I traced my steps back through the narrow dirt paths of this backwater fishing town, my jaw still clenched from that damn sexy jutsu incident. The phantom sensation of soft lips against mine lingered. Except that did not fucking happen… yet I'd nearly fallen for it completely.
If Sai hadn't barged in with his perfectly timed lack of social awareness, I might've actually kissed Naruto. Naruto. The thought made my eye twitch.
My body was still betraying me, blood running hot despite the cool evening air. The image of Naruko's curves, those impossibly blue eyes looking up at me with that teasing smirk, kept flashing through my mind alongside more recent memories of Sakura's flushed face and trembling thighs and soaked shorts.
Why the fuck was he good at it?
And where the hell is this widow's place at?
I should've just asked where Tsunami lived. Or should've trailed Inari like Sai assumed I had. But no, here I was wandering around like some lovesick genin, trying to retrace Naruto and Sai's earlier path while sporting an increasingly uncomfortable problem in my pants.
The bento Tsunami had been prepared with such thoughtful and motherly care definitely deserved a proper thank you and a sorry for ruining it. In person. Alone. And perhaps, if lucky, she would cook something just for me.
My imagination was already running wild with possibilities when I felt the distinctive pop of chakra as one of my shadow clones dispelled, and memories from a not-so-fair place were shoved into my brain.
The merchant was finally making his move. My clone had spotted him deep in conversation with a particularly familiar group of bandits in a rather nice place that certainly did not fit as a bandit's cove.
I paused mid-step. Those same "road protectors" who'd tried to shake down our dear merchant just yesterday were now chatting with him like old drinking buddies.
Would you look at that...
How heartwarming. Really restored my faith in humanity's capacity for personal growth and conflict resolution.
I sighed.
My arousal warred with duty as I stood at the crossroads—literally.
The path leading to Tsunami's house beckoned from the outskirts, promising warmth, gratitude, and hopefully much more interesting ways to spend my evening.
The other direction led back toward town, toward answers for this investigation mission and the fuckery in the Land of Waves.
My dick pulsed insistently, reminding me of exactly how wound up I still was. I closed my eyes, let the tension bleed into fantasy. The mental image of a widowed mother's gentle smile, the way her yukata would shift when she bows…. I could almost see it. Almost feel it.
I'd only ever seen Tsunami on a screen, once upon another life, the memory of her was blurry, but I bet a yukata would fit her well.
Opening my eyes, I looked longingly toward the distant outline of the unfinished bridge nestled against the treeline, outskirts of the town, where a lonely widow was probably preparing dinner, completely unaware of the thoroughly inappropriate thoughts her simple kindness had inspired.
"Ahh, fuck me…"
With a heavy sigh that did absolutely nothing to ease the tension in my pants, I turned south toward town, muttering under my breath about cosmic timing and the universe's apparent investment in keeping people sexually frustrated.
The conversation that unfolded confirmed what I'd already begun to piece together during our journey.
Our dear "client" hadn't simply stumbled into bandit troubles; he'd orchestrated a rather elaborate performance. The same "road protectors" who'd demanded tribute yesterday were now discussing profit margins and territory divisions like seasoned business partners.
How refreshing to witness such entrepreneurial spirit in action.
The pieces had been falling into place since we'd arrived, though the full picture was only now crystallizing.
Some of it I'd gathered from their conversation, some read between the lines, and the rest drawn from experience—and a rather bleak worldview.
Gato's death had left a power vacuum that various interests were eager to fill—and apparently, some of those interests traced back to Fire Country nobility.
Because naturally, our own benevolent lords would never miss an opportunity to capitalize on a neighboring nation's instability.
Such paragons of virtue, our Fire Country elite.
The unfinished bridge served as the perfect catalyst. With legitimate trade routes disrupted and local law enforcement decimated, the Land of Waves had become a playground for organized crime. The bandits weren't random desperados—they were part of a coordinated network that operated with remarkable efficiency.
Too remarkable to be coincidental.
Our merchant friend belonged — just joined, or wants to join? Can't tell with the contradictory wordings he was using — to something called the "Silk Orchid Consortium," a delightfully poetic name for what appeared to be a protection racket with noble backing.
Members received safe passage guarantees, while non-members faced the tender mercies of the local brigands. Simple economics, really—create artificial scarcity, then sell the solution.
The beauty of the arrangement was its deniability. Fire Country nobles could profit from the chaos while maintaining a plausible distance from the actual operations. They provided funding and intelligence, the consortium provided organization and legitimacy, and the bandits provided the necessary violence to keep everyone motivated. A perfect symbiotic relationship.
Our merchant wasn't even fully aware of his role in the larger scheme. His cousin, some noble, had simply suggested this "business opportunity" in Wave Country. The man genuinely believed he was joining a legitimate trading guild, not a quasi-criminal enterprise designed to exploit a war-torn nation's reconstruction efforts.
Either that or he's one hell of an actor. Doubt it.
The irony was exquisite. We'd been hired to protect someone who was essentially working to destabilize the very region we'd helped 'liberate'.
Such was the nature of geopolitics, I guess. Yesterday's allies become tomorrow's competitors in the grand marketplace of influence.
I wondered if the Hokage was aware of any of this. I didn't think it was a difficult thing to figure out. At least it was not a task that required a jounin to solve.
Hell, the scope of Fire Country's involvement implied systemic issues that someone of Minato's intelligence should have anticipated.
Perhaps he was merely being careful?
The Daimyo almost certainly knew. Perhaps. Probably. But then again, why would he interfere? This little band of boys' profits eventually flowed back to his coffers through taxation and tribute.
If he didn't have a direct hand in it.
Bet the bastard was probably enjoying his evening in considerably more pleasant company than I was, surrounded by his legally sanctioned collection of concubines...
Once again, the universe reminded me just how much of a sick joke life really was. I was out here blue-balled and knee-deep in political bullshit, while back in the capital, our illustrious daimyo was probably balls-deep in whichever jade beauty got the honor of being his bedwarmer tonight.
Ahh. Must be nice.
On a side note, Zabuza's role in this affair had been refreshingly straightforward by comparison—a pleasant surprise, actually.
The Demon of the Mist had operated as a simple opportunist, completely divorced from the larger conspiracy. He'd simply noticed a wealthy merchant traveling through his territory and decided to capitalize on the situation. Like a wolf spotting a particularly fat sheep wandering away from the flock, Zabuza had moved to claim his prize.
Zabuza represented chaos, disrupting carefully orchestrated profit margins.
A pity. If the missing-nin had simply waited until our escort contract expired, he'd have had free rein to extract whatever ransom he pleased.
I contemplated potential courses of action, but then I remembered that I was no hero.
I was a man with an increasingly urgent biological imperative that demanded attention before my tactical judgment became completely compromised by sexual frustration.
More pragmatically, any intervention here would prove not just inconsequential but actively counterproductive.
These bandits, merchants, and those in between were all expendable assets in a much larger economic machine.
Eliminating them would merely trigger replacement protocols—new faces filling identical roles within weeks. The true architects of this arrangement sat safely ensconced in Fire Country estates, insulated by layers of plausible deniability and political immunity and hundreds of samurai.
Worse, disrupting operations here would inevitably draw official scrutiny back to my own actions. Questions would be asked about why a Konoha jounin had interfered with Fire Country commercial interests in a foreign nation.
The political ramifications would ripple all the way back to the Hokage's office, and I had no desire to explain my unauthorized actions to a disciplinary tribunal while sporting evidence of my evening's more carnal pursuits.
In laymen terms, this was not my business, not my mission and I need to get laid before I fucking lose my damn mind.
That was so… disappointing.
I harbored no illusions about the side I was fighting for, the Fire Country, its nobility, or even Konoha's moral purity, but actually witnessing how casually our own people profited from another nation's suffering left a bitter taste in my mouth.
Still, dwelling on geopolitical corruption wasn't going to solve my more pressing problem
I left a shadow clone positioned to monitor the merchant's activities and headed toward the village outskirts. At least tracking down Tsunami wouldn't be difficult—between Inari's lingering scent and Naruto's, my wolf clone had easily located the widow's residence.
The house sat alone at the forest's edge, and its condition told a story I recognized all too well.
Loose roof tiles caught rainwater that had rotted through the eaves, creating dark stains down the wooden walls. The front steps sagged under missing support beams that no one had bothered to replace. Weeds choked what had once been a vegetable garden, and the fence posts leaned at precarious angles where the wood had weakened.
It was the kind of slow decay that happened when there was no man around to handle the heavier maintenance. Tsunami was clearly doing her best—the windows were clean, the walkway swept—but there was only so much a woman could manage alone.
The house felt abandoned even though it was obviously lived in, neglected in the way that only happened when someone was surviving rather than thriving.
Most likely just like its owner.
Rusted roofs, warped planks, and salt-rotted wood were practically standard here in the Land of Waves, the place, however, stood out.
Most homes bore the marks of poverty, sure, but this one looked like it had been losing a fight against time and weather for years, and no one had ever stepped in to help. It wasn't just poor—it was tired. The kind of tired that soaked into the bones of a house, where every creak in the floorboards whispered stories of things left unfixed and lives lived on the edge of collapse.
I found her behind the house, hanging laundry on a line strung between two trees. She moved with practiced efficiency, shaking out each piece of clothing before pinning it up, her movements revealing the lean muscle beneath her simple work dress. Damp fabric clung to her curves as she reached overhead, and I caught glimpses of pale thigh when her skirt rode up as she bent down.
She was completely absorbed in her task, humming softly to herself as she worked through the basket of wet clothes. The domestic scene was oddly hypnotic
There was something unexpectedly arousing about watching her move through these domestic routines. The way she bent to retrieve wet clothes from the basket, how her hips swayed as she stretched to pin items on the higher sections of the line—it wasn't just her body that drew my attention, though that certainly helped. It was seeing her in this maternal role, this caretaker managing her household with quiet competence.
The sight of a woman maintaining her home, providing for her family despite everything she'd endured, stirred something primitive in me that went beyond simple lust.
I remained perched in the oak tree's shadow, content to observe her work. Each time she reached up to hang a garment, her dress pulled taut across her chest and rear, outlining curves that promised soft warmth beneath the worn fabric. When she paused to push damp hair from her face with the back of her wrist, the gesture was unconsciously sensual in its simplicity.
First, a pretty boy, then Naruto's stupid jutsu….. why not add 'domestic labor fetish' to my growing list of confusing turn-ons?
At this rate, I'll be jerking off to someone washing dishes by next week.
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