Chapter 150: Tsunade [1]

Tsunade never made it to the Hokage mansion that day. She stayed in the gambling district until the sake ran out and the last of her pride was soaked in it. By the time she staggered back to her own house the sky was already dark. She shoved the key into the lock and turned. Nothing happened. She tried again, harder. The key didn’t fit.

Someone had changed the lock.

The memory of the afternoon hit her like a cold slap. The dice. The final roll. The brat’s calm voice saying *everything*. She had bet the house. And lost.

For a long minute she just stood there on the step, forehead against the wood, breathing through her teeth. There was nowhere else to go that wouldn’t raise questions. In the end she turned and started walking toward the Hokage tower.

The streets were quiet. Her thoughts were not. She could pressure him. She was still the Hokage. One word and the little bastard would hand everything back. Or she could offer him jōnin rank. Every shinobi wanted that. A few months of easy missions. He would take it. He had to. She was Tsunade of the Sannin. No wet-behind-the-ears genin was going to keep her house and her money.

She was still smiling at her own cleverness when she pushed through the mansion doors. The night staff froze. The Hokage rarely appeared this late, and never smelling so strongly of sake.

"I had work left," she muttered, waving them off.

They didn’t believe her, but no one was stupid enough to say it.

Her office door was unlocked. She stepped inside, flicked the light on, and stopped dead.

Kael sat in her chair with both feet crossed on the desk, looking for all the world as if the room had always belonged to him.

"So you’re finally here," he said.

Tsunade’s eye twitched. "Brat. What the hell are you doing in my chair?"

"I won this place too, remember? Everything you have belongs to me now."

She barked a short, ugly laugh. "This is the Hokage’s office. It doesn’t even belong to me personally. You can’t claim a government building."

Kael tilted his head. "But the position is yours. And you bet everything. So the chair’s mine until I say otherwise."

Tsunade strode forward and slammed both palms on the desk hard enough to make the inkstone jump. "Enough of these stupid games. Tell me what you actually want. You want jōnin rank? It’s yours. Time off missions? Done. Name it."

Kael didn’t move his feet. "I can get those things on my own. Why would I ask you for them? You belong to me. That means I can order you to give them to me whenever I feel like it."

Her voice dropped into a dangerous growl. "Don’t get smart with me, kid."

"If you weren’t planning to honor the bet," he said mildly, "you shouldn’t have played."

Tsunade’s face flushed darker. "How did you even win? You cheated. That’s the only explanation."

Kael raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. How would you know I cheated... unless you were the one who weighted the dice in the first place?"

She froze. The words hung in the air. She had almost admitted it out loud.

Kael continued, voice still calm. "What do you think the village would say if they found out their Hokage was loading dice in a public gambling house? The legendary Sannin, caught cheating drunks out of their ryo."

Tsunade’s hands curled into fists on the desk. For a moment pure murder sat in her eyes. Then the practical part of her brain, the part that had kept her alive through three great wars, took over. She forced the anger down and spoke through clenched teeth.

"Fine. Spell it out. What do you want in exchange for my money and my house?"

Kael finally took his feet off the desk and sat up straight. "One condition. You become my maid for a month. You do everything I say. No arguments."

Tsunade stared at him as if he had grown a second head. "Are you out of your mind? I’m a Sannin. I have self-respect. I’m not going to play house-maid for a brat who isn’t even half my age."

Kael stood, gathered the papers he had been pretending to read, and started toward the door. "All right. Then I keep everything, and tomorrow morning the whole village hears how their Hokage cheats at dice."

He had his hand on the handle before she spoke again.

"...Wait."

He looked back.

Tsunade’s jaw worked. Pride warred with the very real threat of public disgrace. In the end pride lost, but only by a hair.

"One month," she said, voice rough. "I do what you say for one month. Then the debt is cleared and I never want to hear about this again."

She told herself it was temporary. A stupid prank the kid would get bored of in a few days. He was still Naruto—loud, impulsive, ultimately harmless. He wouldn’t actually make her scrub floors or fetch tea like some ordinary servant. He just wanted to feel big for a while. Once he got it out of his system she would take her house and her money back and pretend none of this had happened.

Kael closed the door again and turned the lock with a soft click.

"Good," he said. "Then starting now, you’re my maid for the next thirty days."

Tsunade stood on the other side of the desk, still slightly drunk, still furious, and already beginning to suspect she had just made a much worse bargain than she realized.

---