Chapter 24

Kenshiro's POV;

For a moment I was shocked to learn that Tsunade thought we had grown apart. Even more, that she was feeling this badly, and was giving herself the fault. I never thought that we were drifting away from each other. I never spoke with my siblings in my first life about the preferences in the opposite sex or stuff like that. I would have never spoken to my sister about my likes and dislikes, not that I had one.

I tried to come up with something while rubbing her back. Once she has calmed enough to not lose control in hiccups I started to formulate an answer. "Tsu-chan, you would just have had to ask. I didn't tell you about my Jutsu because it was only a minor setback, one that would have needlessly worried you. About my preferences in the female body, they are... how should I say... you've shown clear dislike about such things. I thought it might not be the best to bring up these topics until you start them on your own."

Needless to say, I didn't think it was a very good answer. She nonetheless looked up at me, eyes all puffy from her crying. "Really? It's not because you don't want to spend time with me?"

I hugged her again before answering. "Of course it wasn't. There is nothing I would like to do more than to learn more with you about the human body or to laze around and eat some of Mom's cookies."

"But you are always away with your team, even when team training is over," she argued, which reminded me that her team relations aren't as good as mine.

"Tsu-chan, it's my team, my comrades, I have to rely on them whenever we are out on a mission. If I don't spend time with them, even after training, I could die the next time we have to fight in a team. We need to train to be strong and that only happens if I spent time with them. Even after our normal training's schedule. But if you want to, I promise to try and get home earlier, okay?"

This time she didn't look up."Really?"

"Yes, really. Now please stop being sad, I like it more when you smile," I confirmed and ruffled her hair.

"Only if you wash my hair again," she demanded. I chuckled good humorously and ruffled my hand through her hair again.

"I will do that, but not here. We are in an open hot spring and you are on the male-only side. Someone could come inside at any time. Go get out and meet me in the shared part," I offered. She looked at me wide-eyed and with an open mouth. I think she only now realized where she was.

Her face turned beet red and with a cute squeal, she jumped out of the water and over the fence, only for her head to poke back over it again a moment later. "D..don't be late." Her head vanished and I could hear how she got ready to leave.

I did the same and started to think about what had happened just now. Tsunade must have bottled this up for some time now if she reacted this strongly to something small like this. I always acted as if she and my team were mentally grown up, we were child-soldiers after all. However, situations such as this one show that this might not always the case.

Tsunade isn't a woman who has a solid personality, she isn't an adult that understands that some small secrets are normal. She is a girl not older than twelve, a twelve-year-old girl that was growing up with little to no contact to none child-soldiers. It might be that she simply did not get the memo, so to say.

Or it is because she has already lost two of her loved ones. She might have come up with the thought that Death will take us all and that we should try and make do with what time we have left.

Which is not untrue, and without the death of Hashirama and Dad it might have shown itself less creepy. Both their death's hit her hard. She is trying to keep all her remaining loved ones close. Me not telling her everything must have triggered something in her that made her believe that I would leave at some time as well.

Well, I don't plan to vanish on her, she is my little sister after all. And I also don't plan on dying. And if she does, well, there are ways to revive someone in this world. Edo Tensei and the Rinnegan are two such ways. And I know how to get my hands on both.

With a shake of my head, I dispersed such dark thoughts and stepped into the gender shared part of the spa. Tsunade was already sitting on one of the washing chairs and had her lotions prepared. There were not many other people present, a couple that sat inside the onsen and a woman washing herself a few chairs off of Tsunade.

Tsunade saw me, smiled and gestured to her side. I picked a chair up and placed it behind her, before sitting down and grabbing one of her many lotions. I don't mind washing her hair, it was as calming for me as for her. She liked the massage and I liked the feel of her soft hair.

Once I was done we changed places and she did mine. It was the same straight blond hair as Tsunade's, only that I wore mine only as long as my shoulders. Taking a bath in an onsen was the right decision.

During the whole way back to the hotel Tsunade was smiling brightly, she even had a small skip in her step. I was about to say goodnight when she turned around and gave me a big hug, before then telling me goodnight herself and vanishing into her room.

Happy that she was happy, I walked into mine and found Sakumo and Ariha sitting at the table, playing cards. "Sorted everything out Kenshiro-kun?" Asked Ariha without looking up from her hand. From my position, I could see both of them cheating. Card games for a Ninja aren't good without a fair amount of cheating.

Ariha was using a Genjutsu on her Sharingan, probably to read the reflection of Sakumo's cards off in his eyes. I don't know if Sakumo knew that she had her eyes activated. However, he once told me that when he did know he would counteract her by trapping himself in an ocular Genjutsu. He would see one thing and then use his fingers to feel the real symbol of the card. His own cheating was by using tricks to exchange and mix his own cards into the game. He was also quite good with manipulating the dices.

"Yeah, thanks for leaving," I replied and sat down between them. Sakumo was winning, but not by much. Neither would play any games with me, my luck was simply better than any cheat.

"You don't have to. But please don't write stuff on my back again when I am half naked, do you have any idea how freaked out I was when I felt something on my back?" She gave me a small glare, but there was no real heat behind it. I think she was more miffed that Sakumo was still winning.

"I know, but Orochimaru was behaving funny. Tsunade was acting strangely since we started the exam and I wanted to know why." She nodded in acceptance. She may not like Tsunade as much as I'd like to, but she would still help me if I ask to.

"And what happened?" Asked Sakumo, he also only left because I signed it to him with hand signs.

"She came up with the idea that we have grown apart and that I would leave her. Silly sister, as if I would leave her alone. She is way too helpless and forgetful, she wouldn't survive a month without my help and tips." I mean seriously, I have been once on a week-long mission and when I came back I found her with a cough. Sounds like nothing much, but a medical scan showed that she had nearly killed her own immune system.

She had been trying to increase her own resilence and applied her own medical Chakra into her own leukocytes. So far so good, might have worked with enough control. Control she has not had and probably never will. This is too detailed, too many interconnecting parts.

What she did was frying a lot of her T-Killer Cells and Macrophages. She was trying to rebuild the damage, but healing your own body is always harder than healing someone else. She would have survived, probably, but not without a heavy flue. And that is stuff I have at the top of my mind.

Both chuckled, and Ariha pointed out what they were both were thinking. "Don't play as if you weren't freaking out yourself. Both Sakumo-kun and I could see that you were worried. You are as much a sis-con as she is a brother-con." I had nothing to counter that. Instead, I signed Sakumo sneakily how she was now also trying to use mirrors and prevented her from making the game even again.

She noticed relatively quickly and threw the mirrors at me. I evaded them easily, then caught two with my Chakra strings and used them to see both of their cards while laying down in my bed. "We shouldn't stay up too long, the first round starts tomorrow and it is normally a test that includes either information gathering or preventing others from gaining information."

"Yeah, yeah," replied Sakumo with a dismissing wave of his hand. He had seen the new mirrors and was now repositioning a few of his own to look at the mirror that was reflecting Ariha's hand.