It wasn't that Yume was incompetent. She wasn't. Her questions were sharp, her grasp of the Net's structure better than most of Tatsumi's subordinates. She caught details and actually understood them, instead of just nodding along.
What grated was the tone.
The subtle slide from professional curiosity to something softer, more lingering. The way she angled her body toward Ren when they paused. The way her laugh smoothed out when he made a dry joke.
She was leaning in.
Ren, to his credit, was leaning back—metaphorically, if not physically. He kept his answers precise, his posture contained. When Yume drifted too close, he adjusted his path by a degree or two. Nothing overt. Just enough to maintain that thin, necessary line between colleague and… whatever she wanted him to be.
It still bothered Orochimaru.
By midday, when Ren called for a break near a small, clear stream, Orochimaru's mood had settled into something like low-grade irritation wrapped in calm.
"Fifteen minutes," Ren said, hopping lightly down from a branch. "Eat. Hydrate. Try not to start a political incident."
"Can't promise anything," Jiraiya said, dropping beside him with exaggerated relief. "My charm is a weapon of mass destruction."
"Against you maybe," Orochimaru muttered.
Yamamoto-san landed a moment later, already shrugging off her pack, eyes bright.
"Urahara-san," she said, moving to his side almost immediately. "About that eastern node you mentioned—the one near the cliff path—do you think we could invert the flow there to lessen the strain? Or would that destabilize the adjacent anchors?"
Ren sat on a flat rock and pulled out some rations, mask tugged down around his neck. His features were clearly visible now—sharp lines softened by youth, dark skin catching the late light, white hair falling in slightly uneven bangs that framed his face. His eyes were a pale, metallic silver, cool and cutting when focused, almost too bright against his complexion.
He reminded Orochimaru distantly of the features of Kumo people. There was a tension in Ren's expression even at rest, as if his face defaulted to thinking rather than relaxing. His mouth was shaped for dry comments; when he pressed his lips together to swallow, it made the faintest downward line, like he disapproved of his own need to eat.
As always, Ren tried to finish his food quickly, chewing with efficient, almost military neatness so he could pull the mask back up again. The moment his jaw stopped moving, his hand inched toward the cloth, habitual.
…And that was why Yamamoto-san used these moments to ask questions. She timed them precisely—just when he was most exposed. Probably wanting to lengthen the time she saw him without the mask.
Orochimaru didn't understand the compulsion, but he recognized the pattern. People were visual creatures; they liked symmetry, contrast, expressive eyes. Urahara-san's face provided all of those.
He watched Yamamoto lean in, gaze flicking briefly to Urahara's mouth, then back to his eyes. Her expression brightened faintly; her pulse, if Orochimaru paid attention, sped up.
He considered, clinically, whether anyone had ever looked at him that way.
He knew what people said: that he was unsettling. Pale. Snake-like. Golden eyes too sharp, skin too light, hair too dark. Cold-blooded, a medic had whispered once when they thought he couldn't hear. Even his teammates—Jiraiya with his jests, Tsunade with her sighs—treated his looks as an extension of his strangeness.
He had never been called beautiful.
Useful, yes. Frightening, often. Impressive, sometimes. But never beautiful.
He watched Urahara-san tilt his head slightly as he listened to Yamamoto-san's question, silver eyes narrowing in thought, a small line forming between his brows. Yamamoto-san couldn't seem to look away from his face.
Would Urahara-san ever look at him like that? With that easy focus, that unconscious softness?
It was an odd, uncomfortable thought. He had never cared before whether anyone found him appealing. Flesh was meat; bone was structure; faces were just another arrangement of cartilage and skin. The idea of wondering if his features were… enough for someone else felt almost offensive to his usual priorities.
Still, the question lodged itself there like a splinter.
His own appearance was efficient for what he did—memorable, yes, but also off-putting enough that people kept distance. That had always been an advantage. Why, then, did some small, traitorous part of him now wonder if that same distance might prevent Urahara-san from ever directing that keen, thoughtful gaze at him with anything but professional interest?
Ridiculous.
He clicked his tongue softly and pushed the thought aside. Physical appeal was a secondary factor at best. Irrelevant to research. Irrelevant to ambition. And he wasn't even sure yet whether what he felt for Urahara-san qualified as anything more than a particularly intense attraction to an interesting mind.
He watched Ren gesture in the air, tracing an invisible matrix as he explained the cliff-path node to Yamamoto-san, voice low and patient.
Yes. For now, it was enough to observe. To listen. To catalogue.
Whether he was beautiful enough to provoke the same reaction was… unnecessary data. At least, that was what he told himself.
Orochimaru chose a spot a little apart from them, under the shade of a wide-rooted tree. From there, he could see all three of his temporary companions—and the path behind them. It was a habit at this point.
He unrolled his own food with precise movements.
Someone dropped down beside him with far less precision and considerably more noise.
"So," Jiraiya said, leaning back on his hands. "Impressed, huh?"
Orochimaru glanced at him.
"With what?" he asked.
"Yume-san," Jiraiya said, waggling his brows. "You were staring. I get it, she's pretty, smart, likes seals—"
"I was evaluating her competency," Orochimaru said flatly. "We are on a mission. It would be negligent not to."
Jiraiya gave him a look that managed to combine disbelief and mischief in equal measure.
"Uh-huh," he said. "And exactly how long did you evaluate her for to end up this smitten?"
Orochimaru froze for a fraction of a second.
"Smitten," he repeated.
"With Yume-san," Jiraiya said, as if it were obvious. "Don't worry, I get it. She's focused, dedicated, and the way she looks at Urahara-san like he hung the moon is—"
He broke off.
His eyes narrowed.
Slowly, he turned his head to fully study Orochimaru's face.
Orochimaru raised a brow, expression smooth.
"I'm not infatuated with her," he said, because apparently this needed to be stated.
Jiraiya blinked and then squinted.
"…With Ren-san?" he tried.
Orochimaru opened his mouth, found a denial waiting there, but he couldn't utter it.
It wasn't that simple. It wasn't just that. It was fascination, and recognition, and the quiet, unnerving satisfaction of finding a mind that didn't bore him after five minutes. It was the way Urahara's eyes sharpened when he solved a problem, the way his hands moved when he drew seals, the way he spoke about systems with the same reverence other people reserved for gods.
But also—
Urahara-san had called him Orochimaru-san in that calm, steady voice even when watching him summon snakes. Had met his curiosity without flinching. Had not recoiled when he mentioned autopsies and curse seals in the same sentence.
It was… complicated.
His silence lasted half a heartbeat too long but that was enough for Jiraiya as his face lit up like someone had handed him free sake for life.
"Oh my god," he breathed. "It's Ren-san."
"It is not—" Orochimaru began.
Jiraiya clapped a hand over his own mouth to muffle a gleeful sound, eyes sparkling with unholy delight.
"I've been waiting so long for this," he whispered fiercely, leaning in. "Twenty years, Orochimaru. Twenty years of you looking at people like they're interesting specimens and never once having an actual crush. And now—" He gestured wildly toward where Urahara-san and Yamamoto-san were still talking over a diagram sketched in the dirt. "—this."
"I do not have a crush," Orochimaru said, enunciating the word like it tasted awful.
"You hesitated," Jiraiya sing-songed. "I saw it. I felt it. This is the best day of my life. I'm going to annoy the shit out of you, believe it."
Orochimaru stared at him, expression going very still.
"Now I've learned my lesson," he said blandly. "Next time, I'll ignore you better."
Jiraiya cackled.
"Oh no," he said. "No, no, no. It's too late. You've shown weakness. You're doomed, my friend."
"We are not friends," Orochimaru said automatically.
"Sure," Jiraiya said cheerfully. "Keep telling yourself that. I'm still going to be your best man at the wedding."
Orochimaru allowed his gaze to drift away from him, back to where Urahara-san was patiently explaining something to Yamamoto-san, using a twig to draw a simplified lattice of anchors and flow lines on the ground.
Yamamoto-san's eyes shone.
Urahara-san's expression was relaxed in that particular way it only became when he talked about seals.
Something in Orochimaru's chest tightened.
"I'm not interested in a wedding," he said.
Jiraiya hummed.
"But you are interested," he said, softer now. Less teasing, more… knowing. "It's okay, you know. To like someone who isn't a corpse or an experiment."
Orochimaru's fingers stilled on his chopsticks, but he didn't look at Jiraiya as he hissed, "I don't like corpses."
"You like what they can tell you," Jiraiya said. "Same as seals. Same as jutsu. Same as people. You like taking them apart to see how they work."
Orochimaru was quiet for a long moment.
"…Perhaps," he said finally.
"And Ren-san?" Jiraiya pressed.
Orochimaru let his eyes linger on the white hair, the ink-stained hands, the easy way Urahara-san asked Yamamoto-san, Do you see why that would destabilize the neighboring node?, as if of course she could.
"He puts things together," Orochimaru said, almost to himself. "Systems. Nets. Explanations."
Jiraiya's grin softened into something almost gentle.
"Yeah," he said. "He does."
Silence settled between them, companionable despite Jiraiya's earlier glee.
After a moment, Jiraiya bumped his shoulder lightly against Orochimaru's.
"Don't worry," he said. "I'll only tell Tsunade."
Orochimaru gave him a look that could have frozen lava and Jiraiya laughed, loud and delighted.
Urahara-san looked up at the sound, brows lifting questioningly.
Orochimaru composed his face into neutrality.
"Nothing," he called over. "Jiraiya is having a moment."
"A revelation," Jiraiya corrected.
"Those are usually quieter," Urahara-san said dryly.
Yamamoto-san laughed again, leaning just a little closer to Urahara-san as he turned back to the diagram.
Orochimaru felt the irritation stir once more.
He breathed in. Breathed out. Filed the sensation away along with everything else. He had, after all, waited years to feel anything that wasn't boredom, hunger for knowledge, or the low-level hum of ambition.
Annoyance over a barrier-nin's flirting was… new, and he suspected Jiraiya would never let him forget it. But as he watched Ren explain yet another complex concept with ridiculous ease, Orochimaru reluctantly admitted to himself:
It might be worth the irritation.
.
Orochimaru was not, by nature, easily annoyed.
He prided himself on discipline. On control. On the ability to detach from inconvenience the way a snake shed old skin.
But Yamamoto Yume's flirting was beginning to test that control.
Every time she leaned a little too close to Urahara-san during seal modifications, every time her voice softened into that infuriatingly warm tone—
—and every time she did it, Jiraiya noticed his irritation, which annoyed him, and then Orochimaru's irritation grew threefold.
The first three days of travel after Jiraiya's 'revelation' were tolerable only because Urahara's work was genuinely fascinating. Watching him unravel an anchor node was like watching a master anatomist dissect a body—precise, reverent, utterly absorbed.
He would kneel before a carved array half-buried in moss, brush away dirt with ink-stained fingertips, hum thoughtfully, and begin rewriting the seal like he was solving a jigsaw puzzle only he could see.
He explained every step for Yamamoto's sake—how chakra threads were flexing, how the anchor was distributing strain, how he planned to adjust each sub-array so the net could accept future scrying expansions.
Orochimaru listened too, of course. Quietly, he noted the way Urahara thought. Smoothly. Like water running along grooves carved long before his body was born.
It was… pleasant.
Which made Yamamoto's breathy "ah, I understand now, Urahara-san" even more intolerable.
And Jiraiya's whispered, "Ohhh, someone's grumpy," in his ear worse.
By the fourth night, they were nearing the Land of Fire border. Everyone was on edge. Even Urahara, whose awareness normally wandered behind his sleepy eyes and foggy mornings, had gone unnervingly still after dinner, gaze flicking to the treeline every so often.
The ambush came at dawn.
Orochimaru was awake instantly. So was Jiraiya, already shoving on his sandals while muttering, "knew it, knew it, I told you the forest was too quiet."
Yume flung off her blanket, kunai in hand.
Urahara…did not move. He groaned, instead. Then lifted his head an inch out of his sleeping bag, squinting at them like an irritated cat.
"Why," he said, voice thick with sleep, "is it noisy."
Shuriken whistled overhead, and Jiraiya ducked. Orochimaru blocked it while Yamamoto fell into stance.
Urahara blinked confusedly. Then, as a Water-nin lunged for him—he clapped his hands. The sound cracked through the clearing like a whip as he pressed one palm to the ground, eyes barely half-open.
Then the soil rippled.
Orochimaru slammed a kunai into an attacker's throat, but part of his attention stayed glued to Urahara. He saw the moment Ren's chakra surged—not with the violent, blazing force of most shinobi, but with a focused, intricate shift, like a lock turning.
Then Urahara clapped again.
And the earth… moved.
Pillars erupted around them in an instant—sharp, narrow spikes that shot upward and skewered two Water-nin before they could scream. The others dodge—but the pillars fractured into tentacles.
Tentacles that lunged and wrapped around ankles and wrists and torsos. Tentacles that hardened into stone with a sound like cracking ice.
Within seconds, every enemy was either dead or bound.
Orochimaru stared.
Jiraiya stared.
Yamamoto stared.
Urahara-san yawned.
"Goodnight," he mumbled. Then he dropped back into his sleeping bag and pulled it up to his chin.
Jiraiya made a strangled noise somewhere between horror and admiration.
"Oh no you don't," he barked, stomping over and grabbing the edge of the bag. "Get up, genius boy! Explain! EXPLAIN!"
Ren peeked one silver eye out, still bleary.
"Seals," he said simply. "Modified ground. Changed density. Localized reinforcement. Easy."
"EASY?!" Jiraiya sputtered. "You wrote a battlefield seal in your sleep!"
Urahra-san blinked at him. Confused. Annoyed.
"I was awake," he said.
Yamamoto approached more quietly, kneeling beside him, eyes shining with awe.
"Urahara-san," she whispered, "that was… incredible."
He grunted and closed his eyes, already drifting back to sleep.
Jiraiya stomped off, muttering darkly about "geniuses" and "why do I even try to be impressive."
Yamamoto lingered, staring at Urahara-san's sleeping form like he'd hung the stars.
Orochimaru felt something weird coil low in his stomach. Not jealously like before. It was more akin to… hunger. To know more about this man and understand him.
So when Jiraiya drifted close again, wiping blood off his cheek, Orochimaru heard himself say, casually:
"Perhaps," he said, "I do have a crush on him."
Jiraiya froze. Then he whipped around so fast his hair tie nearly snapped.
"Okay. Okay, wait." He pointed at Orochimaru's chest. "Do you like his power or his brain? Actually—do you even like his looks?"
Orochimaru frowned at him as if he'd asked whether snakes blinked sideways.
"What do looks have to do with anything?" he asked, even if a couple of days ago he was wondering the same thing.
Jiraiya gaped.
"It's what most people are attracted to first!"
"That's… weird," Orochimaru said honestly.
"You're weird," Jiraiya grumbled.
Then he crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes.
"…So what was it?" he pressed. "What made you notice him?"
Orochimaru looked away, uncomfortable.
That alone made Jiraiya's jaw drop.
"Well?" Jiraiya demanded. "Don't leave me hanging, man!"
Orochimaru exhaled slowly.
"…I do admit that at first I was attracted to his mind," he admitted. "The structure of it. The way he speaks. His… patience. And knowledge."
Jiraiya's grin spread, wicked and warm and unbearably delighted.
"Oh," he said softly. "Oh, this is good."
Orochimaru shot him a cold, venomous look.
Jiraiya ignored it.
"I can't wait," he whispered. "I'm going to bother you every day until something happens."
Orochimaru sighed.
"I've learned," he said, deadpan, "that I must ignore you better."
Jiraiya only laughed harder.
And on the ground nearby, Urahara snored softly, completely unaware he had just become an active variable in Orochimaru's carefully ordered life—and Jiraiya's new favorite toy.
.
.
.
If you want to support me and read chapters ahead, go to my p@treon: JorieDS