From the moment they met her, this legendary Sannin, the most beautiful and most powerful kunoichi in the shinobi world, gave Asuma and Kurenai nothing but bad impressions, then worse ones.
Gambling addict. Thick-skinned. Does not repay.
At least now their impression shifted a little. The food stall Tsunade praised was genuinely good.
"Chicken soup is here."
The warm chef set the last dish on the table. Tsunade, wolfing down, popped a bottle cap and chugged a few gulps, then beamed and bragged.
"I was not exaggerating. How is the chef? If I had money, I would hire him as my private cook."
They smiled and praised the chef. You do not insult the cook at the table. And the cooking was truly fine.
Tsunade, flushed from drink, started boasting like a Cadillac owner. "After we eat, let us get massages and a foot bath. I know a hot spring inn where all the massage therapists are young and pretty, and their technique is great…"
Kurenai's improved impression dropped back down. Bad woman, trying to take Ren for a foot bath.
Asuma's impression ticked up. That is the spirit, godfather.
Honest Shinku gave an awkward smile. He had not expected Tsunade to say that. Most of all, his daughter was right there.
"Sir, could you spare me a bowl of noodles?"
A pretty girl in rags stood by Shinku, pleading softly. "Give me one bowl, and I will come to your lodging and massage you. If you buy me two, I will sleep with you."
"Pfft."
Shinku twisted away and sprayed rice. My daughter is here. Do not drag me into this.
Tsunade sobered, staring at the girl. "I think I have seen you somewhere."
"I worked at the Haina Hot Spring Inn," the girl said, shy.
Oh. Tsunade remembered. She had stayed there a few days. The massage girls were pretty. Later she heard those girls offered unspoken services, so she never returned.
But how had this pretty girl fallen so far?
Girls in that kind of work… usually earn decent money.
The local chef sighed and explained. "She was cheated by a handsome young man.
He pretended to be a rich scion and promised to take her as a concubine. She threw herself in, but he was a gigolo who wanted her to sell herself for cash.
After that, the girl caught a venereal disease."
A pretty girl with that disease cannot survive long in Tanzaku.
They all understood. No wonder she was so down, and why she approached Shinku instead of Ren.
"Give her two bowls," Ren told the chef.
"Ren." Kurenai pouted, looking at him with mock anger.
Often, men carry a belief. They believe their girlfriend will not get jealous of another woman because that woman is less pretty or shapely or has obvious flaws. So they think the girlfriend has no reason to be jealous.
But jealousy does not require reasons.
Ren quietly took Kurenai's hand and stroked it twice. The girl melted.
"Thank you…"
The pretty girl sat between Tsunade and Shinku, far from Ren, afraid, it seemed, after being burned by a handsome cad.
"Do not thank me. Consider it the world owing you."
Consider it the world owing you.
Even without the con, her previous work was still selling softness. For such a pretty young girl to end up in dust and ash, it is hard to see it as anything but the world being more in the wrong.
Tsunade and Shinku, both weathered, felt the line. Kurenai only thought it was stylish, and that Ren saying it was even more stylish.
The chef brought a bowl. The girl lowered her head and ate like a starving kitten.
A table of familiar faces suddenly gains a stranger. No matter what, the stranger becomes the focus. Talk naturally shifted to her.
Tsunade asked casually, "Where are you from?"
"The Land of Rain."
One sentence sank Tsunade. The girl said nothing, but said everything. Why is a Rain girl working in Tanzaku?
Hard to guess? Not really.
The Second War's main field was the Land of Rain. The cause was the big villages wanting more than they had, pushing for more space. In that war, it is hard to paint the Leaf as just.
The innocent Land of Rain became a battlefield. If not for Hanzo the Demi-God, the great villages would have carved it up.
In the original plot, as Fifth Hokage, Tsunade told Pain invading the Leaf, "The great villages are victims of war too."
But here and now, facing a weak, helpless Rain girl broken by a war the great villages kick up, Tsunade could not say a word.
So she changed the topic.
"You seem in no hurry," Tsunade said to Ren, who was calm as ever.
"For what?"
"To take me back… to the village."
With the Rain girl beside her, Tsunade would not say "Leaf." She did not want to touch the girl's pain.
"What good is hurrying? Would you come if we ran circles? The more we hurry, the happier you get."
"You are right. I do not want to return. Seeing you in a hurry does make me happy."
What a rotten personality. Kurenai's impression of Tsunade had hit rock bottom.
Ren smiled. "Plus, there are people more in a hurry than us."
"Who? The old man?"
"No. Them." Ren pointed with his chopsticks toward the street.
"Them?" They looked, puzzled.
Ren pointed them out one by one.
"See the guy crouched at the book stand? He has been pretending to browse for five minutes. In those five minutes he has glanced at us at least ten times.
That snack seller has chased off four customers in five minutes. That butcher has zero feel for his blade, he has cut five or six times to reach the right weight…"
Ren flagged every suspicious person on the street, then looked at the girl eating noodles. "So many suspicious people gathered here at once. Do you not think it is odd?
They are the ones more in a hurry."
With all identities exposed, the pretty girl dropped the act, flipped a short knife from her rags, and lunged to stab Tsunade.
"Go to the spa, Tsunade!"
The sudden strike was the flare. The killers hiding around the stall threw off their covers together, pulling weapons, priming tags, or weaving signs as they charged.
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