The warm liquid slid down her throat, bringing a comfortable warmth that allowed her muddled consciousness to slowly coalesce.
As the soup decreased, her mind gradually cleared.
The hand holding the empty bowl paused.
This feeling... it wasn't Shizune?
She abruptly turned her head and looked toward the bedside.
Silhouetted against the morning sun, a figure sat on a chair beside the bed, gazing at her gently.
Fiery red long hair, a gentle and beautiful face, the Diamond Seal on her forehead that she could never mistake... and that compassionate gaze, which seemed to encompass everything and soothe all wounds.
It was... Grandma.
Although there were subtle black marks on that body, like cracks in porcelain, that face, that essence... it was Grandma!
Tsunade's fingers tightened slightly around the bowl, her knuckles turning white.
She opened her mouth but couldn't make a sound. She merely stared, her eyes wide with extreme shock, disbelief, and a fragile cautiousness, terrified that the sight before her was just an illusion.
"Gra... Grandma?"
Finally, a dry, trembling address squeezed out of her throat, so soft it was almost drowned out by the birdsong outside the window.
Uzumaki Mito's smile deepened; it was a tenderness that transcended life and death.
She reached out and gently stroked Tsunade's somewhat messy blonde hair, her movements as delicate as if handling the world's most precious fragile object.
Her voice was as warm and soft as Tsunade remembered, carrying a magic that soothed the heart.
"Little Tsunade, did you miss Grandma?"
That simple sentence was like a key, instantly unlocking the floodgates that had been sealed deep within Tsunade's heart for decades.
All her feigned strength and the legendary demeanor of the Sannin crumbled at this moment.
"Hng..."
A suppressed sob escaped from deep within her throat. The bowl slipped from Tsunade's hand and fell onto the Tatami Mat with a muffled thud.
She practically lunged forward, using all her strength to tightly embrace the red figure before her.
The touch was cold.
The Edo Tensei body lacked the warmth of a living person; embracing her felt like holding an incredibly realistic statue chilled by the coolness of an autumn morning.
Yet this coldness warmed Tsunade's heart more than any heat could.
This wasn't a dream, nor an illusion. It was Grandma... Grandma had truly returned, in this state between life and death.
"Grandma... Grandma..."
She buried her face deep into Mito's neck, and her tears instantly broke the dam, surging out like a flood.
She cried without restraint, her shoulders shaking violently. The grievances accumulated over fifty years of life, the pain of losing loved ones, the burden of being alone, the regret for the past, the confusion about the future... all her hard shells were shattered by this sudden reunion.
At this moment, she was no longer the renowned Sannin, Princess Tsunade.
She was merely a little girl who, after long wandering and struggling in solitude, had finally found a harbor where she could freely unleash her vulnerability, clinging tightly to the grandmother she thought she had lost forever, crying out all her pent-up sadness.
Mito didn't speak, but hugged her granddaughter back just as tightly, her right hand gently patting Tsunade's trembling back.
She quietly endured her granddaughter's tears, using silent companionship to soothe the pain that spanned across long years.
Tsunade's weeping still echoed softly in the room, a release that had been suppressed for too long and, once unleashed, was difficult to stop.
Just then, the room door was gently pushed open a crack.
A head, topped with long black hair and bearing a naive, guileless expression, peered through the gap.
It was Senju Hashirama.
He seemed completely oblivious to the emotional storm unfolding inside the room; he had simply heard a faint noise and naturally came over.
He blinked twice, his gaze first falling on the embracing grandparent and grandchild on the bed, and then settling on Tsunade's tear-stained face, revealing an undisguised look of slight confusion and concern.
"Little Tsunade is awake?"
This overly "casual" greeting was like a small stone thrown into a deep pool of churning emotions.
Tsunade, immersed in profound sorrow and the joy of reunion, abruptly choked on her tears. Her body still maintained the inertia of sobbing, and her shoulders hitched once.
Stiffly, and with tear-filled eyes, she lifted her head from Mito's embrace and looked toward the source of the voice.
When she saw the face in the doorway—a face familiar to the bone, wearing a slightly foolish smile—Tsunade's already chaotic brain felt as if it had been hammered again.
Gra... Grandpa?
If seeing Grandma was the catharsis following extreme shock and grief...
...then seeing Grandpa—who should have died earlier, and who she remembered as always laughing heartily and being as reliable as a mountain—suddenly appear in this... uh, somewhat goofy manner, Tsunade felt her emotional processor completely overload.
Tears still clung to her face, her nose was red, and her eyes were slightly swollen from crying. Yet, her expression was now a mixture of disbelief, absurdity, and a bewildered "What in the world is going on?"
She opened her mouth, seemingly wanting to call out "Grandpa," or perhaps ask, "Why are you here too?"
But in the end, she only managed a short, heavy sniffle.
Uzumaki Mito was also rendered slightly helpless by Hashirama's sudden "entrance." She gently patted Tsunade's back, turned toward the doorway, and spoke with her usual gentleness, though there was a hint of accustomed exasperation toward her husband's "thick-headedness": "Hashirama, Little Tsunade just woke up. Wait a moment and let the child compose herself before coming in."
Hashirama only then seemed to belatedly realize that the atmosphere was wrong.
He looked at his granddaughter, whose eyes were red from crying, then at his wife's reproachful gaze, and scratched the back of his head.
He gave an embarrassed, hearty laugh: "Ahaha... well, I saw the door wasn't shut tight and came over when I heard a noise... Little Tsunade, are you okay?
Are you feeling unwell? Or did you have a nightmare?"
Tsunade looked at her grandfather's "goofy" expression, identical to her memories, and felt the cold yet real embrace of her grandmother. For a moment, grief, shock, absurdity, warmth, disorientation... all these emotions mixed together like a spilled paint palette, leaving her completely speechless.
Maintaining the posture of sitting dumbfounded on the bed, tear tracks still wet on her face, she stared blankly at the confused head peering in through the doorway.
"I'm fine, I'm fine..."
"That's good. Your Second Grandfather went out, I'll go call him back."
Hashirama turned to leave.
"Grandpa, I missed you."
Hashirama stopped moving.
In his memory, his little granddaughter had been riding on his shoulders and following him to the Gambling House just a while ago.
Now that his granddaughter was so grown up, he felt at a loss.
"Mhm, I missed you too, Little Tsunade."