disappointment kept rising in his chest in steady waves.
He had been looking forward to soaking in the hot spring together. He hadn't even had a chance to suggest it before she found a way around it.
He'd had a specific image in his mind. The warm water, the steam making everything a little indistinct, not being able to see each other's faces clearly but being able to feel the other person right there. He could have pulled Satsuki close, let her lean back against him in his arms, her back to his chest, her hair against his chin. He could have bent down and said things near her ear that he was usually too shy to say out loud. He could have held her tighter.
Naruto's face went red. These thoughts in the evenings were genuinely uncontrollable.
He lifted his face from the water and tilted his head back. The night sky above was a deep, settled blue.
He was going to need to stay in this pool a while longer. Long enough for his head to clear. Long enough for the unruly thoughts to stop.
On the other side of the wall, in the inn's room, Satsuki listened to the sounds from the courtyard. Once she was certain Naruto was in the water and wouldn't be returning shortly, she slowly drew the storage scroll from her chest.
She loosened the ties, spread the scroll open, and let chakra flow from her fingertips into the paper. Everything brought from the clothing store -- ordinary to look at, face-reddening on the inside -- cascaded across the floor in a rush.
Satsuki crouched and began to sort through it.
First: in a hot spring context, anything with texture or volume was immediately out.
The qipao styles were also off the table -- silk soaking in high-temperature water would be a waste.
After eliminating the various other categories -- including the one that could barely be called a school uniform: a shirt and necktie on top but only some indescribable scrap of fabric on the bottom. And the one styled like a medical professional's outfit, but using roughly eighty percent less fabric than any actual medical professional ever wore -- Satsuki concluded that in the context of a hot spring, there was only one option that made any sense.
Whether "garment" was even the right word for it, she was less certain. Because this thing was, at base, a bundle of strings.
Those strings did not so much cover the relevant areas as mark their location.
She lifted the tangle of strings from the pile, held it in front of her face, and turned it over. Could this actually be worn? What was the difference between wearing this and wearing nothing? No -- wearing this might be worse than nothing.
She was running out of time to deliberate. If she kept standing here steaming, Naruto would be done with the hot spring and on his way back.
She had to decide. Get dressed, settle herself, and then stand in front of him in a manner that she herself found difficult to believe.
Satsuki's throat moved. She began to change.
She didn't quite dare look at herself in the mirror. Her fingers fumbled clumsily among the ties and fastenings, taking several times longer than usual to get the thing on in any way that could be called on. Her heart was beating quickly. She forced herself to breathe steadily and not dwell on the near-total absence of fabric, and then she began going through the shopping bag for something else.
She still didn't fully understand what the high heels were for. But the proprietress had included a second gift alongside them.
Satsuki hadn't paid close attention to it in the shop -- just dropped it into the bag without looking. Now she wanted to know what it was.
After a brief search, her fingers found something in a white plastic bag. She drew it out, turned it over, and looked at the description on the packaging.
"..."
Her first thought was that the proprietress had put the wrong thing in the bag. Because this item, at first glance, looked entirely ordinary. Ordinary enough to be sold in any general sundry shop. Ordinary enough that any household could pick it up without a second thought. Ordinary enough that Satsuki felt it had absolutely no business being mixed in with all this face-reddening lingerie and footwear.
The next moment, the Satsuki who was already a wife -- who had experienced those things between husband and wife -- who was no longer a girl who knew nothing about any of it -- understood.
Her pupils went wide. She flung the thing away as if she had touched a live wire.
Then she picked it back up. Shoved it back into the bag with force. She would take things gradually -- start with the simplest, and that... that particular item could wait -- it was a bit too... too... too far beyond what her current psychological capacity could manage.
And so Satsuki found herself confronting a realization she could not avoid: so this was what people got up to. The revelation stirred something in her regardless... Satsuki's throat moved.
-----