"Long time no see, Princess Tsunade~"
Hii Kōri's tone was quite light, as if he were not Tsunade's sworn enemy but rather an old friend reuniting with her after a long separation.
"Gh—!"
That tone was clearly the most effective way to grate on Tsunade's nerves. The calm and gentleness she had accumulated over the past few months were incinerated in an instant.
"You bastard!"
Her amber eyes blazed with fierce fire as she ground out a curse between clenched teeth, her full chest heaving violently. "How relentlessly do you have to haunt me before you'll stop?! Putting that disgusting genjutsu on me wasn't enough—even now… even after I've hidden all the way out here, you still come to humiliate me?!"
"Haunt you? Hmm… I'm not sure about that."
Facing Tsunade's entirely Justified fury, Hii Kōri held her wrist and tilted his head slightly.
Recalling the gentle, serene smile he had seen on Tsunade's face earlier, he maintained the frivolous expression that made Tsunade want to punch it off, responding in a playful, lilting tone:
"I simply thought that since the flower was blooming so beautifully, it would be rather uncuth of me not to come and admire it."
"Uncouth?!"
Tsunade's temple pulsed violently. She was clearly enraged by his flippant attitude. The Senju clan's secret monstrous strength technique flowed seamlessly through her, vast amounts of chakra rapidly gathering in the arm Hii Kōri was holding, determined to smash that detestable face before her.
But Hii Kōri knew Tsunade's chakra pathways like the back of his hand. The moment she began mobilizing her chakra, he injected a minute but precisely targeted pulse into her wrist, disrupting her chakra flow.
As a top-tier medical ninja, Tsunade's understanding and control over her own body was equally unparalleled. Almost the moment she was disrupted, she responded correctly.
A decided to attack. B sensed A's intent and prepared to counter. Then A sensed B's counter and changed direction to counter the counter. Then B sensed that, and A again, and B again…
Such cycles were not uncommon between masters of similar caliber.
In the span of two or three seconds, Hii Kōri and Tsunade had engaged in dozens of exchanges. In the end, Hii Kōri was the first to release his strength, letting go of her hand.
He stepped back slightly, raising both hands in a gesture of surrender, his tone carrying a note of helpless amusement: "Alright, alright. I surrender."
Tsunade blinked, not expecting him to stop so abruptly. She instinctively flexed her now-free wrist, her eyes clearly distrustful.
"Under other circumstances, I wouldn't mind a bloody, close-quarters tussle with you, Princess. But now…"
With that, Hii Kōri's gaze dropped slightly, landing on her rounded belly, his voice softening: "For the sake of your health, it's best not to use such taxing techniques like that monstrous strength too frequently."
"After all, Princess, you're carrying my child too, aren't you?"
"—!! Stop talking to yourself!"
Tsunade's breath caught sharply, then almost reflexively she threw a punch at Hii Kōri's face.
But this punch was indeed "well-behaved"—she didn't use her monstrous strength. It was simply an angry, ordinary punch. Such a harmless strike was easily caught with a casual raise of his hand.
He then closed his fingers around her fist, swept his foot to hook her ankle, and pulled. Caught off guard—her center of gravity slightly altered by her pregnancy—Tsunade stumbled and was pulled into his embrace.
Before she could struggle, Hii Kōri's other hand gently cradled her rounded belly.
"Let me go!"
The steady warmth of his palm made Tsunade's body go rigid, then she began struggling—not too violently, as if she deeply resented her own reaction.
"I'm afraid not. Speaking of which, that black-haired girl is Dan Katō's relative, isn't she? You wouldn't want her to see your enemy here right now, would you?"
Hii Kōri squeezed her wrist slightly harder, his eyes narrowing into two rather dark crescents.
He lowered his head, his voice dropping to almost a whisper as he "threatened" her: "You know how much your condition has declined, don't you?"
"If it were six months ago, I wouldn't have been able to get this close without you noticing. If I really wanted to do something even more extreme to you, I could easily grab that child first to threaten you. Even now, you can't stop me, can you?"
"So… can we be a little quieter, Princess? Let's talk properly."
Hii Kōri shook her hand gently, as if playing with a cat's paw, while his other hand stroked her belly soothingly, as if calming a frightened life within.
Feeling his warm breath on her cheek, Tsunade's already half-hearted struggling—born of concern for her unborn child—ceased entirely.
This was what a "weak spot" meant. Once it was seized, there was almost no room to resist.
Her tense body slowly relaxed. Though her eyes still reflected cold hatred, she at least stopped trying to physically resist.
Sensing the change in her, Hii Kōri gently took her by the shoulders and turned her to face the kitchen counter. Step by step, he guided her back into place. Then—like a couple still in their honeymoon phase—he wrapped his arms around her from behind, covering her hands with his as he picked up the knife and began slicing vegetables.
The blade tapped against the cutting board in a steady, rhythmic thud.
The absurdity of this dark comedy made Tsunade feel a wave of physical revulsion, yet at the same time, she found it rather ridiculous.
Hii Kōri's knife skills… were actually far better than hers.
Keeping her face cold, she felt the warmth of his body against her back, the solid presence of him, and began questioning in a low voice: "How did you know Shizune's identity? How did you know I was pregnant, that I left the village? How did you find me here?"
She thought her efforts to hide had been adequate. There was no way Hii Kōri, all the way in Sunagakure, should have been able to track her down.
"Was it that genjutsu you put on me?"
Still holding her hands, skillfully cutting carrots into nearly identical small pieces, Hii Kōri answered with a matter-of-fact tone: "Through spies, of course. I have people in Konoha."
"Don't give me that crap."
Tsunade's voice rose noticeably. "You said you wanted to talk, so stop lying about things a three-year-old wouldn't believe. Judging by the timing, it's impossible—not just for you, but for any ninja village—to have a spy that deeply embedded in another village."
This feeling of being treated like a fool, toys with and deceived, stirred an indescribable sense of grievance in her heart.
Her life had already been destroyed to this extent. Did he still have to humiliate her like this?
Sensing the shift in the woman in his arms, Hii Kōri paused. He gently rested his chin on her soft hair and said softly, in a calm tone: "I'm sorry."
This sudden, unserious apology caught Tsunade off guard.
Then Hii Kōri continued: "You're right. I don't have such capable subordinates at the moment. As for information about you… it came from the future. Our son told me."
"…Hah."
After a moment, Tsunade let out a dismissive snort through her nose, taking it as another crude lie meant to humiliate her.
And for just a moment, she had actually entertained some unrealistic fantasy.
Hii Kōri had expected this reaction. Unfazed, he maintained his embrace from behind, guiding her hands to continue cutting vegetables as he explained in a flat, straightforward manner:
"That child—you gave him a rather tacky name. Kao. I assume there's no way you'd let him take my surname."
Just mentioning the name made Hii Kōri click his tongue in irritation.
"In his timeline, I didn't know about your pregnancy, so soon after he was born, you left him in Orochimaru's care and spent your time pursuing revenge against me."
"Not that Orochimaru did a bad job raising him. He inherited both our talents. It's just… because of family circumstances, his personality is rather twisted."
"At first, he tried to figure out how to mend things between us, but it didn't get anywhere. Then when he was twelve…"
Hii Kōri's voice paused along with the knife, picking up another peeled potato and continuing to cut: "You, exhausted and with no hope of revenge, came to me one last time and offered yourself up to die."
"Though you left a note telling him not to hold it against me, that child ended up with a deep rift between himself and the future me."
"He went off and learned a bunch of things I wasn't good at or that could counter me—swordsmanship, Lightning Release. He even had Orochimaru make him a special Kusanagi sword designed to counter barrier techniques. Then he somehow found a way to come back to this era and confronted me."
"In the end, he couldn't beat me. I sent him back to his original future. That's the gist of it."
Listening to Hii Kōri's brief explanation, Tsunade's expression shifted from disbelief to uncertain astonishment, finally settling into silence.
She silently withdrew her hands from him, unconsciously touching her belly, her expression complicated.
Outlandish as it sounded, it did seem like something she would do. It was only at this moment that Tsunade realized—she had already accepted that she could never defeat Hii Kōri, that revenge was impossible.
After a moment, her gaze lifted slightly, landing on Hii Kōri's hands with their well-defined knuckles. In a voice as hollow and weary as her lifeless eyes, carrying a hint of resignation, she asked:
"So? Knowing that future, what are you going to do?"
"What to do… to be honest, I did consider whether I should just kill you cleanly after you gave birth. One and done."
Hii Kōri responded quite calmly, as if discussing what to have for dinner. "But that would be far too heartless and incompetent."
To mix the rarest colors required the most ruthless detachment.
But with the overwhelming advantage of intelligence and technology at his disposal, he felt he should have some "decency." Otherwise, it would be an insult to his own abilities.
"Tsunade, do you believe in fate?"
Tsunade was silent, offering no answer.
Hii Kōri didn't mind, continuing on his own: "I don't believe in fate. Because I believe humans are free."
"Breathing, pulse, consciousness and thought formed from countless signals in the brain—all of this is free. With even the slightest deviation in the decisions we make, the efforts we put forth, a person could end up on a completely different path."
"But at the same time, I also believe that fate exists."
"It is precisely because those astonishing encounters are so accidental that they are called fate."
"You probably already know—I was an Uzumaki orphan taken in by Sunagakure. Back then, the village's leadership was constantly pushing me toward girls my own age, all to preserve the Uzumaki bloodline."
"I already have two lovers in Sunagakure. We've shared a bed for years. And yet, the first to bear my child is you—someone I've only been with twice. I suppose that's fate too."
Hii Kōri felt Tsunade's body tremble slightly against him.
"I won't deny that what I did to you was terrible. It's only natural for you to resent me. But regardless, there's no need to pass that down to our child."
Tsunade frowned, irritation creeping into her voice: "Are you saying I should just pretend nothing happened, go with you, and raise the child together happily? Don't be ridiculous!"
"Well, one thing is one thing. And you're not the only one who's lost everything, are you?"
Hii Kōri put down the kitchen knife, walking toward the window and looking out at the setting sun. "My birth parents died at the hands of ninja. My adoptive brother and sister-in-law died in the war too. The grudges between ninja are already an unsolvable mess. Even your old teammate Orochimaru—wasn't his family killed by Konoha ninja?"
Tsunade fell silent.
"What brings about these tragedies isn't really 'enemies.' It's this twisted world itself."
Hii Kōri's voice seemed to grow more distant in Tsunade's ears, like whispers from the far end of the horizon.
"Unless we shatter this age—one that hasn't progressed in centuries, that only repeats the same spiral of hatred—we won't see a brighter future."
"So, Tsunade. Mother of my son."
He turned around, his back to the sunset outside the window, his front shrouded in the dense backlight.
Yet those gray, glass-like eyes—polished to clarity—seemed to Tsunade to shine brightly, as if reflecting the brilliant radiance burning across sky and sea.
"Would you like to try creating a more peaceful world with me? For Shizune. For our child."
"When that time comes, I'll be more than happy to let you have your revenge."
"Heh..."
Tsunade stared for a moment, then let out a scoff as if hearing the biggest joke in the world. "Create a new world? You?"
"Even my grandfather and Madara Uchiha—those titans who dominated their era—couldn't do it. Where do you get such confidence?"
"Wouldn't it be too lacking in ambition? Whether it's possible or not, you have to at least try. If you don't even have the courage to attempt it, the predecessors would only laugh at you."
Sauntering back to Tsunade's side, Hii Kōri flashed an easygoing smile as they worked on the ingredients together.
Tsunade fell silent again.
This silence lasted longer than any before. Even as the sky darkened outside and dinner was served, she did not speak another word to Hii Kōri.
***
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