Happy birthday Idle! This is for you, as I promised!
With love, THW
Disclaimer: Certain parts of the plot were based on the tv show Therapy and always loved manga Naruto. I do not own the people, nor do I own the basics.
Modern AU. If you do not like it, please do not read it, do something you enjoy, instead.
Tuesday 10.00- Madara
"Is there a rule?"
He was dark and clean-shaven, sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination, and dark hair hanging over the shoulders. He was dressed in a tailored dark blue suit and wore a white shirt underneath. The dominant expression of his face was startled—anxious; an expression that might any moment leap into the dreadful stare of aggression and announce a total loss of self-control.
"What do you mean?" The therapist asked, following the pacing man with his sharp dark eyes.
"About how to start." Madara cocked an eyebrow, puzzled more by each second that passed.
"Why don't we sit down first?"
"Well, whatever. I am not on therapy. That's for sick people. I don't need a doctor." He answered quite bluntly, looking straight into the other's eyes.
Both took their seats. The room was tall, lined with bookcases, and, where the wall showed between them, long windows rose from floor to the ceiling, flooding the chamber with orange sunlight.
There was a table near the doctor's elbow upon which was a green cloth, and upon it what he would have called a silver Standish —a tray with inkstands—quill pens, a calf-bound book or two and some papers. He sat in a wooden armchair and his clients seated themselves on a large maroon velvet sofa on which small square pillows were put for comfort. Between therapist and client was placed a long narrow table for use of the patients, generally used for placing teapot and box of tissues upon it.
"Then how can I help you?"
"Do you believe there are better therapists than you?" Madara asked, looking straight at the other. He leaned his back against the maroon velvet sofa and crossed his legs as an unconscious desire of alienation.
"I believe yes."
"I was told you are the best." The man scoffed and resumed. "I have checked it. I checked my coworkers, friends, your former patients and I even called one of your relatives."
"Is it this important to have the best around you?" The therapist asked, slightly perplexed. For one thing, he did not like being called better than others, and for another, he also quite disliked people investigating after him and thus, invading his private space.
"Of course. We all want the best of things, of wine, women, and cars…Even therapists. But tell me Kakashi Hatake, don't you recognize me?"
"No, sorry…Should I?"
"You can usually find me in the news but I guess people like you don't watch television."
"I prefer to read if that is what you mean."
"Certainly." Madara nodded. "I am Madara Uchiha. I am the Uchiha Corporation's head. I am basically my enterprise."
"The country's most influential company of heavy machinery, if I am not mistaken." The silver-crowned man nodded in acknowledgment.
"You are not. And also, I ran for presidency last month; albeit, I'd had to temporarily hand over my business to my brother. You know, law."
"I vaguely recall your face now, I apologize." Kakashi bowed his head a little.
"The Uchiha name has been in politics even before the foundation of our Corporation. However…after we didn't even get into the Diet1, one of my employers committed suicide. He stabbed himself ten times in the stomach with a tantō after beheading his wife and children. Before the results of the election, I told everyone that in case they don't work hard enough for us to win, there will be losses in our number. We cannot afford so many useless people, you see. I fired him two months ago."
"Do you believe that the two are in connection with one another?"
"I know it. I don't think it."
"How do you know?"
"I read his journal. He stated it clearly that I am to blame, that I am just as heartless as any of our clan members. That we do not care about anything or anyone, only about power. That we are sick and selfish bastards tainted with insanity. A normal person doesn't do something like this. He was weak."
"When did you hear about the news? Can you recall the moment?"
"My brother, Izuna showed it to me one morning. It took us tremendous paperwork to prove we did everything by the rules, starting from firing him. The papers wouldn't leave us alone since, especially me. I did not want to become a leader; my father put this responsibility upon me. And then, when this shit went down, I felt like him. He would just manage everything about mother's funeral like a robot and when I asked how he felt, he said it is duty. A year later he married another woman. They lived a whole life together and that is what everything meant to him. Ridiculous."
"Don't you think it is interesting that you bring up this memory now?"
Madara folded his arms over his chest and glared at the other, clearly vexed by the words in his ears. "You certainly have no sympathy, making a parallel between my mother's death and this crazy weak person. Her loss was the worst thing in my life!" He replied as if Kakashi's atrocity had smacked him in the face.
The two men looked into each other's eyes for a moment, and something in the younger of them shrank. This was all beyond his ken a little. An odd hint of bleak and cruel reality was in the air, making him shiver along nerves that were normally inactive. The uneasiness he felt about Madara became light alarm. His conscience pricked him.
"I only need your opinion." Madara said with vehemence as he at length broke the silence, also uneasy in the other's company. Or perhaps it was the atmosphere, he could not tell, but something most certainly disturbed his peace, if peace there was at all in him.
There came a short pause again.
"Why do I feel like you're testing me?" Kakashi cleared his throat and straightened his back in his wooden armchair, and leaned to the side of his little table.
"Listen, I come here, opening up, it is the least I want to know if it is all worth or not."
"Continue."
"So…I called a friend that afternoon, you know I couldn't get to work in time, I was late, I felt sick, left my car key at home. I needed to release the tension. So we went running. And my heart stopped beating. A typical case of infarction. Obito called the hospital. I survived as you can see."
Here came a strange pause of irresolution from the therapist's side, as it seemed; then, with a sort of plunge, Madara went on, asking: "Don't you want to hear what I saw? While I was dead? Lights, tunnel, shit like that?"
"Should I be concerned about that?" He asked, his demeanor always calm and severe.
Madara stopped because he hardly knew how to continue. There was a minute's silence. But it was not an empty silence, though no word broke it. The Uchiha's face was a study.
"Do you remember anything from it?" Kakashi pressed on at length.
"I recalled my childhood, a childhood memory from it. Something my friend's grandmother told me. When she saw her husband, that day she found him dead, he was in the tub with the biggest erection she had ever seen. That is what I saw. And I kept hoping I wouldn't die being like that. I was in the hospital for 4 days in the ICU then 3 days more resting. Then I went⸺"
"I would be more interested in⸺" suggested Kakashi, interrupting at a venture.
"Shut up! Don't be so damn impatient!" Madara yelled at the other in sheer indignation. "I am trying to speak here." He leaned forward with a manner eager, fervent, almost impetuous with suppressed desire for action.
Kakashi bowed his head a little in apology and bit upon his lower lip as he did it when he was uncomfortable.
Madara leaned back against the velvet sofa and resumed. "I was dead for 4 minutes."
He sounded like there was something with significance behind his uttered words but Kakashi could not find it so he asked; "Is that a lot?"
"Two minutes are the most someone is let dead. I was deep in that tunnel wasn't I?" Madara scoffed.
"But you are here, against your circumstances."
The politician hesitated a moment and looked up sharply at his interlocutor. A shade of suspicion showed itself in his eyes.
Kakashi did not speak a word but simply locked his gaze with the man in front of him.
Madara grew upset once more; there was impatience, half anger in his tone; "What the hell are you talking about?"
"That all that you have told me shows that both in body and mind you are entitled to keep on living. You do not want to stop living. But it seems like your environment doesn't wholly support that need of yours." The last words appeared to be added as an afterthought and to bring with it a relapse into gloom for the other man. Kakashi noticed Madara's sudden tremor of the hands that may have bloomed from truth or the denial of truth. He went on suggestively; "Aren't you disappointed? Aren't you mad at yourself? That your perfectly functioning body disappointed you?"
"It didn't. This happens. But I am back. Beauty and skill come together, this is evolution. I was always perfect in my entire life. We were born to be perfect."
"We?" The therapist furrowed his eyebrows, suddenly thrown off his guard. He grew wholly confused at the man's reaction. He wished to understand him.
"Us. Those, who form the world, who make the hard decisions, those decisions that actually matter. Life chose us, leaders to be the best, to have the best and to look the best."
"And when your best is not the best, do you feel disappointed?"
"Gosh, you don't get it. How much time do we have left?" Madara sighed disparagingly, vexed at the other's obscurity. Certainly, they did not belong to one group. Kakashi Hatake was just a therapist who couldn't even comprehend the grandeur of those higher on the social ladder.
"I will tell you when we are finished."
"I came here to ask your opinion, nothing else. My wife said I have gone mad but I thought I'd go to the funeral of Zetsu and make a speech above his grave. So? What do you think?"
"What is the conception of good or bad in your mind?"
"Should I go or not? Can we cut this bullshit and speak clearly?"
Kakashi corrected himself, hoping Madara understood the motives of his questions. "Why do you want to be there? What do you want me to say?"
"That I can pay for this "feast" if they so badly want it and I can spare more coins for whatever the relatives need."
"You could simply make an announcement in the newspaper if you wished so. I don't see the point in why you would need to go there personally."
"I told you I need an objective opinion about whether I should go there or not!" Broke out the politician, gesturing with his arms in the air. "You are just making me furious, nothing else."
"Why objective?" Kakashi asked, his voice still calm, ⸺as much as his patience allowed him to be.
"My wife needs it okay? Not me! I guess she wants a professional to tell her I am not crazy."
"You expect me to take responsibility for whatever you want to do?"
"Don't make me look like an idiot okay? I can take responsibility for my own acts." Madara growled.
"I am merely trying to dissect this problem. You came here to have someone tell you what to do. You also mentioned that you were chosen to carry the burden of your clan's and what they do; it is not you who chose it. Wouldn't it all mean that perhaps you are here so that burden can now be taken off your shoulders, and you could breathe again?
There came a tense silence in the room just then.
"Whatever. I guess I can't get a normal answer out of you." Said the other, whose tangled thoughts struggled with incredulity and belief as he heard this strange new thing spoken to him. This was all too much his spirit could bear. Madara sprang to his feet and threw some money on the long dark table that was between them. He looked down at the therapist as he would look down at the world and said disdainfully. "And they said you're the best."
"I am not the best. And your wife is not the best either. Nobody is the best. You are. Let's think over what you want to do. Someone kills his whole family, blaming you." Kakashi sighed, his tone lightly raised but not with anger that would have been obvious from his part, but rather with anguish.
Madara sat back down with apparent reluctance and sighed. Somewhere deep inside, he wanted to be saved, just like everyone else. "What do you want to hear now?"
"For instance, how much did you run?"
"I ran for 5 hours."
"How much did you rest?"
"I did not."
"You're telling me that you almost ran a marathon without rest."
Madara nodded and Kakashi resumed, his usual demeanor regained. "You said you were sick and yet you went to run."
"I was getting better." He frowned, folding arms over chest.
"This is it? This is all you have understood from what I told you?"
The Uchiha's forehead wrinkled. He was obviously struggling with following the man's mind.
He waited a moment and looked up sharply at his interlocutor. A shade of suspicion showed itself in his eyes. "Do you know what I think? I think that you do everything in your power not to have to return to work again."
"Very nice." Madara shook his head, stunned a moment.
"Of course, we should be talking⸺"
His anger gained upon him as he said it; "Shut the hell up! You have no idea what you're talking about! I want to do anything to go back to the only thing I love! The only thing I am good at!" he cried; "Just answer my question for fuck's sake!"
Kakashi waited a moment, hunting for the words that he could use without upsetting him even further. "I can't tell you what you want to hear." Kakashi whispered and bit upon his lower lip.
"I am paying you!" cried Madara suddenly, standing up again.
"I don't care about your money. Don't you believe that someone might be doing something out of passion and not money?" Corrected the other, master of himself again.
There was a deep silence in the little room. Madara stood still in the room, as though struck in the face. He shivered. He kept silent and the silence seemed to him long and curious. His heart was throbbing, the blood in his veins played strange tricks. He did not understand his body's reaction but there was certainly something in the last sentences of the man that struck him cold. "Can I make a coffee?"
"Next time. Come next time." Kakashi looked up at him and said. He rose from the chair and bowed in politeness and the other did too.
"All right..." Was all Madara said and reluctant in body and soul, he at length vacated the room.
Kakashi sighed and fell back into his chair, and for several long moments, he remained motionless, his eyes fixated upon the ceiling.
By his friends, Kakashi Hatake was regarded as an eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and by choice—a therapist. That a man of independent means should devote his time to counseling, chiefly helping people who could either not pay or paid what they felt suitable, passed their comprehension entirely. The native nobility of a soul, whose first desire was to help those who could not help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it irritated them, and, greatly to his own satisfaction, they left him to his own devices.
He took no fixed fees, being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the same time did no harm to his fellow-practitioners, because he only accepted unremunerative cases, and cases that interested him for some very special reason. And it was these whom he desired to help: cases often requiring special and patient study.
To look at, —he was now past thirty—he was broadly built, with speaking brown eyes in which shone the light of knowledge and self-confidence, while at the same time they made one think of that wondrous gentleness seen most often in the eyes of animals. A close white beard concealed the mouth without disguising the grim determination of lips and jaw, and the face somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, almost of light, so delicately were the features refined away. From his manner,—so gentle, quiet, sympathetic,—few could have guessed the strength of purpose that burned within like a great flame.
The next step was that Kakashi shut his eyes and determined to give rest every chance. Excitement of peace and quiet asserted themselves in another form—that of making pleasant mental pictures. Experto crede, pictures do come to the closed eyes of one trying to sleep, and are often so little to his taste that he must open his eyes and disperse them. His experience on this matter could have been a very satisfying one if his phone had not rung a moment later. With a long deep sigh, he reached his hand into his pocket and only then he opened his eyes to see the screen. It was a text from his fiancée.
'Lunch together?'
Kakashi thought for a second and replied.
'I have patients until 5.'
'Dinner?'
'Sounds good. Should I buy anything on the way home?'
'No, just bring yourself! We miss you!'
There was a photo attached to the message in which his lover and their pug waved him. Kakashi smiled and texted back to her.
'See you later, Rin-chan.'
'See you Kakashi-kun!' ⸺and half a dozen of little hearts he read after.
The ringing bell broke the spell of romance and Kakashi rose from the chair languidly.
Tuesday 11.00- Tsunade
At the doorstep stood a young woman. Her face wore an air of gravity touched by sadness, sternness about the lips counteracted by a kindling beauty in the eyes that betrayed enthusiasm nobly regulated. There was a suggestion of stateliness in the woman that made the impression very sharp. Her clothing emphasized it. She wore a dark green dress that was strict in its simplicity with matching high heels, bag and shawl. There was temperance in her somewhere.
Kakashi bowed to greet her and gestured with his arm the way to the counseling room. She returned the greeting and followed him without a word. Her quietness betrayed significance. They both sat down.
"How can I help you?" He smiled as he drew his chair up to a convenient position and prepared to listen attentively to what she had to say. He rested his elbows on the armrest and tilted his head on one side as he always did when he wished to absorb the real meaning of a monologue that might be inadequately expressed, for by this method he found it easier to set himself in tune with the living thoughts that lay behind the broken words.
The woman was fidgeting with her fingers. She drew a nervous sigh as she watched the man making himself comfortable to listen.
"I'm not entirely inexperienced. I have already been at other therapists." She began, a little more at ease as the words seemed to flow their natural course. "The last one recommended you. Kurenai-sama."
"Kurenai recommended me to you?" Kakashi asked calmly, fixing the glasses ⸺that lay beside the Standish⸺ on his nose bridge.
"Yeah, why?"
"And why did you turn to her?"
"Well," She giggled nervously and resumed; "a friend of mine phrased it quite well…I like to live too much…If you get what I mean…" She paused a moment to recover her thoughts. "She said a lot of nice things, this Kurenai-sama…"
"Why did you seek her out?"
"I give a chance to everyone. But I felt after the first counseling that something was off…I guess I just needed a male therapist."
"I see."
"You don't like each other."
"Why do you think that?" Kakashi wrinkled his forehead slightly.
"Because you both seem so diplomatic about one another." The woman smiled and caressed a tendril of her long golden hair behind her ear.
The man in front of her noticed it but pretended to be ignorant of her feminine gesture. She was beautiful, far prettier than most women in Japan.
"You just said that she said nice things of me." He recuperated his thoughts as he said and found himself fidgeting in the chair; there rose in him a sudden wave of discomfort.
"Yes, but she was sort of cold…" She frowned a little and traveled her eyes away from his. "So sorry...I really didn't like her…She looked like a Buddhist statue, showing no feelings or anything."
"What kind of emotions were you expecting…?" Here, Kakashi looked down at the paper on his lap and lifted his eyes back at her as he added; "Tsunade?"
She fixed her bright orbs on his. "I don't remember how much I've told you in the phone."
"Basically nothing, only that you wanted to talk."
He smiled and she smiled back at him. It was a reckless moment of gentleness.
"Well kind of, yeah…" She gulped and began fidgeting with her fingers again. "What do you want to know?"
"I am interested in everything you wish to share with me" He said soothingly and with deep attention in his manner.
"I am studying medicine at the Konoha University. I uh⸺ live in a small flat which we used to rent together with my boyfriend but uh⸺, since we are broken up, it is just me there. I wouldn't say I fill the space…It gets quite lonely sometimes. When Dan left, he took every painting, furniture, cutlery, even. So now…it's...a little empty. In my theory, this is thus me."
"Empty?"
"Let's say that…" answered the other as truthfully as she could. "So...Uh⸺ what else am I supposed to say? I have a little brother Nawaki-kun, he is about 8 years younger than me and he lives with our grandfather in Osaka. Gramps has this giant wooden house with a large Zen garden at the back and the front is always filled with colorful flowers as if the whole home came out of some fairy tale. Now I don't have a boyfriend but I can't complain."
Kakashi nodded with a smile, encouraging her to carry on.
"I don't know, there's nothing coming to my mind right now that should be said at the beginning…" Tsunade blushed and shot her gaze on her lap. She brushed her silky hair back again, feeling suddenly that same nervousness as before.
"Then let's speak about things you don't wish to say at the beginning." Proposed Kakashi with his best abilities to sound soothing.
"Shouldn't we get to know each other a bit more first?" She looked back up at him with a curious expression.
"Say everything in the order you feel most appropriate then."
"You're nice, much nicer than those previous psycho-squirrels."
Kakashi chuckled. "Squirrels?"
"Yeah…uh⸺" The woman hesitated and tried to smile and her flawless face flushed once more.
"We get to be called on much worse names, don't worry."
"You're different. You know, with the first, I hated that he would keep leaning from side to side and just stare at you. And then, with Kurenai-sama… She told me some stupid joke twice. The same stupid joke. I repeat; twice. She forgot that she had already told me that the first time I went to her. Do you know what this means? That she does not care about you, or me. She does not notice you. I went there to talk about a personal, private problem of mine and she would repeat some stupid joke she likes, probably as she does it to everyone else. She would keep asking what is your name, how old are you, where do you live, who are your parents, do you have a brother, and when I'd tell her that my brother has autism, you should have seen her face and that sudden glow in her eyes like those tiny lamps you know in drawings like "There is her problem!" and she would tell me simply that these "kinds of people" have more special needs and require more help and affection. Like what the hell, how dare she says "these kinds of people"? First of all, Nawaki-kun is not a "kind of people" and secondly, I am the one in this damn counseling, she should notice me, not repeat her same shitty joke." She said it all in a breath, her expression now fuming with vexation.
"Did you share these thoughts with her too?"
"You don' tell the waiter "sorry, your cook sucks", and then never go there again, do you?"
For twenty seconds he stared into his visitor's face intently, as though he would force out of her the thought that lay deeper underneath. His features seemed working visibly, yet behind a mask of strong control. "Did you decline your appointments with her?"
"She did not a have sleepless night if this is what you're asking. She left me a voice message, saying we could uh⸺ speak more, but it sounded like coming from a dead person. It doesn't matter if I declined it or not, I am sure she feels the same way."
"What did she do to hurt you so deeply, Tsunade?"
"She did not hurt me. I just…I don't believe that we should be pretending to care when we are nothing but strangers. She made me feel like I was invisible. That was too much. Isn't that enough?"
"It is enough…" Kakashi nodded. "I am listening."
"What do you want me to say?" She was uneasy, even perhaps afraid; something in life distressed her, and she had need of him. She was too unselfish to say this, but it ran everywhere between the lines. He saw it clearly now.
"How can I help you?" He said, with a quiet smile that won confidence, yet deprecated unnecessary words.
"Okay, here you go." ventured the little woman again, looking up engagingly into his face and betraying anxiety and eagerness in every gesture. "There is a thing. I feel like I haven't been able to be my usual self and go with my studies how I used to. I have just finished my field-work at the Konoha Hospital; it is the best hospital in the whole region if not the entire country. And now all I should be doing is just finishing my thesis. However⸺" She smiled and rubbed her forehead anxiously; "Gosh this is so embarrassing to talk about it. I don't know what has gotten into me I cannot focus on writing my thesis, I am feverish."
"Feverish?" asked Kakashi gently.
"That way…" She turned red like crimson blood and looked away from him for a second. "You know…I cannot stop wanting to do it…And I don't think this is normal, I mean this feverish hunger."
"I am not entirely certain if I got this right…" Kakashi leaned closer in his chair towards her. "Sexually overheated?"
Tsunade stared into his face blushing, but the man's naïve ignorance of such a diagnosis truly amused her.
"Tsunade…You only have to speak about things you feel comfortable with here."
"Well since Dan and I broke up…I got a bit…overboard with this but perhaps it is normal at my age...I mean how much is normal? How many men are still normal at 23? At university, I heard they call me nymphomaniac…Am I?" She half whispered, as though telling something disagreeable.
"Listen, nymphomania is not a scientifically proven illness."
The woman cocked her brows, feeling as if a stone was taken off her heart. "So I am not ill?"
"No…" Kakashi leaned back in his chair. "Scientifically speaking no."
"Then I guess I am cured." The woman laughed on a merry, charming tone and resumed, her mood lit up. "I should have come to you in the first place."
However, the therapist remained severe and calm. "Listen, this may not be your problem. There may be something else that brought you here. Tell me more about what happened after Dan and you broke up."
"I uh⸺ got together with a professor of mine, Orochimaru. He was my uh⸺ anatomy professor when I began my studies. It is nothing like the relationship with Dan, you know uh⸺ we were together for 5 years. Dan left about a few months ago. I guess he could not keep up with me. I wanted more."
"What do you mean?"
"What do I mean?"
"Like more what? More sex, more creativity?"
"More sex…"
Kakashi nodded and fidgeted again in his chair. The theme was quite common to be brought up, but he noticed himself feeling uneasy again. "Was it always like this?"
"No…It uh⸺ just happened that I started needing more."
"What about your recent relationship?"
"I said that I am not in one, for a reason. This is not a relationship with Orochimaru."
"Then what is it?"
"We are lovers. He sleeps over whenever we are bored. He will flee soon too, I know."
"How do you know this?"
"Whenever he comes over, we do it for hours. Usually for 3 or 4 hours. I don't feel good without less. I have needs and he can still satisfy them. But after fucking, he can barely stand on his legs. He is only 10 years older; I mean men are still supposed to be quite active that age don't they?" She continued earnestly, "And he said to me once jokingly that this is not normal and I asked him what I am supposed to do? And he said, nothing, you just love living too much."
"You sounded like your problem is that you love living."
"Yeah. It is." She looked him in the face, lowering her voice to prevent her emotion betraying itself too obviously. "Isn't it?"
He waited two full minutes and more with an answer. His eyes were so intent upon the woman's and understood thus all that lay behind the pregnant little sentences.
"Whatever, we will break up soon."
"And how will that happen?"
"How am I supposed to know it?"
"Without a word you vanish?"
"Do you consider me cruel?"
"Not at all." He said gently and added, "But I find it interesting that so far you have told about two kinds of relationships you have. And in both, the end was quite important to you."
"So?"
"Are you ending your relationships like your therapies?
"Why? Why do you care? How am I supposed to behave? Just tell them the truth so they can feel shitty?"
"So you leave without a word."
The woman narrowed her eyes and folded her arms over her bosom.
"How did your relationship with Dan end?"
"Badly. Can a relationship like this end well? I felt like this is not enough and he felt like I was too much. He met some wench and she was the perfect excuse to leave."
"So he left you?"
"I guess. He told me that he may have feelings for someone else. I never picked up the phone after."
"Perhaps he really wished to talk about it with you because he cared about you."
"It doesn't matter. We don't have much time. And my exams are coming. Can you help me? I need my diploma."
"Why?"
"Because."
"What happens if you don't get it this semester?"
"Nothing."
"Okay, what do you think, how can I help you?" Kakashi asked sympathetically.
"Give me the cure." She said on a severe tone and that made him smile warmheartedly.
"I am afraid there is no cure in this field. Not that kind you seek."
Tsunade's lips curled upward without true intention and they kept looking at each other for a short while.
The therapist debated several questions vaguely in his mind; only his mind, being disturbed, could not hold the balance exactly true. Tsunade's influence was upon him. A possibility, remote, seductive, dangerous, began to beckon to him, but from somewhere just outside his reasoning mind. His pulse quickened. He felt the forbidden impulse in him gathering force and tried to call a halt within.
"All right…Let me show you something. The woman's voice slipped in between his tumbling thoughts, as though they stopped the dangerous thoughts instinctively from blooming. There was a new excitement added to life as she pulled her handbag closer to her side and packed the messily stuffed papers on the sofa. She pulled out a time-worn book and handed it over to the man.
"This was my father journal. He was working on something very amazing, which could change the history of medicine." She spoke with a new kind of light in her voice and turned several pages with such a childish excitement, Kakashi felt wholly bewitched. "He wanted to heal people using spirit energy."
"Spirit energy?"
And Tsunade, breaking bounds, let her speech burst forth in a stream of excited explanation, "Yes. The spiritual and psychological entanglements that lead to suffering also can result in illness of all sorts. Many Tibetan Buddhist tools exist for awakening, for removing those entanglements, also promote relaxation and healing by spirit energy. In traditional Tibetan culture, practicing healing such a way and using prayer wheels, incense, prayer flags and other methods all work together with Tibetan herbal medicine in healing illness and maintaining health.." She laughed and blushed; "Don't look at me like that. You know the saying that everything is decided in the brain?" Tsunade asked it half below her breath.
Kakashi nodded, looking halfway at her and at the journal. He felt a touch of awe as he heard this yet inexperienced, genuinely honest woman speak with conviction of such curious things.
"I do." Was the reply.
"I am not talking about curing cancer. I am just simply talking about healing minor sicknesses, even wounds, making the process of recovery become much faster. Just imagine all that time we could save and bandages and doctors wouldn't be so busy with things that we could avoid!"
And Kakashi, as he listened, seemed built on wires, while searching questions shot forth like blows into his mind. The woman's sudden increase of enthusiasm was infectious. He leaped intuitively to the thing in Tsunade's thought. "How does it work?"
"Tibetan Buddhists believe that saying a specific prayer out loud or silently to oneself, invokes Buddha's powerful benevolent attention and blesses the person, if possible, by opening his chakra points. The spiritual energy centers that can be found all over the body. That way, either the person can help someone heal, or feel better or do it on themselves. I think it is amazing and unbelievable at the same time, but my father had collected a great deal of articles and even tests about it! Do you see why I need your help? I cannot focus on this anymore…And I have to. I want to… Can you promise that you'll try and help me?" She gazed longingly yet still fierce with enthusiasm into his eyes. It was impossible to refuse her.
"I can promise that I will do everything to be help to you." Kakashi nodded as he spoke softly and the young woman smiled with the warmth of the sun.
"Deal." She bowed and began packing her things back into her bag. "You didn't say a price in the phone."
"I don't have fix prices. You are a student; I believe you are not swimming in money."
"But that's what puts the bread on your table." Tsunade tilted her head as she watched him.
"I uh⸺ guess 1500 yen then?"
"Thank you…" Tsunade nodded and they stood up. She handed him the amount. "Could I get some water please?" She asked with an odd feeling of nervousness which Kakashi did not notice.
She wavered where she stood. Looking about her, biting her lip then, while the therapist exited the chamber to bring a glass of fresh water, she perceived the astonishing beauty in the simplicity of the time and place, feeling it soak into her as by the very pores of her skin. From all sides this beauty rushed upon her heart. Some radiant, winged sense of wonder sped past her through the silent air.
A thrill of anxiety ran down every nerve. The hair of her head stood up. It was far from unfamiliar to her, being in the chamber of a shrink, but never before had she stood shuddering thus at its significance as now, so mysteriously within herself. Again she shivered and looked about her, touched by solemnity.
Personal life, indeed, was wrecked, destroyed, but something greater was on the way. She took a deep breath and placed a paper on the sofa and she was gone the next moment.
Kakashi only heard the slamming of the door. He walked back to catch the sight of her, but there was only that paper she had left there, waiting for him. Kakashi placed down the glass of water and lifted the document to his eyes.
His heart began to beat with violence as he read it. He felt the energy and zeal pour out of him. He was realizing in himself on a smaller scale what might take place with the woman in large. He shrank on the sofa and threw his notebook open, searching for her number. For a moment he could think no more. "Tsunade… You left your medical evidence here…It is most important that you call me back. Please."
1 Japanese Parliament