▸ Column · Hidden Leaf Village, shinobi era — Tsunade as the Fifth Hokage answering a kunoichi's letter
TSUNADE replies.
Replied to by Tsunade, with a rebuttal from Orochimaru.
The letter
My engagement to Daichi collapsed three weeks before the wedding, and the morning after, I went to every matchmaker in the village and said yes to every name they put in front of me — figuring the fastest way over one man was straight through a dozen. Now I'm four meetings deep with a gentle, patient man named Kenji who cooks for me and remembers small things I said in passing. And I freeze when he takes my hand, because the only thought in my head is that it isn't Daichi's. Last night Kenji asked if I'd meet his sister next month. I said "of course!" while screaming on the inside, because I don't think I want a life with him — I think I want a person-shaped distraction from grief. I never told him I was engaged eight weeks ago, and the silence is starting to feel like a lie I'm building everything on. Do I owe him the truth that he's a rebound? And can a person even fall for someone real while using courtship as a painkiller?
Tsunade replies
Sit up straight, kid, because I'm going to confess before I say one word that sounds like a lecture. I lost the people who mattered most to me and I responded by drinking, gambling, and running from everything I was good at for years. So I know the move you're making — anesthesia. I'm the world champion of it. Here's the one difference between your painkiller and mine: my bottle didn't cook me dinner and remember what I said. Yours does. You've found the cruelest version of the trap, because the thing you're numbing yourself with is a man who doesn't know he's medicine. He's the one without his eyes open here, and I always stand in front of the person who can't see the blade coming. He's owed the truth — you were engaged eight weeks ago. The silence isn't a kindness, it's a debt growing in the dark. Now your real question: can you fall for him while he's anesthesia? No. That's what anesthesia is for — it kills the feeling you'd need to fall. So put it down. Not Kenji, necessarily. The using. Grieve Daichi first. Carry him. Then, if Kenji's still standing there and you're not screaming, place that bet honest — and let him choose with the cards face up.
— Tsunade
Orochimaru weighs in
Kukukuku. My old teammate, ever the medic — bind the wound, protect the man who can't see the blade. Touching. But she's diagnosed the wrong patient, my dear. The gentle one is not your problem; he's barely your subject. Your affliction is the ghost. You are still pressing a hand into Daichi's absence, and Tsunade will tell you to cradle that grief tenderly, forever. I'd tell you to shed it — let the dead engagement slough off like old skin, and walk on lighter. There. Now the careful sentence, the only one you'll get: I shed every such warmth, and became magnificently capable, and entirely alone — and discovered, far too late to model it, that the second thing was load-bearing for the first. So shed Daichi. But notice precisely whom you'd resemble if you shed Kenji the same way.
— Orochimaru
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