[Quest 1/100 ✓]
I sat on the edge of the hospital bed for a long time after the door closed, staring at the empty space where Shizune had stood. My palm still tingled. The sound of that sharp smack kept replaying in my head on a loop. Huff. Finally she left. It had been terrifying in a way that had nothing to do with the system’s death timer and everything to do with the fact that she was Tsunade’s student. Tsunade’s right hand. The woman who had just walked out of here with a stinging ass and a single tear of pure fury was fully capable of turning me into a smear on the wall with medical ninjutsu if she ever decided the "sleeping groping" excuse wasn’t good enough.
I dragged both hands down my face—Naruto’s face—and muttered to the empty room.
"Ninety-nine left. Ninety-nine more of these. Okay. I can do this. I have to do this. Mother is waiting on the other side of whatever this is. I don’t get to quit."
The blue system window flared brighter, almost cheerful.
[Congratulations on completing the first quest.
You may now access the abilities of Naruto Uzumaki appropriate to this timeline.]
A clean list appeared beneath the message:
1. Shadow Clone Jutsu
2. Rasengan
3. Transformation Jutsu
4. Sexy Jutsu
5. Nine-Tails Release (up to 4 tails)
I read it twice. Then a third time. The knowledge settled into my mind the way muscle memory settles into a body that has trained for years—sudden, complete, and not mine. I could feel the hand seals for the Shadow Clone Technique hovering at the edge of thought. I understood the precise rotational force required for a Rasengan. Transformation felt as natural as breathing. Sexy Jutsu sat there like a bad joke the system had deliberately included. And the Nine-Tails... four tails maximum. Controlled. Dangerous. Available.
I looked down at my hands again.
This was the period right after Naruto returned from his training with Jiraiya. The time skip had already happened. He was stronger, taller, sharper around the edges, but still the same loud, orange-wearing idiot the village both loved and underestimated. That tracked with the hospital room, the mission injuries, and the way Shizune had treated me like a familiar headache rather than a stranger.
I stood up. The body moved easily now that the first quest was done and the system had unlocked the toolkit. Whatever residual damage remained from the original mission felt distant, already knitting itself under the medicine and whatever passive healing this body possessed. I needed air. I needed to move. Sitting in the room with the memory of Shizune’s shocked face was going to drive me insane.
I left.
The hospital corridor was busy. Shinobi in flak jackets moved past with the purposeful stride of people who had somewhere important to be. Nurses carried trays. A pair of genin argued quietly about a mission scroll near the stairwell. No one looked twice at me. Of course they didn’t. I was Naruto Uzumaki. The village’s loudest problem child grown. Walking these halls in this body felt like wearing a costume that everyone else believed was real.
I didn’t know what to do next. The system had gone quiet after the reward list. No second quest. No guidance. Just the lingering green checkmark of Quest 1 and the open map of a village I had only ever seen through a screen.
I wandered.
Sunlight came through the high windows in clean winter shafts. I passed a waiting area, a supply closet, another stretch of hallway, and then I saw her.
Tsunade.
She was walking the corridor ahead of me, distant enough that I only caught her in profile at first. Blonde hair. The same confident, slightly irritated posture I remembered from every episode. The white coat. The diamond on her forehead. Even from this far she carried the kind of presence that made the hallway feel smaller. My brain—still half Kael, still the shut-in who had spent years consuming every frame of this world—supplied the only thought it could manage.
She is so hot.
It was stupid. It was shallow. It was the exact kind of observation the system would probably log for later use. I still thought it. Hard.
I didn’t get the chance to do anything with the thought.
A sharp smack landed against the back of my head.
"You jerk. You woke up, huh?"
I spun. Shizune stood right behind me, eyes narrowed, one hand still raised from the head-slap. Her other hand rested on her hip. The flush from earlier had faded, replaced by pure, focused irritation. She was studying my face like she was trying to peel it open and read the truth underneath.
I forced the most innocent expression this body could produce.
"Yeah. Just now."
She didn’t look convinced. Her gaze stayed locked on mine, searching for any flicker of guilt, any micro-expression that would confirm I had been awake the entire time I was groping her. I kept the act going. Mild confusion. Slight concern. The face of a man who had no idea why the medical-nin in front of him looked ready to commit violence.
"Why are you angry?" I asked, tilting my head the way Naruto sometimes did when he was pretending not to understand something.
Shizune’s lips pressed into a thin line. She stared for another three full seconds. Whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it—or she decided she couldn’t prove it in a public hallway. Finally she exhaled through her nose and looked away.
"Okay. Go rest. You’re still not fully recovered."
I smiled. It felt strange on this face, but it seemed to work.
"Okay."
She turned and walked past me without another word, shoulders still a little tight. I watched her go until she rounded the corner. The moment she disappeared, the system window exploded into existence directly in front of my eyes, larger and brighter than before.
[Quest 2/100 : Fuck Shizune]
[Time limit: 3 days]
I stared at the text.
The corridor kept moving around me—shinobi, nurses, distant voices—but none of it registered. The floating blue letters sat there with the same cheerful finality as the first quest, only this time the demand was so much worse. Not a slap. Not a grope I could half-excuse as sleep. The full act. With the same woman who had just slapped the back of my head and still clearly wanted to murder me.
I heard my own voice come out quiet and broken.
"Kill me."
The system did not answer. It simply hovered, waiting, the timer for Quest 2 already beginning its silent countdown somewhere behind the text. I stood in the middle of the hospital corridor in Naruto Uzumaki’s body, newly unlocked jutsu humming under my skin, the Fifth Hokage still walking somewhere ahead of me, and the second quest already demanding something I had never done with anyone in either life.
Ninety-eight more after this one.
I closed my eyes for a second and spoke to the only audience I had ever trusted—the empty air, the walls, the version of myself that still remembered a dark room and a mother’s quiet knocks.
"Okay. Talk it through. You’re still here. You’re still trying to get home. She still thinks it might have been an accident. You still have time. Somehow. You have to find a way to do this without dying, without destroying whatever thin cover story you have left, and without completely losing whatever is left of Kael in the process."
The system window pulsed once, almost impatient.
I opened my eyes, turned away from the direction Shizune had gone, and started walking again. The village outside the hospital walls was waiting. Tsunade was somewhere in these corridors. The Nine-Tails stirred faintly behind the new seals I could now feel. And Quest 2 sat in my vision like a loaded kunai pointed straight at the rest of my second life.
One step at a time.
Even if every step felt like walking off a cliff.
Give me power!!!