The tent reeked of herbs and blood, a mix sharp enough to make one's skull ache.
Ryo reclined against the pillow, eyes shut, his breathing deep and steady. The last dregs of chakra inside him surged again like a maddened bull, humming through his bones.
The gore-rimmed hole in his left shoulder, almost his undoing, had begun to sprout new flesh under Tsunade's unforgiving Mystical Palm Technique and his own monstrous recovery. The skin looked pink and tender. The bone had set. The numb ache rose, like countless ants gnawing at his bones.
But that itch was good, life.
Strength, strand by strand, seeped back into the body that had nearly come apart. He tested the fingertips of his left hand.
Good. The shackle of injury was loosening. Outside, the battlefield's iron tang mingled with shouts of slaughter and burrowed into the tent, teasing his dormant killing intent until it stirred, itching to break free from the coffin of death.
Shra.
The flap snapped up. A gust of cold wind rode the camp's metallic reek inside. Tsunade strode in, hem of her field medic robe spattered with mud. Her domineering presence rushed in and blasted the sticky stench of medicine out of the tent.
"Kid, tough life you have, huh?" Her voice was loud, that impatient kind of concern. She flatly ignored Mikoto, who hastily stepped aside, and flashed to the bedside. Quick as lightning, she yanked open the ragged bandage on Ryo's left shoulder. Emerald medical chakra flared in her palm like a tiny sun and, with no ceremony, pressed into that torn wound, hot enough to make the air tremble.
"Hmph." Ryo did not bother lifting his lids, answering through his nose. When his eyes did open, a cold light had already pooled within, sharp as a freshly honed boning knife. Fresh from the battlefield, his feral edge never slept, not even with a single breath left.
Tsunade's rough fingertips skimmed with surgical precision along the edge of that fresh, pink, hideous scar. The feel beneath her fingers made her heart jolt, skin stretched over coiled, dangerous power.
Her brows knit tight.
What made her heart leap was not only his freakish self-healing.
It was also that, beneath flesh and blood, something stirred that made her instinctively, deeply uneasy, and strangely moved.
Just now, in those zero-point-something seconds when her fingers brushed the searing edge of his wound, the feeling struck again. Like a jolt arcing through her heart, making some corner she had buried on purpose seize tight.
"Damn, that again…" Tsunade's mind flashed uncontrollably to days earlier, hauling a scar-latticed Ryo into her arms, his weight pressed against—
Back then she had focused only on his injuries and had not thought further.
But when last night's cold crept into the lull between fire and blood, her tired body had suddenly remembered the pressure against her chest, the heat, the feel of his rapid breath against her skin.
She snapped her head to the side, golden hair slashing a violent arc, as if to whip the intrusive fluster and panic out of her skull, then forced all attention back onto treatment.
"Bone's set, chewed up like a dog had it." Her voice was rough and husky. Smack. She slapped a slab of sticky, stinging dark green salve onto the wound, hard, almost too hard.
"Tendons and meridians, though, solid. A hundred times sturdier than that useless Jiraiya. Lie still for a few days. If you dare hack your bones to pieces with that move again, I will drag you out and bury you." She cursed as she worked, but her bandaging hands moved so fast they stirred wind. In no time it was tidy.
Done, she turned to leave and stopped at the flap.
Her eyes cut like knives, first over Mikoto, standing there like a wooden post, then back to Ryo, eyes closed and regulating his breath, but already fierce again.
That look was too complicated to read, assessing, irritable, and laced with something she could not even name herself.
"Hmph. Mikoto, not bad." She tossed the words out abruptly, like dropping a tool as she walked by.
Before the words had settled, the heavy flap went whack as she yanked it open and strode out into the cold wind, steps that recognized no kin, almost like she was fleeing something.
The half-meaning remark, and that iron-scented wind, tore open Pandora's box.
Mikoto lowered her head. In the shadows, her eyes flared with a sudden, startling light.
Tsunade's tacit approval, that was what it was to her, worked better than ten thousand words. The last bar on the beast's cage, at its weakest, had just swung open.
Silence settled again. Only Ryo's steady, powerful breathing remained.
Mikoto's heart pounded louder than a charge horn. She lifted a rough clay cup steaming warm. The air pulled taut, the silence she had engineered stuffing it to bursting.
Cup in hand, steps still light, as if she walked out of a painting, she glided to the bed, a face of impeccably tuned concern.
"Ryo-kun, have a little water, moisten your throat." Soft, gentle, the tail of her words floated, extra clear in the cramped hush.
Her left toe just happened to snag an unseen fold in the ground cloth. Her body lost balance in an instant. Mikoto let out a short, convincing cry. "Ah!"
The world spun. She pitched hard toward Ryo's side, out of control. The cup in her hand, half full of near-boiling water, flipped at a perfect angle, flying with her momentum straight toward the deadliest zone below Ryo's waist.
A hair's breadth.
Ryo's eyes flashed open.
At the same time, his left hand, the arm that had only just regained a faint sense of movement, lashed outward on instinct.
Not a cup shattering, but a heavy thump of impact. Mikoto's upper body, along with her panic-tilted face, slammed squarely, solidly into Ryo's chest, which had thrust up to meet her.
The scalding water he had anticipated did not hit him. His lightning elbow parry barely knocked it aside. Most of it splashed onto the cold dirt and tattered sheet with a hiss. But the more dangerous contact arrived.
Time stalled.
A bundle of soft warmth, honeysuckle-cool and sweet with a girl's scent, pressed flush to Ryo's iron chest.
Worse, zero distance between their faces.
Cold, an unfamiliar, faintly medicinal bitterness and a hint of candied sweetness, soft and cool, crashed onto his cracked lips, hard enough to bump his teeth.
Breath tangled. Everything jammed.
Ryo's pupils pinholed. His nose filled with the girl's scent. The soft, cold press on his lips was as numbing as the most potent toxin, freezing every action and thought. For the first time, utterly stumped.
A battlefield demon who butchered gods without blinking now tasted something called being at a loss. Every muscle locked to stone. His left arm still hung there in that dumb blocking pose.
Mikoto froze as well.
She could feel the heat of his chest through thin cloth, and the heartbeat that seized for an instant. Her lips were tight against the heat-dry shape of his.
In the plan it was a light touch. It became a crash.
The effect overshot the mark. Her mind went white with a buzz. Shame, panic, and the shiver of a plan succeeding melted into a stew. Her heart nearly leapt out of her throat.
But the Uchiha clan's time-tempered bridal drills kicked in. In less than a second of blankness, the actress's instinct rolled over every raw feeling.
Performance, full on. The black eyes inches away, parted in shock, instantly pooled with shine, fluttering long lashes like a scared fawn.
Shyness, grievance, and natural fluster, woven without a seam.
Like she had suffered a terrible fright and slight, she jerked her face up and sprang from his arms.
She staggered back two steps. Her cheeks flamed, red from the pale ear tips down the fine curve of her neck. She scrubbed her mouth with the back of her hand on reflex, then snatched it back as if shocked.
Those lovely eyes darted in panic, landing on Ryo's lips, still a little damp, then skittering away as if burned, head bowed deep. Her shoulders trembled just a hair. A tiny mosquito-weak voice, edged with tears, quavered out:
"I, I am sorry, Ryo-kun. I, I did not mean to. I tripped… I am so, so sorry. I… I offended you…"
Air so still it could suffocate. Only the drip, drip from the wet sheet, and two uneven breaths.
Ryo still held that left-arm block, torso rigid.
His throat bobbed painfully. He wanted to curse, but found his voice too dry to make a sound.
At last, he slowly, stiffly, drew that dead-heavy left arm back.
Mikoto still kept her head down. The hand that had covered her lips dropped. Her fingertips trembled. She did not dare look up. She bent to gather the shattered clay, then grabbed a rag to dab the mess, movements clumsy with panic. The red at her ears refused to fade. Her small, helpless back looked pitiable.
(To be continued.)