Chapter 582: Sightseeing
Naruto and Satsuki had gone, leaving the scene to its own unfolding as the sky fully darkened. Their thoughts had already shifted away from everything that had just happened, turning toward the immediate and practical question of where they were sleeping tonight.
He wasn't going to do this carelessly. Not find a hollow log or a cave and make do until morning.
He wanted to do it properly. Like two ordinary travelers with nothing to worry about -- find somewhere genuinely comfortable, and rest.
They didn't technically need food or sleep as often as ordinary people. But "don't need to" and "don't want to" were completely different things.
What Naruto wanted -- walking hand in hand with Satsuki down an unfamiliar street, eating street food at a night market bright with lanterns, playing the stall games, watching the crowd, and then going back to a warm room when the night had gone quiet -- was more satisfying than anything dramatic.
Should they move on to the next world tonight? They considered and dismissed the idea. They were on vacation. Not a mission.
Crossing from one world to the next was effortless for him at this point -- just a thought and it was done. But the feeling wasn't right. The feeling was of rushing, scene to scene, never stopping. He didn't want that. He wanted to slow down. To be, in a place that didn't need him to be anyone's savior, an entirely ordinary person -- someone no one recognized, someone who could walk down a street with his wife's hand in his.
In this world, he and Satsuki had no reputation at all. They were just two young people who happened to be good-looking, who read unmistakably as newlyweds, no different from any other couple on the street.
This specific freedom -- of not being watched -- was a rare luxury for two people who had been watched their entire lives.
They found a prosperous small town outside Konoha, in the Land of Fire.
The town was alive with noise. Shops and market stalls packed both sides of every street, lanterns hanging from every eave and connecting overhead into one long warm river of light.
The air was thick with food smells: the savory char of skewers on an open flame, the rich soy glaze of takoyaki, the sweet nuttiness of roasting chestnuts. The noise was layered -- vendors calling out their wares, customers negotiating on price, children chasing each other and laughing, a song drifting from somewhere inside a tavern, too muffled to make out the words.
Naruto and Satsuki walked hand in hand, from one end of the street to the other and back around again.
They stopped at a dango stall. Naruto bought two skewers, handed one to Satsuki, kept the other.
They stopped at a shuriken-throwing game. Naruto picked up one of the blunted wooden shurikens, weighed it in his hand, threw it without looking particularly hard at the target -- center of the bullseye. Satsuki picked up one, didn't bother to look at the target at all, threw -- the shuriken stuck in the exact center of the ring. The stall owner's expression curdled. Ninja customers were his least favorite kind.
Satsuki and Naruto moved through the warm, uncomplicated pleasure of the evening. Contentment with no particular reason attached.
The sudden deaths and resurrections back in Konoha, the death of the ROOT organization's leader -- those things could be sorted out by the people of this world. The people who needed to give explanations would give explanations. The people who needed to make things right would make them right. The ones who were meant to cry and laugh and hold each other and shed their tears were already in their right places, doing exactly that.
Of course, to say the evening was entirely without incident would be an overstatement.
From the moment they entered the street, Naruto noticed that eyes kept falling on Satsuki. Occasionally, sometimes in clusters, sometimes trying to be subtle about it and not entirely succeeding.
They came from all directions. Every age. Every type.
A middle-aged man walking with his child stopped mid-stride, stared, and only noticed his wife tugging at his sleeve when she did it twice. He recovered with an awkward cough and faced forward again as though nothing had happened.
A group of young boys in traditional jackets pushed each other back and forth indecisively, none of them willing to be the first to approach, but none of them willing to look away.
Young men walking alone had their gazes catch on Satsuki for a few seconds before dropping to the hand she had tucked through Naruto's arm. The light in their eyes dimmed. They turned away with the particular resigned expression of someone accepting a beautiful fact that was also an impossible one.
A pair of men stumbling out of a tavern half-drunk squinted in Satsuki's direction and seemed about to say something before their companions covered their mouths and redirected them elsewhere.
In the original story, Sasuke during the Shippuden era had once obtained intelligence about the Executioner's Blade essentially by accident -- purely because of what his face looked like.
Naruto walked with Satsuki's hand in his, through that web of attention, feeling the watching from every side. He turned his head slightly and looked at her profile. At the face the red lantern light was making softer, warmer, more impossible to look away from than it already was.
"You're something else, you know that." Naruto's eyes were forward, not on her, but his fingers tightened slightly against her palm. "Even with me right here, you still pull that many eyes."
Satsuki turned her head, looked at his profile, and let the corner of her mouth lift slightly.
"Does it bother you? I could use a Transformation Jutsu if you want..."
She waited, completely prepared: say the word, and every stray gaze disappears.
"No need." Naruto's face had gone noticeably redder, and his fingers closed tighter. "I want to show off a little too."
"About the fact that my wife is this cute."
Satsuki leaned in against him, their fingers interlocking completely, her smile curving up higher. It was the kind of smile that was warmer than any lantern on the street.
They kept walking, no hurry to their pace.
Before long, a shop caught Satsuki's attention. From the outside it was unremarkable -- wooden doorframe, white walls, a hand-lettered wooden sign, nothing that set it apart from its neighbors. But the clothes hanging inside were something else: kimono, dresses, casual wear, athletic cuts, and styles so fashionable they seemed to have arrived from somewhere outside this era entirely -- colors running from bleached white to deep black, packed densely onto every rack in the space.
Naruto also noticed something: nearly every garment in the shop was women's clothing.
His gaze moved through the display, and stopped.
A black qipao. The fabric caught the light in a faint, restrained sheen. The cut was fitted, the waist taken in high, the side slit beginning at the upper thigh -- precise. The garment was embroidered with a pattern that started at the hem and climbed up through the waist to the chest.
Naruto's throat moved. His mind had already gone somewhere he wasn't entirely in control of, imagining what it would look like on Satsuki. He found that he very much wanted to see it.
Satsuki noticed the exact expression he was wearing -- eyes fixed on a single garment, thoughts written plainly in his face. She didn't hesitate.
"Welcome, welcome."
The proprietress came out from behind the counter -- a well-kept woman of middle age, wearing an elaborate dress, her smile warm and professional. Her eyes landed on Satsuki and lit up immediately.
"Oh my! Now there's a rare customer. You're very welcome, truly -- young man, your girlfriend, well, I have to say, the impact she's made on me just walking through my door -- it's a first. I'm not flattering you."
"...She's not my girlfriend." Naruto corrected.
The proprietress paused. Her smile faltered for half a second.
"She's my wife."
The proprietress' expression opened back up immediately. Young and hopelessly in love, she thought -- this type of couple's money was always the easiest to take.
"I'll take this one."
Satsuki's voice came from somewhere in the lantern-lit interior. It carried a faint trace of self-consciousness. Her finger pointed steadily at the black qipao -- the exact one Naruto had been staring at.
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