Amidst Tsunade's incoherent babbling, Saiki managed to lug her into the living room.
"Shizune... my money... sake... I want more sake..." Even after he sat her down in a chair, she showed no sign of settling down, shouting at the top of her lungs.
"God damn it, how much did she actually put away to end up like this?" Saiki thought, his head beginning to throb.
Ninja weren't immune to alcohol. If they could be poisoned, they could be intoxicated; Rock Lee was the perfect example.
To get someone of Tsunade's caliber this drunk, she must have downed several gallons of high-grade sake. Saiki was sure of it.
Reeking as she was, he couldn't just let her crawl into bed. He left her to her shouting and went to fetch a basin of hot water.
When he wrung out a towel and tried to wipe her face, Tsunade slapped his hand away.
"No! Get that away from me!"
The alcohol had left her skin flushed and hot; the last thing she wanted was a steaming towel on her face.
A flurry of petals drifted through the air as Saiki split off two Flower Clones. One grabbed each of her arms to hold her still. If Tsunade hadn't been too drunk to exert her full strength, he never would have been able to restrain her.
As she struggled, Saiki washed her face as if he were scrubbing a stubborn toddler. The hot water seemed to clear her head slightly.
By the time he started on her hands, she had stopped resisting.
She wasn't completely unconscious; she was just caught in a state of chaotic, drunken delirium.
Saiki knelt in front of her to remove her shoes. He nearly took a kick to the face, which made him seriously consider throwing her out into the street.
At 163 cm (5'4"), Tsunade wasn't short by the standards of her world, and her legs were slender and shapely. She only appeared shorter because her massive, papaya-sized breasts were so dominant, making her curves look even more compact and explosive.
Her feet were practically perfect. Her calves were slim, her feet delicate and petite, and her ten toes—painted with bright red nail polish—looked like translucent gems. A foot fetishist would have died of happiness right then and there.
Saiki, however, felt only exhaustion. If Tsunade hadn't saved his life, he wouldn't be playing maid and washing her feet like a dutiful son.
As Saiki dipped her feet into the warm water, he used his own hands to grip her ankles to prevent any more kicking, while sprouting two extra arms from his shoulders to do the actual scrubbing. Under the warmth, Tsunade finally went quiet.
However, the hot water accelerated her blood circulation. Feeling a surge of heat, Tsunade began frantically shedding her outer robes. Her movements were so coordinated that for a second, Saiki thought she was faking the intoxication.
Tsunade was notoriously lazy; she usually made Shizune and Saiki do her laundry. But she maintained herself perfectly. Thanks to the Strength of a Hundred Seal, her feet were as smooth as silk, without a single callus—just like a high-born noblewoman who had never walked a day in her life.
He meticulously cleaned her feet, dried them with a cloth, and set them into clean slippers.
When Saiki finally looked up, he saw Tsunade staring at him with tear-filled eyes. He wondered why she had stopped her antics, only to find her on the verge of a breakdown.
"What's wrong, Sister Tsunade?"
His question acted as a trigger. Tsunade suddenly burst into a loud, childish wail. She lunged forward and tackled him in a massive hug, nearly knocking over the basin of water.
The sudden "facial" from her massive chest and her hysterical sobbing caught Saiki completely off guard.
With his head buried in that deep, snow-white cleavage, Saiki was overwhelmed by the sensation of soft, slippery skin. The warmth and the faint, milky scent were intoxicating enough to make a man want to stay there forever, but he was rapidly running out of oxygen.
Saiki struggled with all his might to pull back from her soft embrace, but Tsunade only squeezed harder.
Being crushed by those two mounds of flesh was a physical luxury, but Tsunade possessed monstrous strength. If Saiki didn't have a hyper-resilient physique, he would have been strangled to death by her "love."
Listening to her muffled sobs, Saiki began to comfort her like a small child. "Don't cry, don't cry, Sister Tsunade. What happened? Tell me, okay?"
But she didn't answer. She just kept weeping. Saiki's head was spinning.
Most people either go silent, get violent, or start crying when they're wasted. They don't know why they're crying; they just feel an overwhelming sense of grievance.
Humanity spent millions of years evolving its intelligence, but it only takes a few bottles of sake to revert the brain back to a primitive state. That was Tsunade's current condition.
Did she have reason to feel aggrieved?
She had more than enough.
Her clansmen had been sent to the front lines to protect Konoha until the Senju name had all but vanished.
Then came the deaths of her brother, Nawaki, and her lover, Dan Kato—the man who had given her a new reason to hope. Their deaths had carved a hollow void in her soul. How could she not be in pain?
Even twenty years in the future, she would still be drowning in this trauma.
Tsunade's mind had effectively regressed to that of a wounded animal, but the sensation of Saiki washing her face and feet had likely triggered those painful memories of being cared for.
Seeing that she wouldn't stop crying or answer him, Saiki felt a pang of pity. He had his clones clean up the living room while he stood up.
He swept Tsunade into a princess carry. She looked "fleshy," but Saiki was surprised by how light she actually felt—perhaps only seventy or eighty pounds.
He tried to talk to her again, but she just buried her face in his neck and sobbed. If he hadn't been twenty centimeters shorter than her, Saiki would have felt like he was holding a little girl.
It was a shame he didn't have a camera, though he had his Genjutsu. He decided that if Tsunade ever tried to pull rank on him in the future, he would show her this recording of her most shameful, vulnerable moment.
Of course, it was just a thought. He would never actually do something so cruel to his family.
He reached her bedroom—a room he was intimately familiar with.
Aside from her bras and panties, Saiki was the one who usually cleaned her messy, disheveled room.
He laid her on the bed, but as he tried to pull away, Tsunade refused to let go.
"Sister Tsunade... let go," Saiki whispered.
To his utter shock, her crying subsided into a small, broken whisper: "Don't go..."
The words left Saiki completely stunned.
He didn't know what specific memory she was reliving, but he could feel how fragile and desperate she was. She was terrified of being alone.
Saiki wasn't sure if she was truly blacked out or just playing the role, and he was honestly a bit scared. If he stayed in her bed, he was fairly certain she would try to kill him when she woke up in the morning.
But seeing her so heartbroken, he gritted his teeth and thought, To hell with it. If she hits me, she hits me.
Allowing her to keep her arms around him, Saiki lay down on the bed.
Saiki had never claimed to be a saint—if he were, he wouldn't be "cultivating" so many young girls.
But he had a conscience. He wouldn't touch a girl until she was old enough to know what she was doing. He wanted them to have the choice to regret him later.
Now, lying in Tsunade's bed, he was surrounded by her scent, even through the smell of alcohol.
And with those two massive mounds of softness pressed against his chest, his mind began to wander to very dark, very erotic places.
But then he heard her quiet, rhythmic sobbing, and his lust was instantly extinguished. Eventually, Tsunade's weeping faded away, and Saiki drifted into a shallow sleep.
He didn't know how much time passed before he began to have a nightmare. He was in a world of pure white, where gargantuan white steamed buns with legs were chasing him. He couldn't escape. They crowded around him, smothering him until he couldn't draw a breath, his mouth and nose sealed by their soft, doughy surfaces.
Meanwhile, Tsunade was having a very different dream. She was in a vast, endless grassland, racing on a horse. The annoying brat Saiki was racing against her, and she was leaning forward over her horse, her thighs gripping its flanks as she spurred it faster and faster. She was winning, leaving Saiki in the dust, and she felt a thrill of joy she hadn't felt in years.
But as she rode, she felt something on the saddle poking her persistently in the butt, triggering a sudden, urgent need to pee.
Dawn began to break over the Hidden Leaf.
Inside Tsunade's room, the first rays of light filtered through the window. On the bed, due to Tsunade's restless tossing, the quilt had been kicked aside.
Tsunade still had her arms wrapped around Saiki's neck, and her body was moving in a rhythmic, undulating crawl.
In her dream, as the horse galloped faster, Tsunade felt she could no longer hold it. Having finally left Saiki and Shizune far behind, she hopped off her horse, pulled down her pants, and let out a long breath of relief as she finally released the pressure. Then, she woke up.