That sharp slap jolted the dazed Saiki back to a shred of sobriety.
"It's fine, I'm really fine!"
"Fine?" Tsunade's voice sounded like it was being ground through a stone mill.
It was laced with forcibly suppressed fury and a deeper, more primal sense of unease.
She stood up abruptly, bringing with her a gust of fragrant air—the light scent of honeylocust mixed with her own unique, domineering musk.
"Do you take me for a fool, you little brat? Look at the state of you!"
Her voice carried an unquestionable authority, layered with a terror she refused to acknowledge.
Under the dim, yellow glow of the light, Tsunade looked down at Saiki from her full height.
In truth, it wasn't a life-threatening crisis; he just needed a long rest.
But worry has a way of clouding the sharpest minds.
Saiki, however, was far too drowsy to notice the depth of her concern.
He shook his heavy head, feeling like he was about to pass out.
He decided to skip the bath and just go straight to bed.
He stood up, intending to head upstairs.
It was an awkward reversal: Tsunade, who had been avoiding him, was now the one showing concern, while Saiki was too exhausted to care.
"Stop right there!" Tsunade's hand shot out, gripping his arm.
"What now?" Saiki turned his head, but before he could react, the woman of monstrous strength yanked him back.
Saiki stumbled and fell ungracefully onto the chair she had just vacated.
As he looked up to see what she wanted, her other hand slammed onto his forehead.
A soft, emerald glow ignited at her fingertips—the Palm Sage Jutsu.
Her chakra probed into him with clinical precision.
As the minutes ticked by, Tsunade's expression turned grim.
She couldn't find a medical cause.
Everything looked normal, yet Saiki's condition shouldn't be this depleted just from standard chakra use.
Saiki's reserves of ordinary chakra were vast, but the Pre-natal Qi was his true foundation.
He had burned a massive volume of Sage Chakra, leaving his fundamental essence un-nourished.
For a normal person, life force is chakra; for Saiki, Pre-natal Qi was the source.
With that source drained, he was fundamentally "hollow."
In Tsunade's perception, his chakra levels were stable. He wasn't in a state of rampage.
But his lower abdomen felt like a void, an insatiable hole devouring his energy.
As she leaned over him, her hand pressed to his head, the collar of her loose bathrobe gaped wider.
The breathtaking sight of her deep, pale cleavage was inches from Saiki's face.
But her mind was entirely focused on the diagnostic feedback of her chakra.
Under the green glow, her brow knitted tighter.
Her usual mask of irritation and temper was replaced by a heavy, immovable solemnity.
Seeing the "scenery" before him, Saiki managed to summon a final spark of consciousness.
Then, Tsunade dropped to a crouch in front of him, her hand moving toward his stomach.
Thinking she was going to do something else, Saiki took a sharp breath, the scent of her skin invading his lungs.
She ignored his reaction entirely.
Her warm palm, radiating medical chakra, pressed against his lower abdomen through the thin fabric of his shirt.
The emerald light flared once more.
"Here..." Tsunade's voice was low, heavy with gravity and confusion.
"What is this? Why is it devouring chakra?"
With her hand pressed directly over his Sea of Qi, she could "see" it clearly.
The area was acting like a gravity well, sucking in both his energy and her own.
"What... devouring what...?" Saiki mumbled, his eyelids feeling like lead weights.
Tsunade was at a loss with this boy's unique physiology, but she was beginning to understand the mechanism.
Compared to her previous examination, the "violent power" in his gut had vanished.
It was as if his body was cannibalizing its own energy to rebuild that fundamental loss.
In her eyes, Saiki was burning himself alive from the inside out to recover his core strength.
No wonder he looked like a walking corpse.
"Don't move!" Tsunade barked.
She pressed her other hand over the first, doubling the output.
A torrent of powerful medical chakra surged into him, a desperate attempt to fill the void with her own reserves.
But it was a futile effort. Three years of Saiki's dedicated accumulation could not be replaced by her in a night.
The qualitative difference between her chakra and his Sage energy meant the conversion rate was abysmal.
Saiki's void could have swallowed the Nine-Tails whole and asked for seconds.
She poured herself into him until sweat began to dot her forehead.
Strands of blonde hair stuck to her cheeks as she focused everything on the anomaly.
The leaning posture and the physical exertion caused her bathrobe to slip further.
Her massive, heaving breasts were almost entirely exposed to Saiki's downward gaze.
Right then—
"Sister Tsunade? Saiki? What are you..."
Kushina's voice rang out from the corridor leading to the hot springs.
She had just finished her soak. Her cheeks were flushed from the steam, and her damp red hair was draped over her shoulders.
She was wearing a white bathrobe identical to Tsunade's.
She walked into the living room while drying her hair with a towel, but she froze mid-sentence.
The scene before her was enough to turn her into stone.
Under the dim light, Lady Tsunade was in an incredibly intimate position, crouching between Saiki's legs.
Both her hands were pressed firmly against his lower belly.
But from Kushina's angle, it looked like Tsunade's head was buried in Saiki's lap, while the boy sat there, head bowed and limp.
Shizune, trailing behind Kushina, saw it too.
Her mouth fell open in a perfect 'O' shape, and her towel hit the floor with a soft thud.
Time stopped.
The flush on Kushina's face vanished, replaced by a look of total, agonizing shock and disbelief.
Her brain went blank. Her voice was trapped in her throat, leaving only the roar of her heart in her ears.
Tsunade sensed the movement behind her and whipped her head around.
Seeing the frozen expressions of Shizune and Kushina—especially the look of betrayal in Kushina's eyes—she realized the disaster.
A wave of shame and awkwardness hit her like a physical blow.
She scrambled to her feet to explain.
"Kushina! It's not what you think! I was just..." Tsunade's voice was high and frantic.
But Kushina wasn't listening.
The image of Tsunade's wide-open collar, the way she was crouched over his lap, and Saiki's "depleted" posture...
In her mind, the pieces fit together into a scene so scandalous she couldn't process it.
"No... I... I didn't see anything...!" Kushina's face turned a violent red.
Her voice trembled as she waved her hands frantically, backing away.