Chapter 139: Aloof, Talk-no-Jutsu, and the Busty Medic
The night wind was cool. Naruto stared up at the figure in the second-floor window, feeling an inexplicable pull toward her.
Yugito noticed the blond boy below. Her feelings were a still pond — completely flat. Just another Konoha ninja, as far as she was concerned.
"Stop there."
A black-clad figure stepped into Naruto's path. ANBU uniform, animal mask, standard-issue ninja sword at his back.
Naruto knew the look. ANBU — directly under the Hokage's command. Sakura had been one of them once, which gave him a natural, if secondhand, sense of the organization.
"Hah?"
He looked at the ANBU member, annoyed.
He'd come here specifically to find out what everyone was hiding from him. He wasn't leaving empty-handed.
"Naruto Uzumaki. First warning."
"Leave. Now."
Tenzō's voice was even.
As the only active Wood Release user in Konoha, he'd been assigned to guard the Two-Tails jinchūriki. He knew exactly who this boy was — the village's Nine-Tails jinchūriki, and one of his former subordinate Sakura's closest friends.
That identity meant he couldn't just throw him out.
What genuinely puzzled him, though, was how Naruto had found this place at all.
Nobody wanders here by accident at this hour.
"Who is she?"
Naruto ignored the warning entirely and asked about Yugito instead.
"None of your concern. Second warning. Don't make me act."
Tenzō pinched the bridge of his nose mentally. He made a subtle hand signal, and somewhere in the shadows an ANBU member vanished silently.
Above, Yugito watched the standoff with mild interest.
The blond boy had gotten her attention.
Someone important, clearly. Even the ANBU was handling him with kid gloves.
To her eye, even Tenzō's firm tone was gentle by ANBU standards. A normal deployment would have dispersed an intruder immediately — at minimum. No second warnings. Possibly a drawn blade.
Is this kid the Hokage's actual son?
Meanwhile, Sakura was staring blearily at her bedroom wall, wondering why there was a knock at the door at this hour.
She answered it to find Tessen — another ANBU — looking apologetic.
"The Third sends his regards. He says he's too old for late-night incidents and asks if you would be so kind as to retrieve Naruto."
That old man.
You're the Hokage. I'm twelve.
Sakura kept her internal commentary to herself.
"Fine."
She slipped her shoes on over her pajamas and went.
When she arrived, Naruto was still there, locked in a staring contest with Tenzō.
"Naruto."
Her voice cut through the standoff — and drew Yugito's eyes to the window as well.
Yugito recognized Sakura immediately. How could she not.
And that made the blond boy beside her more interesting, not less. Who is this kid, that Haruno Sakura comes out personally to collect him?
Sakura's name had been in every village's intelligence files for some time, and after the Frost Country engagement, Kumogakure had put a bounty on her in the black market.
Thirty-five million ryō. The same as Asuma Sarutobi.
She's worth as much as a seasoned jōnin commander. And she's twelve.
Tenzō exhaled with quiet relief when he saw the pink-haired girl arrive.
"S-Sakura..."
Naruto shrank slightly under the look she was giving him — arms crossed, brow furrowed, clearly not thrilled.
"Wandering around in the middle of the night instead of sleeping. Explain yourself."
Before he could, her gaze moved to the second-floor window. Yugito, watching.
Sakura looked at Tenzō flatly.
"Someone go close that window. Are you really letting her use you all as entertainment?"
Tenzō's mouth twitched.
You were removed from ANBU, young lady. You can't just give orders.
He gave the signal anyway. An ANBU materialized from a corner, ignored Yugito's displeasure, and shut the window firmly.
"S-Sakura..."
Naruto looked at her with a complicated expression.
"Apologize to Tenzō. Then come with me."
Whatever Sakura said, Naruto listened to — he always had.
He turned and bowed properly.
"Sorry for the trouble."
Tenzō, who had spent fifteen years in ANBU and was not built for wholesome interactions, managed: "N-no. It's fine."
Sakura glanced between them.
"Sorry about tonight. It won't happen again."
She took Naruto's arm and left.
Konoha's streets at this hour were quiet.
Naruto trailed behind Sakura, the usual brightness gone from him.
Sakura walked ahead, looking calm. She was watching him the whole time.
Under the yellow glow of a streetlamp, his shadow stretched long behind him.
He looked up.
She was standing just outside the light, her face half-in shadow, harder to read than usual.
Naruto had the strange feeling of looking at someone from a different world.
He didn't like it. Sakura should be in the light, where everyone could see her.
"Naruto."
"Who brought you to that woman?"
She already suspected. The Nine-Tails, almost certainly. Kushina Uzumaki had been the Nine-Tails' previous host — and Yugito was being kept in what had once been Kushina's home.
Tsunade had commented on the irony when she assigned the location. "Might as well give her the nice accommodations."
Everything of value had been moved out before Yugito moved in. Kushina's sealing research was too precious to leave.
"...The Nine-Tails."
Exactly as expected.
Sakura studied him. The slump in his shoulders, the hesitation — she hadn't seen that particular expression on him in a while.
"So something's bothering you enough that you'd go to the Nine-Tails for answers before asking me, or Asuma, or the old man?"
She sat down on a bench by the road and patted the space beside her.
He hesitated, then sat.
He wanted to ask: if I actually asked — would you tell me the truth?
But the question didn't come out.
"Actually — do you know who that woman was?"
Naruto's posture shifted slightly. The topic interested him.
He wasn't going to pretend it was just intellectual curiosity. He wasn't that kind of person. He'd thought the woman was genuinely striking — but more than that, something about her had reminded him of Gaara. That same quality. Same as me.
"I haven't seen her in the village before."
Sakura smiled in a way that communicated she knew exactly what kind of "not noticing" that was.
You literally called her 'big sis,' kid.
"Before I tell you who she is — can I ask what you think about Sunagakure?"
The non-sequitur threw him. He thought about it seriously.
"I don't have good feelings about them. They attacked Konoha and killed people."
"What about Gaara?"
His brow furrowed.
"Gaara too. He was part of it."
"Gaara wasn't a 'part of it,'" Sakura said. "He's the Fourth Kazekage's son. He was a central piece of the plan."
Naruto went quiet.
"If Gaara were right in front of you — would you kill him?"
The question landed and sat there.
Someone like me.
Do I kill him?
His expression said no. Every part of him said no.
Sakura watched him wrestle with it and felt the familiar mixture of affection and helplessness.
She stood up.
"If that's where you are — "
"If it's what Sakura thinks I should do!"
He interrupted her before she could finish.
The answer didn't satisfy her. It wouldn't satisfy Hiruzen either, in the shadows nearby.
"What if I'm not there, and Gaara kills Sasuke? Or someone else from Konoha?"
"Then what do you do?"
Naruto looked up at her — standing now, the streetlamp catching only the lower half of her face.
The green eyes he'd known since childhood felt distant.
Sakura exhaled.
"Sasuke's been in the hospital. Go see him tomorrow."
Maybe Naruto simply wasn't built for this kind of violence. She thought about the Forest of Death — the first time he'd killed someone, pushed into it by her and Sasuke's necessity. She'd been so focused on Orochimaru she hadn't looked at Naruto's face afterward.
Maybe the aversion had started that night.
"Sasuke's in the HOSPITAL?!"
"Is he hurt?!"
"He is." Her voice was already moving away. "He almost didn't make it. Don't bother him tonight — go in the morning."
Naruto lunged to his feet and reached for her — and stopped.
His hand hung in the air.
Her expression had been cold. Unfamiliar. Cold in a way he couldn't place.
Was that really the same Sakura who chased off the kids who bullied me? Who taught me to cook, to check expiration dates, told me to stop eating instant ramen?
He let his hand fall.
The lamplight sat on his shoulders. He stood in it alone, quiet, the forward momentum he usually carried nowhere to be found.
True to his word, Naruto waited.
The next morning he showed up at the hospital with a fruit basket, confirmed Sasuke's room number at the front desk, and arrived at a jog.
The door bounced off the wall.
Sasuke jolted in his hospital bed.
"Naruto!"
"What is wrong with you!"
"It's early in the morning and this is a hospital!"
"Ah — sorry, sorry. I forgot. Won't happen again."
Naruto scratched his head sheepishly.
Sasuke looked at the idiot grinning at him and felt something in his chest ease that he hadn't realized was tight. His mouth kept the disapproving line.
"Took you long enough. I've been back two days."
"I only got back yesterday! And Sakura told me — I didn't even know you were here."
The disapproval faded slightly. Sasuke reached into the fruit basket and picked up an apple.
"Is that so."
"Were you on the Suna front? I didn't see you in Frost Country."
"If you were in Suna alone, you should be careful. Kakashi, Sakura, and I weren't there."
Naruto went still.
"...Front?"
"What front?"
Sasuke noticed something was off. He took a bite.
"Didn't you just get back? From the Suna front?"
"The front," Naruto said slowly. "What are you talking about?"
Sasuke lowered his apple.
"The war. It's been going on for a while. Against Suna and Kumo."
"...You didn't know?"
Outside in the hallway, Tsunade stood with her arms folded, listening to the muffled conversation within, expression hovering between impatience and obligation.
If Hiruzen hadn't specifically asked her to give them space, she'd have walked in five minutes ago.
Standing in a hallway babysitting the Nine-Tails kid.
Kushina's seal had been unstable and nobody made this much fuss over her. They just dropped her in the village and got on with things.
She had no idea what spell this boy had cast on Hiruzen.
"So the woman last night... she's from Kumogakure?"
Naruto's voice was subdued.
It all made sense now. The pieces fell into place.
Sakura and Asuma had kept the war from him. Because of the Nine-Tails. Because his existence was too significant, too fragile a variable. Everyone had decided, without telling him, that he couldn't be there.
And meanwhile—
While he'd been kept safe with Team 10—
His friends had been on battlefields. Getting hurt. Almost dying.
He couldn't accept that. He needed to be there. He needed to protect people.
That's exactly why they didn't tell you, said some quieter part of him that he mostly ignored.
Naruto's single-mindedness hadn't registered the obvious: his presence in any engagement meant the Nine-Tails was present in that engagement. Without the ability to control it — and twelve-year-old Naruto, without the Falls of Truth or Killer Bee's guidance, had no such ability — he was an asset that could become a catastrophe without warning.
"I see."
Sasuke turned the apple in his hand.
So Kumo's Two-Tails jinchūriki is already in Konoha.
"I don't entirely understand why you weren't deployed."
"But if that's what Sakura and everyone decided — there's a reason."
"Maybe not going to the battlefield was lucky for you."
He said it as plainly as he could. Sakura had clearly given up on convincing Naruto herself and sent him over instead. He wasn't sure why she thought he'd be better at this — he wasn't exactly known for his warmth — but she'd asked, and he'd try.
"Lucky?" Naruto's voice sharpened. "They didn't even think about my feelings—"
"Naruto."
Something in Sasuke's expression went still.
He looked at the blue eyes across from him.
"They did think about your feelings. That's why."
"I don't know why specifically you weren't deployed. But think about who they put with you — Asuma, and this generation's Ino-Shika-Cho."
Asuma was the Third Hokage's only living son. Ino, Shikamaru, and Choji were the formation that had defined Konoha's tactical strength for generations.
That lineup wasn't protection detail. That was a statement of value.
Naruto pressed his mouth shut.
He knew Sasuke was right.
He just couldn't accept it. Somewhere in him, something stubborn wouldn't let it go.
Sasuke turned toward the window. A sparrow on a branch outside, hopping between twigs.
"You haven't noticed?" His voice went quieter. Something almost wistful in it. "When nobody used to pay you any attention — look how many people are around you now."
"Sakura. Me. Ino. Choji. Kiba. Kakashi. Jiraiya..."
He thought about himself.
Naruto had all of that.
And what did Sasuke have?
A debt. A name that had once meant something and now meant he was the last. The weight of something unfinished he'd been carrying since he was six.
Maybe — when this was finally over — maybe he could set it down.
If I survive it.
"Sasuke..."
Naruto stared at him, the words sitting strangely in him.
And then, quietly, something shifted.
Sasuke carried more than he let anyone see. More, if Naruto was honest, than Naruto himself carried. And here he was — in a hospital bed, healing from wounds that had almost killed him — and he was the one offering comfort.
Am I really being that selfish right now.
It was the first time the thought had arrived without anyone putting it there.
"Done talking?"
"Good. Sit down somewhere and be quiet."
"You — little blondie — over there."
"Don't bother me while I'm working."
Tsunade swept in like a force of nature, grabbed Naruto by the shoulder, moved him out of the way with minimum ceremony, and positioned herself at Sasuke's bedside to begin rehabilitation.
"Hey!"
"What is your deal, you giant— you enormous— you enormous—"
The word that came out of Naruto's mouth next was not a tactical choice.
"Naruto—"
Sasuke's face went rigid, trying to intercept the sentence.
Too late.
Tsunade's knuckles cracked audibly.
She turned.
"Say that again."
She is going to kill him.
Is there still time to call Sakura to identify the body?
Cold sweat appeared on Sasuke's forehead.
(Chapter End)
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you