Chapter 13: You Make Me Sick!
Minato looked out the windows of his office and sighed in contentment. It was a wonderful spring day and so far nothing had happened to ruin it. No threats of war, no diplomatic incidents, no bad missions, no whiny genins complaining about some lousy D-rank missions—nothing.
Well, there was a lot of paperwork to do, but when wasn't there a stack of papers to stamp? Such was the life of the Hokage, the greatest desk-ninja in the whole village. Work consisted of sorting through tons of forms and requests, assigning missions, and endless meetings. It wasn't half as glorious as he'd thought when he'd first developed his ambitions for the post when he'd been a young genin, but he had no regrets.
To even be considered for the position, a ninja had to be one of the best of the best. No one is more respected than the Hokage; no one had half as much power to guide and change the village. As Hokage, he could protect everyone.
That was what he most desired to do, even before he became a genin of Konohagakure no Sato.
"And I will," he mumbled to himself. "I will protect everyone."
"Are you talking to yourself, again?"
Minato turned towards the doorway of his office to see Kushina trudging through it. She looked grumpy and tired and kind of sick. He frowned, worried.
"I was just thinking out loud," he replied. "Are you feeling okay?"
"Not really," she snapped. "Thanks for noticing."
"Er…" He nervously rubbed at the back of his head. "Do you want to see a medic?"
She fixed him with a positively evil look. "No."
"Okay," he hurriedly agreed. "Do you want to go out for lunch?"
"No." She shuddered and looked sicker. "I'm not hungry."
He frowned again and walked over the gently embrace her. "Are you sure you don't want to see a doctor? You haven't been yourself for weeks."
For a good month she'd been sick, off and on. Some days she was fine. But most days she ranged from feeling a bit ill, to not wanting to get out of bed all day. Just when it seemed that she was getting better, she'd have a bad day. He was really getting worried.
"I don't need to see a doctor," she growled. "I'll be fine."
"Alright," he sighed and ran his fingers through her long red hair. "You want to come sit with me?"
She nodded and he gently led her over to his desk where he pulled up a spare chair next to his own. While he quietly sorted through stacks of forms and filled out paperwork, she leaned against his arm and started to doze. In spite of his worry over her mysterious health issues, he found himself smiling in contentment.
Health questions aside, things were going great with them. Barely a month after he'd moved into the Hokage Manor, he'd persuaded her to join him. It had been a fantastic half a year with her, and he was comfortable and secure enough to be seriously plotting ways to propose to her. As soon as she felt better…
"A gift for you, Hokage-sama," a chuunin on administrative duty announced as he stepped into the office, weighed down by an impressive floral arrangement.
Minato sighed in irritation at the sight. It was known within the village, and rumored within the rest of the Land of Fire, that he was with someone. Most people didn't know who exactly it was – they enjoyed their privacy, and he didn't want his enemies targeting her for some violent act of vengeance – but they knew it was serious. He politely turned down every advance any woman made towards him, yet some women, especially daughters of rich families, seemed determined to pursue him anyway.
"Did you try to refuse it?" the young Hokage asked.
"The messenger who delivered it was very insistent," the chuunin muttered. "What should I do with it?"
"Get rid of it!" Kushina coughed. "It reeks."
Minato blinked and leaned forward a bit to sniff at the small bale of flowers. "It doesn't smell that bad…"
"Are you kidding?!" she sputtered and buried her face in his shoulder. "It's making me nauseous. Take it away!"
"Take them down to one of the shinobi lounges and leave them for whoever wants some," Minato instructed. "I'm sure that there are plenty of young ninja who would love to have free flowers for their sweetheart."
The chuunin bowed, as much as he was able, and carried the pile of flora out of the office.
"Is it gone yet?" Kushina mumbled into his shoulder.
"It's gone," he answered, rubbing her back gently. "Are you developing an allergy to flowers?"
"No," she snorted, shifting to get more comfortable. "They just smelled so strong it was giving me a headache…made me feel sick."
"Sure that was a lot of flowers, but they were halfway across the room…"
"So what?" she pouted. "It's not like you wanted them anyway."
"True," he nodded. But I barely smelled them…
And the aroma of flowers wasn't the only thing that seemed to aggravate her recently. His morning coffee, which she'd never liked but never complained about before, now drove her from the kitchen. She stopped eating some of her favorite foods, like sushi, complaining that it made her feel nauseated. A few times she'd even thrown up.
I know you hate doctors and hospitals, but I wish that you'd go. Swallowing a sigh, he tried to return to his paperwork. I wish I knew what was wrong… You're scaring me, Kushina.
What am I doing here?
Kushina growled in aggravation as she sat in an exam room and waited for the medic to return. Her back felt sore and no matter how she shifted on the little exam table she couldn't get comfortable. She was really regretting finally giving in to the subtle pressure that Minato had put her under for weeks.
Personally, she didn't see what he was so worried about. She probably just had a lingering virus of some kind, made worse by a few small bouts of food poisoning. And her moodiness was because she felt so awful half the time, and she was due for a period sometime soon—which also explained why half her pants weren't fitting, and the ones that were, were tight.
This is no big deal, she sulked. Minato, you're such a worry-wart! Hospitals are hell, doctors are evil, and medicine is nasty!
She'd shrugged off his worried pleas for a while now. But when he asked her to spend some time with Rin, his student who specialized in medicine, she finally cracked. Admittedly she overreacted. She'd snapped very nastily at him, and angrily promised to see a doctor…just to shut him up. And so here she was.
The medic assigned to her case was thankfully a patient one. She managed to pry the wide range of symptoms she'd experienced over the past few weeks and talk her into a blood test. Now she was just waiting for her to come back with the results.
Nothing's wrong, she huffed to herself. It's a virus. There's no medicine for viruses, only for bacteria. This is stupid. Damn you, Minato! You jerk! I'm fine—
"Sorry it took so long," the annoyingly cheerful, infinitely patient medic smiled as she came back into the exam room. "I have your results."
"And?" Kushina scowled, impatient.
"It's just as I suspected," the medic woman grinned. "Congratulations!"
"…Congratulations?" Kushina repeated blankly. "For…what?"
"You're pregnant!"
