Jiraiya's house wasn't particularly grand just the modest home he had bought after being promoted to chūnin all those years ago.
Orochimaru knocked. No one answered, so he opened the wooden door himself hardly any obstacle for a jōnin.
Pushing it open, a wave of greasy herbal medicine scent hit him. He recognized it medication for treating damaged chakra pathways.
"Oh, it's you."
Wearing a garish pink apron, Jiraiya had been on his way to answer the door. He stood in the hallway, leaning on a walking aid with his left hand. His complexion was pale, his eyelids heavy, his voice hoarse and listless. Fatigue and melancholy weighed on his brow.
Clearly, he hadn't anticipated just how slow his movements would become. He hadn't even made it to the door before his visitor got impatient and let himself in.
"Huh. Seeing you so dejected is bringing my mood down."
Orochimaru took Jiraiya's right arm and guided him back into the room, his expression unchanged.
He'd come to "tease the fool," but faced with Jiraiya like this, his tone lacked bite.
After all, despite always thinking Jiraiya was an idiot, they had always gotten along.
Both war orphans, trained under the same teacher for years, partners for over a decade together for nearly twenty years and finally, jointly honored with the title "Legendary Sannin."
If their relationship were truly poor, the team would have disbanded long ago. Let fighting alone in sync.
Trust was vital for a ninja team. When you entrusted your life to your comrades, lack of trust was suicide.
What bothered Orochimaru about Jiraiya was his devotion to that "prophecy" to the will of others as his life's mission.
For someone who had always known what he wanted and stayed true to himself, Jiraiya's choices were incomprehensible.
That was why he'd been close to Danzō Shimura in recent years. A man with strong, undisguised desires was dangerous but also easier to understand.
Orochimaru didn't want to waste his precious time on inefficient conversations. Danzō was a decent trading partner. He paid; Orochimaru delivered. Human interaction should be that simple.
He didn't intend to criticize Jiraiya's life principles or actions.
Partly because, even between friends, there was no reason to interfere in each other's choices.
Without shared experience, an outsider's perspective had no solid ground. And even if you said something, they might not accept it just creating more worry.
Partly because, even if the ideal was borrowed from others, the effort invested and the results achieved were one's own. That was enough.
"Spare me. Your expression hasn't changed since you walked in."
Leaning on his old teammate, Jiraiya rolled his eyes, seeing through Orochimaru's already sour mood.
"I was cursing you in my head, you idiot."
"Hmph. That's usually my line."
Jiraiya snorted in reply.
"Looks like with one hand crippled, you've stopped bothering to maintain your nest."
Inside the room, Orochimaru glanced around and commented flatly.
Hard to say if it was mockery or observation. Jiraiya's living room wasn't exactly clean, but it was standard bachelor-level—calling it messy would be an exaggeration.
His old teammate's Knowing nature, Jiraiya didn't bother arguing. Compared to Orochimaru's home and lab, his living room was a boar's den.
"Alright. Sit."
Orochimaru helped Jiraiya into a chair, took off his apron, put it on, and walked into the kitchen.
From the apron and the lingering medicinal scent, he had been decorating medicine.
Jiraiya's condition wasn't good.
Losing the thumb, index, and middle finger of his right hand—the three most crucial digits was already a devastating blow for a ninja.
Worse, to break free of Hii Kōri's stillness barrier, the toad sage couple had forcibly canceled their summoning while still in their Two-Beings Technique.
Though if they hadn't, all three including Jiraiya would have died. Choosing the lesser of two evils was the right call. But Jiraiya had still suffered severe trauma.
The forced disruption of his senjutsu chakra cycle had damaged his entire chakra pathway system. Some tenketsu had even failed to close properly or fell into complete disorder.
The former caused Jiraiya's chakra to leak uncontrollably he would dry up like a husk until all life force was exhausted.
The latter prevented chakra from reaching the parts beyond those tenketsu, blocking even natural nerve signals, making it difficult to control his body.
Fortunately, he had been reverse-summoned to Mount Myōboku immediately, where he and Gamabunta received proper treatment.
During that time, Jiraiya had practically been marinated in the flavor of Mount Myōboku's secret medicine toad oil. But it couldn't be helped. He'd narrowly escaped Hii Kōri's killing blow; dying from the aftereffects of his escape would be too ridiculous.
Once he regained enough mobility, he had rushed back to Konoha to deliver the intelligence about Hii Kōri.
Why not send a toad ahead with the information? At the time, with his chakra pathways shredded, Jiraiya was almost completely paralyzed couldn't even open his mouth, let alone relay anything.
The stiffness in his gait was nerve dysfunction caused by lingering damage to his leg tenketsu.
Even now, he still needed medicine mixed with toad oil to treat various hidden issues in his chakra pathways. Since the treatment was the same on Mount Myōboku, there was no reason to stay.
As for the severed fingers… for now, he could only leave it to fate.
Flesh regeneration was rare in the Naruto world. Before cloning technology and Hashirama cell research produced reliable, safe results, it was almost exclusively tied to "Sage body"—excluding the Earth Grudge Fear stolen from Takigakure by the rogue ninja Kakuzu.
Even with the former—using one's own cells to clone rejection-free limbs—the surgery would require extremely precise vascular and neural connections. Troublesome, with a low success rate. Even after transplantation, there would be lingering stiffness—worse if the severance was at a joint.
The latter also relied on the "Sage body" power.
Even Tsunade, who had inherited some of Hashirama Senju's bloodline, needed the massive chakra reserves accumulated over years or decades in her Yin Seal to perform the Creation Rebirth Technique—which could regenerate lost limbs.
That technique worked by stimulating full-body cell division for high-speed regeneration—at the cost of shortening her lifespan. Only Tsunade, a Senju-Uzumaki hybrid with an exceptionally strong constitution, could withstand it.
Someone else, even if they mastered Creation Rebirth and had enough chakra, would likely sacrifice decades of life and age rapidly.
Even Mount Myōboku's sacred treasure the Sage's Talisman, capable of resurrection had limited effect on limb loss, similar to reincarnation techniques like Self-Reincarnation or Dragon Life Reincarnation.
That sort of thing was more Ryūchi Cave's specialty, given their molting and regeneration.
But as a Mount Myōboku contractor, Ryūchi Cave—whose toads were on poor terms with Jiraiya—wouldn't help him, even with Orochimaru, a Ryūchi Cave contractor, pleading his case.
The White Snake Sage was not an easy old woman to deal with.
But worse than his physical injuries was the psychological blow.
Hii Kōri's words had sickened him deeply. Yet even reflecting on them now, Jiraiya could find no rebuttal.
Psychological warfare was a tactic for ninja. For jujutsu sorcerers, it was a way of life.
There was a decisive gap in skill.
Adding to that, when Jiraiya had asked the Great Toad Sage about Hii Kōri after recovering somewhat, the old toad's ambiguous, evasive answers had only deepened his unease and frustration.
By the time Orochimaru finished decorating the medicine and was about to help treat his legs, Jiraiya couldn't hold back his complaints: "How did we not notice something as big as Tsunade being pregnant?"
"Hello. Our names are Orochimaru and Jiraiya, not Hyūga Orochimaru or Hyūga Jiraiya. We don't have X-ray vision."
Orochimaru slapped Jiraiya's hairy leg hard, making him yelp, then added slowly: "Besides, even a Hyūga wouldn't—couldn't—just casually look around like that. Especially not at their own teammate's body…"
He trailed off, remembering Jiraiya's "great achievement" (peeping on Tsunade and nearly getting beaten to death). His tone grew uncertain.
"…You wouldn't, would you?"
"What's that supposed to mean! I was gathering material! Do you understand—material?!"
Jiraiya's voice cracked, utterly defeated by his old teammate's low, cutting tone and gaze.
"I don't understand! Why would I understand something like that?!"
Orochimaru shouted back, even louder.
A well-adjusted technosexual researcher with no interest in romance at most handling things to avoid health issues was completely unshamed.
Male or female, they were just flesh. Attractiveness? Tell that to his scalpel.
"If you had stopped Tsunade or not stopped me, would things have turned out differently?"
Remembering Orochimaru's nature, Jiraiya dragged the topic back. His voice grew quieter, weaker.
Orochimaru still refused to judge. He glanced at Jiraiya with his cool snake eyes, tossed the used gauze into the trash, and countered in his characteristic hoarse voice: "Who are we to Tsunade?"
Jiraiya blinked, then answered reflexively: "Friends. Comrades-in-arms!"
"But that's all we are."
Orochimaru picked up a glass, considered drinking, then walked to the sink, poured out the water, and used a small Water Release to clean the cup.
It wasn't that he found Jiraiya's things dirty. On missions, he'd drunk far worse.
He just wanted to try Hii Kōri's habit of incorporating ninjutsu into daily life—something he'd never had the chance to do before. In the lab, he couldn't use ninjutsu casually; it might affect the experiments.
Visiting Jiraiya's house seemed like a good opportunity.
But Jiraiya, not understanding his intent, felt his already battered heart ache a little more—shattering silently.
"We're just friends and comrades. So on what grounds do we interfere with her decisions?"
After washing the glass, Orochimaru's eyes lit up clearly satisfied with this experiment. He formed a water ball in the glass and drank it in one go.
Turning to Jiraiya's hesitant expression, he delivered a cutting remark he'd long wanted to make: "If you'd had the guts to confess to Tsunade earlier, you wouldn't be in this position sulking without any right to complain."
This wasn't baseless. Orochimaru had come prepared.
If Jiraiya had confessed earlier, supported her at that jōnin meeting, the two who had grown up together might really have worked out.
And regardless of Dan Katō, even if Tsunade had encountered Hii Kōri, she would have just been captured. The later trauma might never have happened.
Having talked with Hii Kōri, Orochimaru could be certain he wasn't the type to casually toy with valuable "goods" like Tsunade for momentary pleasure.
"You... I... she..."
That hit harder than any attack Jiraiya had ever taken. His face reddened. He opened his mouth, but only garbled sounds came out. Finally, he slumped, shuffled to a corner, picked up a pen with his left hand, and awkwardly began writing on manuscript paper.
A ninja should have good dexterity in both hands—many even trained their left hand deliberately. To surprise opponents with thrown weapons or close-quarters combat, or to write left-handed for coded messages.
But Jiraiya's occasional tenketsu spasms made him twitch while writing, producing a mess of illegible scribbles. The master of erotic literature grew even more frustrated.
Seeing this, Orochimaru took a now-lukewarm boiled egg from his pocket, cracked it open, and swallowed it whole. He casually mentioned: "If the First Hokage's cell research yields something useful, I'll try to regenerate your fingers."
"Don't get your hopes up, though."
He added: "The lab's funding is cut. What's left will go to maintain the culture tanks and preservation units—keeping the existing samples from going haywire. Who knows when the experiments will restart, let alone produce practical results."
At the mention of "First Hokage's cell research," Jiraiya's back stiffened noticeably.
That experiment was one of the deciding factors that drove Tsunade from the village.
"…Thanks."
After a few seconds, he finally managed a muffled reply.
Over twenty years of friendship. Orochimaru shrugged indifferently, offering no response. He sat on the sofa, pulled out a book, and began reading quietly.
***
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