The festival lit Konoha like a second sunrise, lanterns strung from eaves and poles until every alley wore warm gold. Paper streamers fluttered in the evening breeze; the scent of grilled squid, sweet dango, and spiced broth mingled with woodsmoke. Laughter rolled in waves, spilling from game stalls and food lines and the little pockets where musicians tested their luck with flutes and shamisen.
Jiraiya eased into the current of people, hands tucked behind his head, trying not to look like he was looking for someone. He'd told himself he was here for food. Maybe for the fireworks later. Definitely not because a certain blonde hammer-fist tended to show up to win every strength game within reach.
He found her anyway.
Tsunade stood at a ring-toss booth, sleeves tied back, eyes locked on the pyramid of wooden pegs like they'd insulted her. A crowd had already formed, drawn by the simple gravity she carried. The stall owner was sweating—somewhere between impressed and afraid of his prize inventory.
Jiraiya slid in at the edge of the circle. Orochimaru was already there, a half-shaded silhouette under a lantern, arms crossed loosely. He didn't say hello; he just flicked his eyes at Jiraiya, a quick "of course you'd be here" that said more than words.
"Watch and learn," Tsunade told the booth runner, accepting a ring. She tossed. The ring cut a clean arc and dropped onto the center peg with the finality of a judge's gavel. The crowd cheered. The owner winced.
"Beginner's luck," someone muttered.
She didn't look to see who. Another ring, another perfect drop. Then another. The pyramid was half-claimed before the owner found his voice.
"Three more and you pick any prize," he said, sounding like he regretted the terms of his own existence.
Jiraiya cupped his hands around his mouth. "No pressure!"
Tsunade didn't turn. "Don't jinx me."
"Wouldn't dare," he said, grinning.
The fourth ring kissed a peg and settled. The fifth rattled, wobbled, and then—by force of will or spite—stayed. The crowd drew in a breath all at once, as if they'd agreed to share a single set of lungs. For the last throw, Tsunade rolled her shoulders, exhaled slowly, and let it go.
It missed.
It should have. It was a hair wide, the kind of miss that taught humility. But at the last instant, the tiniest breeze pushed—a child ran by, a sleeve fluttered, the rope line twitched—and the ring slipped onto the edge of a peg and dropped home like it had been there all along.
The stall owner sagged. "Pick your prize," he said, with the resignation of a man mourning his profits.
Tsunade looked over the spread: plush boars and paper fans, wooden tops, lacquered combs, a gaudy fox mask with gold-flaked edges that flashed in the lantern light. She pointed at the mask without hesitation.
"Good choice," Jiraiya said, still grinning. "It matches your personality."
"Fierce and shiny?" she asked.
"Bites," he said. "And expensive."
She smirked and slipped the mask on her head like a crown, the gold ears catching light. For a second, with lantern glow painting her hair and the mask glinting above, she looked like her own emblem—something people would paint on banners.
Orochimaru cleared his throat softly. "If you two are finished bankrupting small businesses, there's a charm stall three streets down that claims to sell 'unbreakable thread.' It's probably a lie. I'd like to buy some anyway."
"Why?" Tsunade asked.
"To find out how it breaks," Orochimaru said, as if that explained everything.
They let the crowd carry them. Musicians tangled notes in the air; children chased each other with paper sparrows on sticks. A vendor with a tray of skewers shouted praise for his own cooking. Jiraiya bought three, because the man sounded convincing and because his stomach had made a noise that suggested mutiny. He passed one to Tsunade without looking and held another toward Orochimaru, who accepted it like someone accepting evidence.
They ate while walking, shoulder to shoulder in the press. The festival rhythm made it easy to fall into step. Easy to pretend there had never been arguments sharp enough to cut. The night did that: filed edges, rounded corners.
"Try the hammer game," Jiraiya suggested when they reached a strength stall. The big wooden mallet gleamed; the tower bell at the back dared them. "Make the bell cry."
"I don't play for bells," Tsunade said, but she was already rolling her wrist like she could feel the handle in her palm. The stall runner—a broad-shouldered man with a festival sash—gestured grandly.
"Five ryō," he said. "Three swings. Ring the bell, win a prize."
"Two swings," Tsunade said. "And I pick the prize."
The man hesitated. Then he looked at her shoulders, then at the crowd forming, and decided the show was worth the risk. "Two swings," he agreed.
Tsunade stepped up, tested the mallet's weight, and let her breath fall into that smooth place Jiraiya had started to notice more often—the one where everything lined up because she told it to. The mallet fell like a verdict. The indicator shot up the rail and stopped a finger below the bell.
"Tch," she said.
Jiraiya clapped anyway. "That was a warm-up."
"It was a mistake," she corrected, resetting her grip. She exhaled again, not harder, just cleaner. The second swing sang. The indicator hammered the bell with a clear, satisfying clang that turned heads three booths over. The crowd yelled. The runner flinched, but smiled. Business boomed when bells begged for mercy.
"Prize?" he asked.
Tsunade scanned the shelf. There were the usual trinkets. Then, on the bottom, half-hidden, an old-fashioned carpenter's pencil kit in a neat wooden case. Not the flashy choice. The practical one.
"That," she said.
Jiraiya blinked. "Huh. Didn't see you as the 'neat wooden case' type."
"It's for plans," she said simply, taking it. "You can't build anything without drawing it first."
"Since when do you build?"
"Since I realized no one else would build what I want," she said, matter-of-fact.
He liked that answer more than he expected.
They wandered. Orochimaru found the thread stall and bought a coil despite the owner's nervous pitch. He tugged on it experimentally. It held, then gave, then held again—interesting enough to keep him quiet for three whole streets.
They stopped at a goldfish-scooping game. Paper nets, shallow bowls, slick flashes of orange and white dodging under lamplight. Tsunade crouched, focused like a hunter. Her first scoop tore; the fish darted away unbothered.
"This one's rigged," Jiraiya said cheerfully.
"Everything is," she said. Then, softer, "Doesn't mean I can't beat it."
He squatted beside her, bowl in one hand, net in the other. "Don't chase them. Let them come to you."
"That's a stupid line," she said.
"Works in taijutsu. Might work on fish."
She made a sound like she wanted to argue but didn't have a better plan. They waited. Lantern light fell in little squares across the water. When a slow, fat goldfish drifted close as if resigned to its fate, Tsunade slid the net under with a steady hand and lifted. The paper bowed. The fish didn't fight. It slid into the bowl like it had chosen.
She stared. "Huh."
"See? Dumb line, smart result," Jiraiya said.
She elbowed him, but lightly. "Don't get cocky."
They won two fish between them and gave them to a boy who had been staring hard enough to set the water on fire. He took the bowl like an altar offering, eyes wide. "Thank you!"
"Feed them," Tsunade said. "And don't name them before you make sure they live a week."
"That's morbid," Jiraiya said.
"That's experience," she said.
They ended up at the edge of the main square where the fireworks would launch later. The crowd was thinner here, a spillover of couples, parents with sleeping children, shinobi out of uniform pretending to be civilians for a night. A small stage had been set; a troupe started a comic skit about a hapless genin who could never remember the last hand seal. It was broad and silly and made even Orochimaru's mouth twitch once, which Jiraiya counted as a miracle.
"Do you ever think about… later?" Jiraiya asked quietly when the laughter washed over them. "Not tomorrow. Not next week. Later."
"Later like what?" Tsunade asked.
He shrugged. "When we're not running obstacle courses and writing plans on scrolls."
"Later I'll be stronger," she said. It wasn't boasting. It was the same as saying the sky would be dark after sunset. "Strong enough that no one tells me where to stand. Strong enough to decide when to fight and when to heal."
He nodded. "Good later."
"You?" she asked.
He looked at the stage without seeing it. "I want to be… the one people count on. The one who shows up."
"That sounds like someone who dies first," she said bluntly.
"Maybe," he said, smiling anyway. "But not always."
"And if you can't show up?" she asked, eyes cutting sideways at him, sharp. "What then?"
"Then I get stronger," he said. "Until I can."
She exhaled, a small huff that wasn't quite a laugh. "Idiot."
"Accurate," he agreed.
Orochimaru had drifted half a step away, examining his coil of "unbreakable" thread under the lantern. "If either of you begins to make vows under the fireworks, I'm leaving," he said without looking up.
"We're not," Tsunade said quickly.
"Definitely not," Jiraiya added, too quickly.
"Good," Orochimaru said. "Public promises are imprecise and inefficient."
A commotion rippled near the food stalls. Not panic—festival noise didn't turn on a coin—but a rise in voices, an edge under the laughter. Jiraiya's head turned on instinct. Predator's intuition tugged a thread behind his ribs: something a little wrong in a place that should be simple.
"Stay," he told Tsunade, already moving.
"Don't order me," she said, already following.
Orochimaru sighed, then came too, because of course he would.
They reached the edge of the stall line where a vendor and a teenager stood nose to nose, argument boiled over. The boy had the look of a runner from the poorer quarters—thin, faster than he needed to be, hands too practiced at being empty in public. The vendor shouted about a stolen pouch. The boy shouted back about lies. The crowd started to circle in that way crowds did, hungry for spectacle.
Jiraiya slid between them before anyone did anything stupid. "Hey. It's a festival. Nobody ruins a festival."
"Get out of the way, kid," the vendor snapped. "He lifted my takings."
"I didn't!" the boy shouted, voice cracking. "I didn't, I swear!"
Tsunade's eyes scanned with the speed of someone who hated being lied to. "Pouch?" she asked the vendor.
"Green," he said. "Leather. Tied at the top."
She pointed three stalls down where a stray dog was happily ripping open a green leather pouch with its teeth, coins clattering like cheap bells. The crowd laughed in a different way. The vendor's face fell; then his shoulders sagged. He pushed through, muttering apologies to no one and everyone. The boy stood frozen, caught between fury and a sudden option to run.
"Don't bolt," Jiraiya said, turning to him. "Not because you're guilty. Because it'll make you look guilty."
The kid's throat worked. "You gonna lecture me?"
"No," Jiraiya said. "I'm gonna tell you to eat before you pass out. Your hands are shaking."
The boy stared, half-suspicious, half-hungry. Jiraiya handed him the skewer he'd saved and forgotten. The kid took it like it might vanish if he blinked. He ate with the intensity of someone who didn't know when the next meal would be stupidly easy.
"Don't steal here," Tsunade said, not unkind but not soft. "We have better fights than that."
The boy nodded once, quick and sharp, and melted into the crowd before the vendor could come back and decide someone still had to pay.
Orochimaru watched him go. "He'll be faster next time," he said.
"Good," Jiraiya said. "Maybe he'll outrun his mistakes."
"That is not how mistakes work," Orochimaru said mildly.
"Sometimes it is," Tsunade said.
The moment passed. The crowd folded over the gap like water.
They found a quiet spot along a low wall as the fireworks crew started setting charges. The first crackle tore the sky; a silver bloom opened, trailed by a tail that fizzed down like molten rain. Children shrieked in delight. Another burst—green, then red, then a cluster that popped like a bouquet of stars.
Jiraiya leaned back on his hands, eyes wide as if he were five years younger and allowed to be. Tsunade tipped her head back, the fox mask slipping until she pushed it higher with an absent hand. Orochimaru didn't smile, but he didn't not-smile either; he watched the patterns like a scroll unfurling in the sky, studying the math of color.
"You know," Jiraiya said after a long burst of white left a ghost on his vision, "I like training with you more than with anyone else."
Tsunade didn't look at him. "Why?"
"You don't let me be lazy," he said. "And when I'm near you, I think clearer."
She snorted. "That's because you're afraid of getting punched."
"Partly," he admitted, because he liked living. "But also because… I don't know. You make 'later' feel closer."
She was quiet long enough that he thought maybe he'd said it wrong. Then: "You make 'now' feel louder," she said, almost grudging. "It's annoying."
"I can tone it down," he said.
"Don't," she said. "Just don't get in my way."
He smiled at the sky. "Deal."
Another bloom cracked open—gold dripping into blue, a comet's tail chasing itself. The crowd oohed in one voice.
From the far end of the square, a pair of eyes watched them—hard, steady. Hayato stood half-hidden under an awning, hands jammed in his pockets. He didn't step closer. He didn't shout. He simply memorized the way Tsunade stood with Jiraiya and Orochimaru, how they laughed at nothing, how they shared food and space and words. He etched it into whatever ledger he kept and closed the cover with his teeth.
"Let it go," a voice murmured beside him—an older boy with a ROOT-straight posture who had no reason to be at a festival except to watch. Hayato didn't answer. The older boy didn't repeat himself.
Near the wall, a spark fell close, fizzed harmlessly on the stones between Jiraiya's sandals. He didn't flinch. He could feel the urge in his ankles—the itch of a trick he wasn't using—ready to step where the world didn't offer a step. He ignored it. Tonight didn't need stars no one else could see.
"Tomorrow," Tsunade said, not taking her eyes off the sky, "I'm taking the top lane on the obstacle course."
"You can have it," Jiraiya said. "I'll just take the finish."
"You wish."
"I plan."
"Big difference," she said, but her mouth curved.
"Do either of you ever pause?" Orochimaru asked, dry. "The fireworks will envy your noise."
"Jealousy is ugly, Orochimaru," Jiraiya said.
"Then we are safe," Orochimaru replied.
The finale began—rapid bursts, gold pouring over red pouring over green until even the stars flinched behind smoke. When the last bloom cracked and the echoes rolled off the Hokage Monument, the square inhaled, then let out a long, happy sigh. For a moment, Konoha felt very small and very warm, a village that believed light could be summoned at will.
They stood. The crowd pressed toward the streets. They let themselves be carried once more, three nodes in a moving constellation. Vendors shouted last deals; kids slept against parents' shoulders; shinobi slipped into shadow again where they belonged.
At a fork, they paused. Home split three ways.
"Later," Tsunade said, easy.
"Later," Jiraiya echoed.
Orochimaru nodded. "Later."
They turned. Jiraiya walked a dozen paces before he glanced back. Tsunade had already vanished into the river of people. Orochimaru had already become the shadow he liked to be.
Jiraiya breathed in smoke and sugar and the faint metallic scent of spent fireworks. He let the night file off his sharp edges and put away the line he'd almost stepped over—words he could've said and didn't. Not tonight. Not yet. Not until after later was decided and someone named Dan had walked into their orbits and either left or hadn't.
He headed home with the fox mask's gold glint still in his eyes and the quiet decision he never said out loud riding in his chest: he would show up. Not with promises. With presence.
And when the time came, he'd step where there was no step and land anyway—without anyone ever seeing the star.