Chapter 587: The Balance Scale of Love
Naruto had soaked long enough that a light dizziness had set in. His head rested against the stone at the pool's edge, the stone cool against the back of his heated skull, making his thoughts drift at the edges.
But those thoughts -- the face-reddening ones -- simply would not dissolve. No amount of soaking dislodged them. No amount of cold air cleared them out.
The urge to hold someone in his arms would not go away.
The feeling sat like a thorn in his mind, and slowly that thorn became a flame, burning in his chest, burning lower.
Desire caught between "this will happen" and "this cannot happen" is always the most tormenting kind. If you know something will never happen, you give up; you let the flame die. But if you know it will happen in a little while -- if you know the door is right in front of you, that all you have to do is reach out and push it -- the flame doesn't die. It only burns hotter.
Because Naruto knew. In a little while, he and Satsuki were absolutely going to be together in that way.
They were husband and wife. They were staying in a room with only the two of them. The bedding was already laid out. The quilts were soft and full. The light was warm.
But Satsuki had declined to soak together, for reasons he still couldn't explain.
Naruto shifted his back against the stone. At home, she genuinely enjoyed sharing the bath with him. She would lean into his shoulder, press her face into the curve of his neck, and say in a coaxing voice that his body temperature was so warm. But today she had said no.
It left him feeling puzzled and curious at once, restless and a little deflated.
Then the sound of the door sliding open came from behind him.
His back registered a faint stir of air. He startled involuntarily but did not turn.
"...Satsuki?"
His voice pressed its way out.
"Mm."
A voice from behind him. "Naruto -- don't turn around yet..."
The voice was like a piece of cotton candy caught in steam, already half dissolved.
That shy, trembling sound snapped him back entirely. The dazed heaviness from a moment ago evaporated. His breathing quickened.
Why had the Satsuki who said no come back? He hadn't had time to form a proper thought about it -- hadn't assembled a complete sentence in his head -- before the sound of something entering the water reached him.
Splash.
Then came a soft sensation. Skin pressed directly against skin. Warmth with no gap between them, no distance at all, fitting flush against him from beside him.
Naruto's entire body shivered.
His hand moved underwater by instinct, reaching around to her waist. But the instant his fingers made contact, he noticed something. "Huh? Satsuki -- are you wearing something?"
"..."
Silence. No explanation. She simply buried her face against the back of his neck. Pressed her forehead to the nape. Rested the tip of her nose against his skin. Parted her lips slightly and breathed out a warm, trembling breath.
Sometimes silence is its own answer. Satsuki's silence told him: yes, she was wearing something. She didn't want to say what it was. She wanted him to see for himself rather than hear it described.
And so Naruto slowly turned his head.
He saw his wife.
Lines of black cord began at her shoulders, tracing the curve of her collarbones downward, crossing at her chest, winding several times around her waist and sides.
Her hair was slightly damp. A few strands clung to her cheeks, making her skin look more pale and luminous than usual. Her face was red. Her ears were red. Her neck was red. Her eyes were on him, and in her dark pupils he could see his own face, and the light jumping on the surface of the spring.
"Naruto... do you like it?"
Do you like it. The question, framed that way, was a little off.
A better question: what kind of person could possibly dislike what was in front of him right now? Probably only someone uninterested in women. Or someone without eyes. Or someone whose heart had been replaced with a stone. Or someone who had no understanding of what the word beautiful meant.
Any man of ordinary inclination, looking at this, would have exactly one answer.
But Naruto's reaction went considerably beyond like. His own face flushed red in an instant. Something detonated inside his chest. His throat began losing its ability to form words.
At the same time, the answer to the question that had been sitting in his head all day arrived at last. What Satsuki had bought at that clothing store.
All those layers that covered almost nothing -- this was what she had hidden, refused to show him, kept the storage scroll to herself to protect.
Naruto felt like a powder keg that had just been handed a lit match.
"Satsuki... these clothes... you bought them?"
"Mm..."
"Because the shopkeeper said... Naruto would definitely like them... just for Naruto to see."
Excitement, suppressed tightly, and underneath it a dry, burning feeling -- those emotions kept rising in waves, one after another, until they had entirely submerged him.
But there was another thing in his chest alongside all of it. Something that had nothing to do with desire. Nothing connected to instinct.
Being moved.
His wife had been willing to put on something like this for him. Satsuki was a proud person. But she had put them on.
For him. To make him happy. To let him see. To make him feel that his wife was beautiful.
Satsuki felt the arm around her waist tighten. His grip closed, pulling her toward him, closer, tighter, until there was nothing between them at all.
She yielded completely. Her whole weight settled against him. She gave him everything: her weight, her guard, her shame.
Their eyes grew hazy.
Their gazes locked together and would not separate. Eyes drifted from face to lips, and from lips back to eyes, slowly, back and forth.
And then -- the switch was thrown.
That invisible switch that exists inside a person. The one belonging only to spouses and lovers. In ordinary moments it stays closed, locking what drives us behind a sealed door. But in this moment, the door opened.
A well-raised person carries a set of scales inside them. On one side: morality. On the other: instinct.
Morality is what we're taught from the beginning -- what society presses into us, what our environment builds in us, the standard for what we should do and should not do.
Instinct is the most primitive drive we carry as living beings. The deepest layer. The desire for what we want and don't want, existing in the body without needing to be taught.
These scales are not balanced. They lean. The upbringing a person receives causes morality to outweigh instinct. We feel shy. We blush. We hold back. We tell ourselves this isn't right, this is too fast, this is too much. Morality pulls at us. It keeps us from taking that step.
But in this moment, in the midst of closeness, the instinct side of the scales begins to grow heavier. Weighted down by love and joy.
Body warmth. Sound. The pull of the person in front of you. Every moment, every breath, every small thing adds another weight to that side of the scales.
More and more, until the scales begin to tremble, begin to tilt, begin to fall the other way. Until instinct's weight completely overwhelms morality's. Until that door is pushed fully open.
At that point, a person becomes a complete fool. No longer shy about closeness. No longer holding back. What remains is only the instinct to follow love.
"Mm..."
In the steam, Naruto kissed her. His arms pulled her body entirely into him, held her fully, held her so close there was nothing left between them. The spring water rippled softly around them, whispering. Steam rose between them and blurred their outlines.
For Satsuki, once the switch was thrown, the shame that had come with what she was wearing dissolved completely.
Those black lines were no longer something that made her blush. She became the wife who knew only how to reach for happiness -- who wanted only to be held by this person, to be looked at by this person with that gaze that made her heart stutter -- the Satsuki who needed to think the least.
"Satsuki... so soft... so lovely..."
"Naruto... I love you... I love you most..."