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Chapter 64 – “To Cut the Mind, To Touch the Heart”
🕑 Added 2025-07-01 23:08:32 +0000 UTCChapter 64 – “To Cut the Mind, To Touch the Heart”
Tsunade walked through the sealed tunnel that led to Hajime’s private underground lab. Her footsteps echoed softly against the polished stone floor. The lights overhead flickered on one by one, powered by the chakra generator tucked somewhere deep in the walls. The air smelled faintly of sterilization agents and something older, something untouched.
Her eyes narrowed with every step.
This wasn’t a shinobi laboratory. It didn’t feel like anything built by Konoha hands. It changed from the initially looks of the lab when it was given to Hajime. The walls were too smooth, too mathematically shaped, carved with geometric designs that were precise yet foreign, almost ceremonial. Strange instruments lined the shelves. Some looked vaguely medical, others entirely alien.
She paused as her gaze fell on a skeletal metal harness resting in the corner of the room. It was humanoid in shape, yet its limbs bent in unnatural ways, built with joints and actuators she didn’t recognize. Whatever this was, it wasn’t for fighting.
“What the hell have you built down here, Hajime…” she muttered under her breath.
And then she saw him.
At the center of the room, beneath pale blue lights and containment seals, stood Hajime.
Shirtless.
Bald.
A stack of scrolls and handwritten notes clutched loosely in his hand, his lean, muscular frame shadowed by the flickering light. His halberd rested quietly against the far wall, but his presence filled the space entirely.
He looked calm, but his eyes were razor sharp.
“Tsunade,” he greeted, voice smooth and composed. “Thank you for coming.”
She crossed her arms, suspicion already rising. “You said this was urgent. But you didn’t say what kind of urgent.”
“I need your help,” he replied simply. “There’s no one else I trust for this.”
He stepped forward and handed her a scroll.
She took it without looking at him, unrolling it as her eyes scanned the contents.
And then her entire body froze.
Diagrams of an organ, fleshy, veined, connected to complex pathways branching into the brainstem. Notes described hormones, regulation, synchronization across artificial implants. Terminology she had never seen in medical texts but could interpret from context. Also the organs, Hajime implanted in his bodies.
She looked up, confused and horrified.
“This… goes in your brain?”
“Yes,” Hajime said. “It’s called the Magnificat. It’s the central gland that regulates all the other organs I’ve implanted. Without it, the entire system will begin to destabilize. It’s not optional.”
Tsunade’s fists clenched at her sides. “You’ve already changed your bones, your muscles, and you have a second heart, now you want to rewire your brain?”
“I’m not doing this on a whim,” Hajime said. “This is the key. The others won’t last without it.”
She slammed the scroll down on the table beside her, anger rising like a wave. “You went through all of this without saying a word to me. Not once did you ask for help. And now, when you need someone to cut open your skull, you call me?”
“I’m calling you,” he said gently, “because you’re the only one I trust to bring me back alive.”
The words hit her like a blow to the chest.
Not because he begged.
Not because he sounded desperate.
But because… he meant it.
She stared at him, her breath slowing. Somewhere in her chest, something softened.
He trusted her.
Not as Hokage. Not just as a medic.
But as her.
Her anger didn’t vanish. But something warmer pushed through it.
“…Even if I agreed, Hajime,” she said, voice quieter now, “Your nervous system’s too enhanced. Your brainwaves are reinforced an unknown energy, I can’t suppress them with any known anesthesia or genjutsu. I won’t be able to shut your mind down long enough to operate.” as she saw the information of Hajime on the folder.
“I’ll lower my defenses,” he replied. “Just for you. I’ll open the door. Let you in.”
Her breath caught.
That level of vulnerability from someone like him… it wasn’t just rare, it was sacred.
A long silence stretched between them.
Then she sighed, rubbing her forehead. “Fine. But if you die, I’m killing you again.”
......
Tsunade moved briskly. She cleaned the surgical table with one of Hajime’s chakra-sterilization blocks, the soap that now filled Konoha’s clinics. His inventions really were spreading fast.
The tools had already been laid out. Unfamiliar, sleek, and strangely shaped, but she could guess their function from their weight, their edges, their design.
Hajime climbed onto the table without hesitation. His breathing was slow, steady. Not a trace of fear.
She stood over him, fingers raised, channeling her chakra.
“Ready?” she asked.
He nodded once. “Begin.”
She activated her genjutsu, a deep layer sedation field, one she’d used only in the most dangerous surgeries. Immediately, resistance pushed back at her like a wall of iron. His mind was fortified, not against her, but by nature.
Then something shifted.
She felt the resistance fall away… and she entered.
And Hajime slept.
Surgery Begins
With her chakra scalpel glowing bright, she began. Her hands moved with confidence, even though her heart pounded harder than she liked to admit.
She made the first incision across his scalp. No blood. No twitch.
Clean.
The bone came next. She used a fine vibrating blade from Hajime’s workbench to carve a perfect oval into the skull above the brainstem. She lifted the disc of bone carefully and set it into a preservation fluid.
Tsunade wiped her brow.
Then turned toward the containment pod.
It opened with a hiss.
And the Magnificat floated upward, unaided.
Tsunade stepped back slightly. “What the”
The organ rotated slowly toward her… and nodded.
Her eyes widened.
“…Hajime?” she whispered.
Of course. His psychic essence was still active, guiding the process even while unconscious. Always in control, even now.
“Of course you wouldn’t let go,” she murmured. “Even asleep, you’re still fighting.”
Implantation
With a steady hand, she guided the organ down. It shimmered slightly with psychic feedback, but didn’t resist her. It almost wanted to be implanted.
She aligned it carefully with the base of the brain, just above the hypothalamus. Chakra tendrils lit up, already reaching into neural nodes.
Then it flared.
Hajime’s body jerked once.
She caught his shoulder with one hand, poured medical chakra into his nervous system.
“Not yet,” she growled. “You stay down.”
She kept working.
The organ slid deeper. Threads of psychic-responsive tissue locked into place. She sealed blood vessels, linked neural patterns, diffused hormonal pulses.
Then… stillness.
The Magnificat clicked softly into place.
Tsunade exhaled.
.......
She reseated the skull plate. Regrew the bone. Sealed skin and scalp with a long wave of medical chakra. Her hands were shaking now, not from fatigue, but from the weight of it.
She looked down at him.
Pale. Still. Silent.
Then his fingers twitched.
His eyes opened.
Tsunade leaned in sharply, startled.
He blinked at her. “It’s done,” he murmured.
Their faces were close.
Too close.
She didn’t pull away.
She stared into those strange, silver eyes.
She wanted to scold him. To shout.
But nothing came out.
Because for the first time… she didn’t see a student.
She saw a man.
And he had trusted her with his mind.
End of Chapter 64 – “To Cut the Mind, To Touch the Heart”
