Vizem
patreon
Chapter 36 - The Hungry Whirlpool
🕑 Added 2025-05-15 15:20:08 +0000 UTCKUSHINA UZUMAKI
Kushina yanked her long red hair into a high ponytail, tying it off with a practiced flick of her wrist. The strands still gleamed vivid red despite the years. She barely glanced at herself in the mirror, but she caught the color of her own reflection anyway. She looked the same on the outside. Strong. Energetic. Kunoichi-mom extraordinaire. Even a passing glance felt like too much. She forced a smile, though no one was there to see it.
The kitchen was already awake—sunlight bleeding in through the paper screens, casting soft wheaty gold across her counters. She threw herself into motion like it was a mission. Her hands were fast and sure as she cracked open the fridge, grabbing neatly packed vegetables, yesterday’s grilled chicken, and seasoning oils. Groceries were topped up. She’d made sure of it.
Anything to keep the reawakened Hungry Whirlpool at bay.
“Naruto’s big B-rank mission,” she muttered to herself, half-grinning, a little breathless from how hectic her heart already felt. “No way he’s going out there with crap rations, dattebane.”
Cutting boards thudded under her blade. Ginger. Onions. She worked quickly, confidently, though the rhythms had a bit more edge to them than usual. Maybe too fast, and the slicing too short, like she was trying to exhale something that wouldn’t leave, no matter how much she moved.
Her son was growing up. Her baby boy.
Fifteen now. Tall like his dad. Talks like her, fights like... well, both of them—in his own wild, wonderful way. That sharp stab of pride twisted something in her chest. She didn’t cry.
It must be the onions.
Kushina rubbed her eyes with the back of her wrist, sniffed — damn onions — and moved to sauté the protein. She already had the bento boxes laid out by the scroll. Her seal work still made even Anbu trainees sweat. A little touch, some heat-preserving matrices, and his food would come out fresh no matter how long he delayed eating. She had plans for everything—except the ache between her legs. But she was starting to get used to it since its awakening…. kinda.
The clang of the frying pan was too fucking loud.
She exhaled through her nose.
Focus.
Chicken into the pan. Splash of sesame oil, a bit of miso paste. No time for anything fancy, but it would taste like home. Like her. And that mattered.
He was so excited last night, bubbling over like he’d nearly pissed himself with the briefing halfway through. She smiled through the heat welling behind her eyes again. Naruto was determined. Optimistic. Still just a kid in more ways than one.
Still, she wrapped each part of the meal obsessively, made sure the pickled plum sat just right over the rice. Carrots sliced into little spirals, a stupid habit she’d never let go of. His teammates would probably tease, but her boy’d smile anyway. Because Mom packed it. Mom believed in him.
“Come back safe,” Kushina whispered without thinking. Her voice caught at the end.
With Naruto’s bentos packed, sealed, and tucked inside a scroll as neat as any mission dossier, Kushina wiped her hands and turned towards the hallway with a sigh. Breakfast scent already flooded the house—eggs frying now, steam rising from the rice cooker. Everything like clockwork.
“Alright,” she muttered, stretching her arms overhead until her back cracked. Her breasts shifted under her shirt, nipples sensitive, annoyingly more sensitive than usual. It must be the change in weather. Her arms hastily came back down. “Ugh. Not today, dammit.”
She wiped her hands and turned on her heel, marching down the hall, the slap of her slippers against the floor just a little louder than necessary.
It was stirring again, despite her best efforts to exhaust it with early morning chores. This insistent need that had slumbered for years until he had awakened it. One encounter against that table, and suddenly her body remembered what it had been missing all along.
Naruto was still asleep. Of course, he was.
“Naruto,” she called, sharp but sing-song, knuckles tapping once against his bedroom door. No answer.
Kushina huffed but didn’t wait. She yanked the door open fast enough for it to rattle on its runners. There he was—sprawled out across the bed like a lazy fox kit, limbs tangled in the blanket like he’d been fighting sleep instead of getting any. Hair a golden mop, mouth parted in a drool-lined snore, shirt twisted up his stomach.
“Naruto,” she said, louder this time—voice snapping like a shinobi captain’s.
Her son groaned, turned his face deeper into the pillow, and muttered something that sounded very un-Hokage-worthy.
Kushina’s eye twitched.
“Oi,” she barked, crossing the room in three long strides. “Get your ass up before I toss you out the damn window!”
A muffled fart of a reply made her whole body combust with maternal irritation. She ripped the blanket straight off the bed.
“Mom! It’s still dark!”
“It’s called dawn, you sleep-deprived dango!” She snatched a pillow and lobbed it right into his face as he sat up with a groggy wheeze. “Get dressed, brush those teeth, and meet me in the kitchen in five!”
Naruto groaned again, shifting up reluctantly, scratching his chest with the enthusiasm of a sedated turtle.
Kushina turned on her heel fast enough to conceal the startled warmth that flared in her. That restless flutter in her belly that didn’t settle no matter how many mornings she started at 5 a.m., no matter how perfectly she folded hand towels or diced radishes.
Lately, it crept in without warning. A passing thought. A flicker of memory. Him. In the kitchen. On the porch. Just now. It left her irritated more than anything—like a splinter she couldn’t reach, a whisper in the wrong room.
She stomped through the hall, voice echoing back like a warning to herself.
“Five minutes!”
The ache was just loneliness. Hunger. Hormones. She was a healthy woman. That’s all. It wasn’t like this before—not for years—and it would pass again. It had to.
She stopped at the sink and braced her hands on it, letting cold water run for a second before rinsing her fingers. She hadn’t sought Minato’s touch in months. Years, maybe. He hadn’t insisted. He never insisted. He was too kind and too tired for it. He kissed her cheek out of habit, but even that had become rarer. He left messages with Anbu when his work bled over late again.
He had not really asked either. Eishin, she later learned his name. He was not kind, he was…..
“Shit,” she muttered under her breath, scrubbing her palms too hard before shutting the faucet off with a flick.
The desire she'd managed to suppress for years had awakened with a vengeance after that afternoon. One encounter against that table, and suddenly her body remembered what it had been missing all along—refused to be ignored any longer, no matter how she tried to exhaust herself with chores and maternal duties.
She grabbed two cups and started filling them—muscle memory doing most of the work while her mind reeled. She tried not to think about Eishin's eyes watching her from the hallway days ago as she bent over the laundry basket. About how fast her thighs had clenched just from being seen.
“Fucking hormones,” she hissed under her breath—sharp and hot like she hoped it would burn the desire right out of her.
No such fucking luck.
Naruto stumbled out of his room, his hair looked like it had fought a typhoon, and lost. He was still in his pajamas!
He yawned loudly.
"I'm up, Mom, jeez—what's the trauma this early? Gimme a second," he muttered, rubbing his face and scratching just above the waistband of his pants in that utterly boyish, totally unbothered way.
Kushina’s eye twitched so hard it might've rearranged her frontal lobe.
“By the Kami, Naruto.” She sent him a deadly stare, apron still slightly damp at the waist from rinsing rice earlier. “Could you maybe try looking like an actual shinobi? The kind that doesn’t stroll into mission day with bed hair and morning wood?”
He blinked. “Morning, wha—?”
“Nothing!” she cut in, throat tightening. She was starting to get disgusted at herself. Her hand instinctively went to her hip, where a kunai would be if she weren't wielding a frying spatula instead. “Brush your teeth. Wash your face.”
Naruto flopped into one of the chairs at the breakfast table with all the athletic grace of a cement sack and dropped his cheek onto the table’s surface. “Ten more minutes…”
“You’re going to miss your own mission start at this rate, dattebane!” she snapped, slamming his cup of water down in front of him with a sharp thunk. “Don’t make me throw you into your battle gear myself! I swear on—”
A knock at the door interrupted her rant.
Kushina blinked at the sound. Who would it be this early?
She wiped her hands one more time without needing to, stomach knotting without her permission.
She opened the door, and her breath caught in her throat.
The cause of all her trouble stood there.
“Good morning, Kushina-san,” he said, voice low but controlled. Almost soft. Barely a bow—more of a measured incline of his head. “Naruto’s ready?”
What is he doing here?
Kushina’s chest tightened. That damn voice. Like silk and stone and thunder quietly held in the throat. It rolled through her like smoke—felt too intimate, despite saying nothing wrong at all.
“You?” Her voice came out a half beat too late, a little caught. “I… what do you want?”
“Naruto’s part of my squad now,” Eishin replied smoothly. “Temporary reassignment. I thought I’d walk him in.”
What about Kakashi? She wanted to ask, but her teeth stayed clenched.
“Oi!” Naruto perked up behind her, still in those pajamas. “Eishin! Whoa—what’re you doing here so early?”
Eishin inclined his head ever so slightly. “Could ask the same of your outfit,” he said dryly, eyeing the ramen-print pajama bottoms. “We leave in ten.”
Naruto laughed, scratching the back of his head. “Y-Yeah, yeah, I’m going!”
He turned and bolted back toward his room in a sleepy sprint, muttering something about forgetting his leg wraps. The hallway echoed with the sound of a door sliding open, then slamming shut again.
Kushina’s eyes didn’t leave Eishin. Even as her annoyance mounted at how quickly Naruto obeyed when he hadn’t listened to her all morning.
Even as reason screamed at her not to, Kushina stood back from the door to let him in, heart thumping. There were things they needed to talk about.
He stepped in, close enough that she caught his scent, something uniquely his that made her fingers twitch at her sides. The entryway suddenly felt too small, the air between them charged. She took a half-step back, trying hard to ignore the flush of warmth.
She closed the door behind him. Folded her arms. Chin lifted.
Kushina silently cursed herself. Why had she let him in? She could have kept him outside, kept that barrier between them. They could’ve talked outside. Stupid, stupid hormones making her stupid.
“I didn’t even know your name,” she said flatly.
Eishin nodded once. “I know.”
“I asked Naruto the next day,” she continued, trying to put iron in her voice. “I thought his team was with Kakashi.”
She was stalling.
“Temporary reassignment,” Eishin said simply. His tone wasn’t apologetic. It wasn’t smug, either. Just… patient.
Kushina hated that. Quiet confidence always gnawed at her nerves. This man had no right to stand there, calm and composed in her entryway, while she had spent the last hours and days trying to forget what he’d done to her against the table — how she’d let him.
The Whirlpool seemed to remember, though, spinning just below her awareness, down her lower belly, threatening her careful control.
“Listen,” she started, eyes narrowing. Her fingers dug into her arms as she exhaled through her nose. “What happened between us—That—That-that thing—it was a mistake. It never should’ve happened.”
Something flickered in his gaze, but he said nothing.
“I have a husband,” she pushed on tightly, filling the silence before it grew too wide. She pictured Minato's gentle smile, his patient eyes, and felt her stomach twist with guilt. Yet that very guilt, the knowledge of how wrong this was, made her hyperaware of every inch of her skin. “I have a son. I’m not that kind of woman. So whatever idea you might be nursing in that thick little jonin skull of yours, you can kill it now. This ends here.”
The lie burned her throat—because, apparently, she was exactly that kind of woman. The kind who'd bent over a table while her husband was away. The kind whose body was humming with anticipation even as she spoke these righteous words.
She still felt the ghost of that fullness, how he'd stretched her in ways she'd forgotten—didn’t know—was possible, reaching places inside her that made her vision blur at the edges.
Despicable! I'm absolutely the worst!
Funny how she'd contained the actual Nine-Tails, but this whirlpool seemed almost harder to subdue. At least the fox had responded to seals. This... this had no such remedy.
As if….. Last time was a stupid slip-up! This time, no way am I letting my guard down, dattebane!
She stared at him, not blinking, her mouth set, as if she were facing an enemy shinobi across a battlefield.
There was a long pause. A beat dragged out just a hair too long.
Then he tilted his head… just slightly.
“I like your ponytail,” he said simply.
Kushina blinked.
What?
“It suits you like this,” Eishin added. “Your hair’s off your fair neck so I can see every line of your jaw and every glint in your pretty eye. You’re stunning.”
What the fuck—
Her stomach dropped, and then flipped. She felt her shoulder blades tighten through her apron. The heat in her gut she’d been trying to douse with ice water all morning suddenly surged back like someone had struck a flint to silk.
Kushina stood frozen, her mind suddenly blank. The collected speech she'd prepared was scattered like leaves in a windstorm. Heat crawled up her neck to her cheeks, and for several excruciating seconds, she just stared at him, mouth still hanging slightly open.
What am I doing? Standing here gaping like some lovesick genin, dattebane! I'm a grown woman with a husband and a teenage son, not some blushing academy girl!
Oh, for—not this again! Kushina raged internally as heat pooled low in her belly. She was too old, too married, and too angry for this nonsense. Yet here she was, getting wet over a man who wasn't her husband, standing in her entryway. Disgusting.
Her hand moved—instinctively, defensively—to the base of her ponytail, squeezing it like a pressure valve, as if she could tame the burn that flushed high in her chest and throat.
Get it together, Kushina! One mistake doesn't mean you need to make another! I'm smarter than this... probably!
"You—Kuso..." she swore under her breath, finding her voice again. "You think you can just throw that at me and just—"
“No,” he said, voice barely a murmur. “I know you’re strong enough to throw it back.”
Her breath caught, swallowed by silence.
Kushina didn’t drop his gaze. She couldn’t afford to.
But part of her—traitor spine, traitor thighs—tightened beneath the weight of his quiet steadiness. Not a taunt. Not a leer. Just enough presence to brush against her restraint and slice it fine and soft like silk thread.
Kushina straightened her spine with a breath so sharp it scraped her throat. She tore her hand away from her ponytail as if it had embarrassed her, and fixed him with a look born from years as The Red-Hot Habanero.
"That doesn't matter," she said, voice cold and level as a drawn blade. Her fingers curled into fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms just to ground herself. "You don't speak of that day. Ever. Do you understand me?"
An unbidden flash of memory — table edge against her thighs, his grip firm on her hips—sent a single, potent pulse of heat through her core that she tried desperately to ignore.
Damn it all to hell! Get it together!
Eishin arched his eyebrows slightly. Calm. Unmoved. He looked at her like the threat was part of some game.
She didn’t wait for him to respond.
“I mean it,” she pressed, raising one finger between them like a warning seal. “I don’t care if you’re Naruto’s commander — if this ever comes up again, if anyone hears even a whisper about it—” her voice thickened, nostrils flaring, “—I’ll cut your balls and put you in the ground so deep they’ll need a map and a summoning circle just to find your name.”
There was heat in that threat. Enough that the air in the entryway tightened.
Still, Eishin didn’t flinch. He blinked slowly, his mouth curving.
“Understood,” he said simply. “Not a word.”
Nothing in his voice suggested fear.
This brat was not taking her seriously. The realization should have fueled only her anger, but instead, it sent a forbidden thrill down her spine. The kind of thrill she'd sworn never to feel again—the kind that had gotten her bent over that table in the first place.
She hated that his calm made her feel naked. Worse, she could feel her nipples hardening against the fabric of her apron. Kushina crossed her arms tightly over her chest, disguising the movement as anger rather than concealment.
What kind of woman, a mother at that, gets turned on by threats not working?
Kushina wanted to punch herself more than she wanted to punch him.
She was a bad wife. A terrible example. And her treacherous body seemed to enjoy that knowledge far too much. She pressed her legs together, trying to quell the insistent pulse between them. Still….
She nodded sharply. “Good.” At least he was not a scum as she imagined, he seemed not interested in blackmailing her. He would have walked with a few loose ribs if he even tried. “Good.” She repeated.
Quick. Final. Like a snapped seal.
Then, wearing the thinnest smile she could fit over clenched teeth, she widened her stance, adopted the cheer of a mother.
“Well then.” Kushina said, “Naruto’s in your hands now. Be strict if you have to—he’s stubborn and stupid sometimes, but he’s got heart. Just… take care of him.”
That smile almost held.
“I will,” he said. “I’ve got good motivation now.”
She blinked once, confused.
He reached into his pocket.
Folded green lace.
Her breath stopped.
Her panties.
Her face flashed hot, then cold. The evidence of her weakness, her betrayal, dangling from his fingers like a trophy.
The absolute bastard!
— — — — — — —
Author’s Note: Our favorite redhead is finally back!
But damn this chapter fought me every step of the way. (It's like she doesn't want me in her head.) I lost track of how many drafts I scrapped, and truth be told, I’m still not satisfied with it. Perfectionism won this round… but I’m posting it anyway.
That said, I’d love to hear what you think. I appreciate every bit of feedback. Thanks for reading!
