I drank the medicine. The liquid was bitter and thick, the kind of concoction that tasted like someone had ground up leaves and spite together. I set the empty bottle back on the tray with a soft clink. Shizune watched me the entire time, arms folded, expression stuck somewhere between professional concern and residual suspicion from my earlier outburst.
"Okay," she said. "Now sleep for some time and rest. I’ll check up on you later."
"Okay," I answered, because anything more complicated felt dangerous. My voice still didn’t sound like mine. It was deeper, rougher, carrying the weight of someone who had shouted across battlefields. Naruto’s voice. I lay back against the pillows and listened to her footsteps leave the room. The door clicked shut. The blue system window lingered at the edge of my vision like a smug ghost.
[Quest 1/100 : Slap Shizune’s Ass.]
[Time remaining: 23:41:12]
I stared at the ceiling and started talking to myself again, the same way I always did when the silence got too heavy.
"How the hell am I supposed to do that? Slap someone’s ass. I’ve never done anything vulgar like that in my life. Not once. I could barely say thank you to the convenience store clerk without my hands shaking. Now this floating blue bastard wants me to grab a medical professional’s backside or die permanently. What kind of sick cosmic joke is this?"
I cursed the system under my breath. Lustful. Degenerate. The kind of entity that looked at a virgin shut-in who died in the snow and decided the best therapy was forced sexual harassment with a death timer. I rolled onto my side, then sat up again because lying still made the panic worse. The hospital room felt too bright. Too clean. The bandages around my torso itched. Whatever mission the original Naruto had been on before I arrived had left real injuries. The body healed fast—I could feel that much—but the phantom ache still lingered.
I got up and walked to the window.
Outside, the village stretched under a clear winter sky. Snow still clung to rooftops and the branches of distant trees. In the small garden below the hospital wing, a mother and her young son were playing catch. The boy kept missing. The mother laughed every time, soft and unbothered, retrieving the ball and tossing it back with exaggerated underhand throws so he could succeed. The kid’s face lit up every time he managed to close his small hands around it.
I watched them for a long time.
The image hit harder than I expected. My own mother used to do things like that when I was little—before the bullying, before the locked door, before I became the problem the family tiptoed around. Even after I stopped coming out of my room, she never fully gave up. Trays of food left outside the door. Soft knocks. Quiet questions through the wood about whether I was still alive in there. She never stopped caring, even when everyone else decided I was a lost cause. Even when I made it as hard as possible for her to reach me.
I pressed my forehead against the cool glass.
"She’s going to think I’m dead," I whispered to the empty room. "She’s going to get the call, or the police report, or whatever they do when a shut-in gets stabbed three blocks from home. She’s going to cry. Dad will go quiet the way he always does. And I won’t be there to say anything. Not even sorry."
The resolve settled in my chest like something heavy and necessary.
I needed to go back. I needed to apologize to her. For the years of silence. For the trays I sometimes ignored. For dying in the snow because I was too broken to walk outside until it was too late. One hundred quests. Whatever filthy, humiliating, system-mandated acts it took. I would do them. I would survive them. I would go home.
I turned away from the window and lay down on the bed again. Closed my eyes. Forced my breathing to slow. The system window stayed visible even behind my eyelids, a faint blue reminder. I started planning in the dark.
Pretend to sleep. Wait for her to come back. Make it look accidental at first—sleep-groping, something I could play off if she woke me. Then the actual slap when she turned away. Quick. Hard enough to register as a slap. Then commit to the act of still being "asleep" so she wouldn’t immediately start yelling or calling for Tsunade. It was pathetic. It was predatory. It was the only idea my panic-addled brain could produce that didn’t involve chasing her down a hallway.
Time passed. I don’t know how long. Long enough for the medicine to drag my real body toward drowsiness even while my mind stayed wired. Footsteps eventually returned. Soft. Careful. The door opened with almost no sound.
Shizune.
I kept my eyes closed and my breathing deep and even. She moved to the side of the bed. I heard the soft rustle of fabric as she set something down, then the careful tug of bandages being unwrapped. Her fingers were gentle, professional. She cleaned whatever wound the original Naruto had taken, applied fresh dressing, and worked in silence. The smell of antiseptic rose again.
My hand moved before I fully committed to the decision.
I let it drift, slow and clumsy, the way a sleeping person’s limb might shift. It found the curve of her ass through the fabric of her pants. Soft. Warm. Yielding under my palm in a way that made my brain short-circuit for a full second. I had never touched a woman like this. Not once. The system’s earlier insult about dying without knowing pleasure echoed in my skull like an accusation.
I kept my eyes closed and my face slack. Pretended the contact was unconscious. My fingers sank slightly into the flesh, testing, almost kneading, the way someone half-asleep might idly squeeze a stress ball. Soft. Springy. Nothing like the cold isolation of my old room.
"Ahhh" Shizune’s moan came out.
Shizune froze.
I felt the exact moment her entire body locked up. She didn’t pull away immediately. She just stood there, rigid, while my hand continued its slow, spongy exploration. Her breathing changed—sharper, quieter.
"What are you doing, Naruto?" she asked. Her voice was tight, flushed with something that wasn’t only anger.
I gave her nothing. No reply. No change in breathing. Just the continued slow movement of my hand against her ass like it was the most natural thing in the world for a sleeping man to do.
She stayed frozen for several long heartbeats. Then, carefully, she reached back and lifted my wrist. Her fingers trembled once. She placed my hand back on the bed with exaggerated gentleness, as if any sudden movement might wake the beast. I kept the act going—heavy breathing, closed eyes, the full performance of deep sleep.
I could feel her staring at me. Shock radiated off her in waves. She gathered the soiled bandages and tissue paper into the tray with quick, slightly clumsy movements. Her face, from the glimpse I risked through barely cracked lids, was bright red. She turned toward the door, tray in hand, still processing whatever had just happened.
That was the moment.
I opened my eyes fully, sat up just enough, and swung my open palm.
Smack!
The smack was sharp and loud in the quiet room.
Her whole body jolted forward a half-step. One hand flew back to the stinging spot. She spun around, eyes wide, a single tear already gathering at the corner from the sudden sharp pain. Her mouth opened, but no coherent words came out at first. She just stared at me—Naruto, asleep, hand still slightly raised, expression carefully blank while my heart hammered so hard I was sure she could hear it.
The system window flashed green at the edge of my vision.
[Quest 1/100 Complete.]
[Reward pending...]
Shizune’s face cycled through shock, humiliation, and rising fury in the space of two seconds. She clutched the tray harder, turned on her heel, and walked out of the room with stiff, rapid steps. Just before the door closed I heard her mutter under her breath, voice tight and watery:
"Wake up for real, bastard... then I’ll show you. I’ll slap your ass red and blue."
The door clicked shut.
I sat on the edge of the bed in the sudden silence, palm still tingling from the contact, and stared at the place where she had been standing. The system’s completion notice hovered like a smug trophy. Outside the window the mother and son were still playing catch in the garden, completely unaware that a man from another world had just crossed a line he could never uncross in order to claw his way back to the mother he had failed.
I looked down at Naruto’s hands.
"One down," I told the empty room. "Ninety-nine to go."
The blue screen pulsed once, almost like it was smiling.
And for the first time since waking up in this body, I felt the full weight of what kind of story I had been dropped into.
Give me power!!!