Chapter 6: The Walk of Shame
The door didn’t just open. It exploded inward, the deadbolt tearing through the frame with a sound like a gunshot. Splinters of painted wood skittered across the warm hardwood floor.
Naruto stumbled off the couch, his knees buckling, fumbling with the button on his expensive trousers. Ino let out a sharp cry, scrambling backward and yanking the hem of her violet dress down over her thighs. The air in the cozy apartment was thick, humid with the pungent, unmistakable scent of sweat and sex and spent candles.
Tsunade filled the ruined doorway. She wasn’t in her usual professional suit. She wore dark, fitted training gear—a tank top and cargo pants—that showed off the powerful, athletic definition of her arms and shoulders. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a severe, functional ponytail. Her face was a mask of cold, controlled fury, her brown eyes sweeping the scene: the disheveled couch cushions, the empty water glass on the table, Naruto’s half-clothed state, Ino’s flushed skin and swollen lips.
“Explain,” Tsunade said. The single word was low, vibrating with a threat that made the anime figurines on the shelves seem to tremble.
“Professor Senju! It’s not—we were just—” Naruto stammered, hands up in a placating gesture, his mind a white void of panic.
She cut him off, her gaze slicing to him. And then, impossibly, her expression shifted. The fury didn’t vanish, but it refined, sharpened like a laser point. The corners of her mouth even turned up into a small, genuine smile meant only for him. “Naruto. I’m not upset with you. Not at all.”
Her eyes swung back to Ino, and all the warmth died, replaced by a glacial contempt. “I’m upset with her.” The smile vanished. “I want an explanation from you, Yamanaka. Now.”
Naruto stared, baffled. His brain short-circuited. Not mad at me? Ino looked just as confused, her defiant posture faltering for a second.
“What did I do?” Ino asked, her voice regaining its edge as she stood up, straightening her dress with a sharp tug.
“You interfered,” Tsunade stated, taking a step into the apartment. The door hung crookedly behind her. “You took what was not yours to take. I had plans for him last night. Real plans. A proper introduction.”
“Plans?” Naruto whispered.
Tsunade’s eyes stayed locked on Ino, but her words were for him, her voice dropping into a confidential, almost wistful register. “A reservation at Uchiha’s. The twelve-course kaiseki tasting menu. The chef’s counter. I was going to explain each dish to you—the texture of the uni, the sake pairings, the way the blowtorched wagyu melts. Afterward, a private viewing at the Senju Wing of the museum. The scrolls that aren’t on public display. The ones that contain the original seals for the shadow clone technique. I was going to let you touch the parchment.”
Naruto’s mouth went dry. He could see it. The silent, elegant restaurant. Tsunade, knowledgeable and intense, guiding him. The ancient scrolls under soft museum lights. His mind, traitorously, swam with the image. It was a fantasy he didn’t even know he had.
“Then,” Tsunade continued, her voice gaining a razor’s edge again as she glared at Ino, “a suite at the Konoha Grand. Not a student apartment that smells of ramen and regret. A suite with a view of the entire valley. Silk sheets. A bath deep enough to swim in. I was going to teach you. Properly. Without this… this adolescent groping in the dark.”
The comparison was brutal. Ino’s beautiful, heartfelt dinner—the candles, the roast chicken, the vulnerability—was being framed as cheap, childish imitation.
Ino’s confusion evaporated, burned away by pure, incandescent rage. Her cheeks flushed a deep, angry red. “You psychotic bitch,” she breathed, and then louder, “You were going to buy him? Like a prize poodle? A fancy dinner and a history lesson so he’d be grateful when you fucked him? That’s your idea of a ‘proper introduction’?”
Tsunade took another step forward. They were now only a few feet apart in the cramped space. “It’s called class, something your family’s cut-rate flower shop would know nothing about. You saw something shiny and new and you grabbed it with your grubby little hands because you have no concept of patience, or value, or protocol.”
“He’s not a protocol!” Ino shouted, stepping right into Tsunade’s space, her face tilted up defiantly. “He’s a person! And he was here, with me, because he wanted to be! He wasn’t some project for a bored, lonely professor who hates men so much she has to schedule their deflowering like a board meeting!”
The air left the room. Tsunade’s control snapped. A vein pulsed in her temple. Her hands, which had been curled at her sides, clenched into fists so tight the knuckles turned bone-white. Ino didn’t back down, her own fists raised, her body coiled like a spring. The distance between them crackled with the promise of violence. It was a heartbeat away, half a second.
Naruto moved without thinking. He surged between them, his arms out, pressing a palm against Tsunade’s rock-hard stomach and a hand against Ino’s shoulder. “STOP!”
The physical contact jolted them. They both looked at him, their fury now redirected, amplified by his intervention.
Tsunade’s hand shot out, but not to strike Ino. She wrapped her fingers around Naruto’s bicep and pulled him firmly, possessively, to her side. Her touch was searing through the cashmere. “You see what she is? Impulsive. Crude. Undisciplined.” She looked down at him, her anger subsiding into a taut, expectant intensity. “What do you think, Naruto?”
He looked from her face to Ino’s. The silence was deafening. It wasn’t a question. It was a demand for a verdict. Ino’s eyes were wide, pleading, still wet with unshed tears of anger. Tsunade’s were burning with a fierce, unyielding certainty. They were both waiting. They wanted him to choose.
His heart pounded against his ribs. He couldn’t. The words tumbled out, raw and unpolished, before he could cage them.
“I can’t,” he said, his voice cracking. “I can’t pick. Tsunade, you… you were my first. You showed me what it could be. You made it… incredible. It was a gift. But Ino…” He looked at the blonde girl, who was shaking now. “You made me feel… wanted. Not just for my body, but for… for saying good morning to a guard. For sharing stupid gummies. You made me feel loved during it. You asked me how it felt. You looked at me.”
He’d said it. The truth, split right down the middle, offered up to both of them.
Ino broke. A sob ripped from her throat. She lunged forward, grabbing his other arm, pulling him toward her. “I don’t want to lose you! I won’t. I’ll do anything, Naruto, anything, please. I’m not sorry! I’m not, but I’ll do whatever you want!”
Almost simultaneously, Tsunade’s grip tightened, her voice a low, urgent rumble in his ear. “You are mine. I have invested in you. I see your potential. Do not throw that away for this… temporary infatuation. I will not let you go. I, too, will do what is necessary.”
They were both pulling on him, a silent, desperate tug-of-war over his soul, his body, his future. The pressure was immense, suffocating. An idea, absurd and terrifying, bloomed in the chaos of his mind. It was the only door he could see that didn’t lead to someone being destroyed.
“Stop pulling!” he yelled, and they both froze. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “There’s… there’s one way. One idea. But it’s… it’s bold. And if you say no, it all goes south. Everything.”
“What is it?” Ino whispered, her tears streaking her mascara.
Tsunade said nothing, her jaw clenched.
Naruto swallowed hard, the words feeling impossible. “You… you share me.”
The silence that followed was heavier than any that had come before. Ino’s crying stopped abruptly. Her mind was visibly working, weighing, calculating. A strange, reluctant curiosity flickered in her wet eyes.
Tsunade’s reaction was immediate and violent. “Absolutely not.” The words were final, carved from stone. “Preposterous. I do not share. I do not compromise. This is not a negotiation.”
“But you both said you’d do anything—” Naruto started, a desperate plea.
Another knock echoed through the apartment.
This one was different. Not a shattering blow, but a firm, polite rap-rap-rap on the ruined doorframe.
Everyone froze. All eyes swung toward the doorway.
“Who now?” Naruto breathed, the words barely audible.
Tsunade’s grip on him slackened in sheer surprise. Ino wiped her face with the back of her hand, staring.
Heart in his throat, Naruto stepped away from both women and moved to the shattered door. He looked through the broken frame.
Sakura stood in the hallway. She was back in her professional clothes, a neat blouse and skirt, her pink hair perfectly in place. Her expression was neutral, professional, but her green eyes were wide, taking in the destroyed door, the scene inside. She held a leather folio against her chest.
How long had she been standing out there?
How much had she heard?
“Who is it?” Tsunade demanded, her voice still raw from the confrontation.
Naruto blinked. “It’s… Sakura.”
Ino sniffed, wiping her nose. “Sakura? Kaguya’s robot? The one who talks like she’s reading a terms-of-service agreement and has the social life of a potted fern?” A flicker of something like petty satisfaction crossed her tear-streaked face. “What does she want?”
Sakura’s professionally neutral expression tightened almost imperceptibly at the edges. Her knuckles whitened on the leather folio.
“I have no idea who that is,” Tsunade stated, dismissive, her attention already returning to the unresolved tug-of-war in the room. “Send her away. We are in the middle of something.”
“I… I should let her in,” Naruto said, his mind flashing to the crisp efficiency of Sakura’s drive, the roses, the unasked-for help. He pushed the shattered door open wider.
Sakura stepped inside, her eyes doing a swift, analytical sweep: the ruined door, Tsunade in combat gear, Ino’s smeared makeup, Naruto’s disheveled state. She didn’t react. She walked calmly to the couch, moved the oversized plush fox aside with a finger, and sat primly on the edge of a cushion.
She placed the leather folio on the coffee table, directly in front of Ino. “Dean Kaguya asked me to deliver this to you, Yamanaka. She felt, given the developing circumstances, full transparency was warranted.”
Ino stared at the folio like it might be wired to explode. She slowly reached for it, unclasped the binder, and flipped it open.
Her breath stopped.
The first photo was high-resolution, crystal clear, taken from an angle that suggested a security feed. It showed Naruto, naked and dazed, standing in the center of Kaguya’s office, the dean’s tailored suit jacket open. The next was a closer shot, a tangle of limbs and skin on the polished desk, a strand of long, silver hair stark against Naruto’s back. There were others. Graphic, unambiguous, a chronological record of his afternoon.
Ino’s face drained of all color. Then it flooded with a violent, humiliated crimson. She slowly turned her head toward Naruto. The hurt in her eyes was a physical thing.
“You… you were with her? Today? Before you came here smelling like laundry and wearing clothes that cost more than my rent?” Her voice was a hollow whisper. “You let me… you let me think…” The whisper spiraled into a shriek. “You liar!”
Her hand flew through the air in a sharp arc.
The slap connected with Naruto’s cheek with a loud crack. His head snapped to the side.
Before the sting had even fully registered, before Ino could even pull her hand back, Sakura moved.
It wasn’t a dramatic lunge. It was a swift, practiced rise from the couch, a pivot, and a backhand that caught Ino squarely across the face with twice the force. The sound was a heavier, meatier thwack. Ino cried out, stumbling backward into the bookshelf, sending a cluster of figurines crashing to the floor.
“Don’t,” Sakura said, her voice finally losing its professional monotone, gaining a low, dangerous heat. She stood between Ino and Naruto, her chest rising and falling once, slowly. “You don’t get to mark what isn’t solely yours anymore.”
Shocked silence filled the apartment again, broken only by Ino’s pained gasp and the hum of the broken door swaying slightly.
Sakura turned her back on them both, walked to the kitchen counter, and hoisted herself up to sit on it. She took a slow, deliberate breath through her nose, her eyes sliding closed for a moment. Then she opened them, her gaze traveling around the room.
“Roast chicken with rosemary and burnt garlic,” she stated, her voice flat once more. “Undercooked carrots. You panicked and pulled them early. A cheap soy-wax candle, ‘Sandalwood & Mist’ scent, now extinguished. Two sets of fluid stains on the primary couch cushion. Different viscosities. Different… entry points.”
Her eyes landed on the empty water glass on the coffee table. She didn’t comment on it. She looked at Tsunade. “Heightened cortisol and adrenaline in the air. Postured for frontal assault. No blows landed. Verbal confrontation only. Subjects: possessive entitlement versus wounded territorialism. Stalemate reached approximately ninety seconds before my knock.”
Ino was holding her cheek, staring in bewildered horror. “How… how can you possibly know all that?”
Sakura looked at her with something akin to academic pity. “Seven clues. The pan is still on the stove with fond. The carrot pieces in the trash are snapped, not cut cleanly. The candle wick is black, not white. The fabric wear on the cushion is fresh and damp. Your lipstick is gone but his isn’t. Professor Senju’s knuckles are white but unmarked. And,” she added, the slightest edge returning to her voice, “I have exceptional hearing. I heard every word from the hallway. Your little speech about gummies was almost touching.”
She swung her legs, her practical flats tapping a soft rhythm against the cabinet door. She looked at Naruto. “Your proposal is the most logical one. If they cannot comport themselves with the dignity required to share a resource, then the resource should be allocated to a more disciplined end user.”
“Resource?” Tsunade spat.
“Dean Kaguya’s sex drive, for lack of a more clinical term, operates on a different scale than yours,” Sakura continued, ignoring her. “Her stamina and focus are… considerable. If you two are going to squabble over him like children over the last slice of pizza, he would be better served, and frankly less annoyed, dedicating his energy to her. The returns would be more significant.”
She paused, then added a final, casual bombshell. “Also, I want a turn. Which she has already authorized for the next session.”
The room exploded.
“YOU?!” Ino shrieked, laughing with hysterical anger. “Of course! The lonely secretary wants to play too! Do you even know how, or do you need to file a request form first?”
“This is absurd!” Tsunade roared, her composure vaporizing. “I will not be part of some… some harem for this boy, orchestrated by that emotionless ice queen in the tower! She is a bureaucrat, a glorified administrator with a freakish libido!”
“She is a calculated, manipulative witch who collects people!” Ino yelled, joining forces with Tsunade in their mutual target. “She probably has a spreadsheet! She’s probably watching us right now on some creepy feed from that shrine in her office!”
“Her social skills are legendary in their absence,” Tsunade sneered. “She navigates human interaction like a bot programmed by a sociopath.”
“She’s probably never had a real, messy feeling in her life!”
“She is the definition of sterile efficiency, devoid of passion!”
The ruined door, hanging by its bottom hinge, was pushed quietly inward.
Kaguya stood in the threshold. She wore a simple, elegant black dress. Her silver hair cascaded perfectly. She did not look at Naruto, or Sakura. Her pale eyes fixed on Tsunade, then Ino, with the placid interest of a scientist observing agitated insects.
“Finished?” she asked, her voice a cool stream in the heated room.
They froze, mid-insult, caught.
“Good.” She took one precise step inside. “Senju. Your definition of ‘passion’ is a temper tantrum masked as intensity. You mistake volume for depth, and possessiveness for care. It is why your research has been stagnant for five years. You are all reactive heat, no sustaining light.” She turned her head, just a degree. “Yamanaka. Your ‘real, messy feelings’ are the predictable emotional diarrhea of a child who confuses drama for connection. You weaponize vulnerability because you have no substantive craft to offer. Your family’s business survives on sentiment, not skill.”
She paused, letting the first two blows land. Then she delivered the third, to both of them.
“You are both so loudly, desperately afraid of being overlooked that you have made yourselves utterly uninteresting. You are black-and-white characters in a story I have long since finished reading.”
The air was sucked out of the room. The insults were surgical, specific, and devastating because they carried the ring of truth. Tsunade looked gut-punched. Ino looked like she might be sick.
Naruto stood up. He didn’t shout. He walked past Kaguya, to the broken door. He lifted it, aligned it with the frame as best he could, and closed it. It sagged, but it blocked the view to the hallway.
He turned back to face the four women in the ruined apartment. Without a word, he pulled the cashmere sweater over his head. He let it drop. He kicked off the pristine Jordans. He unbuttoned the trousers and let them fall, stepping out of them. He stood naked in the center of the room, the golden light from Ino’s desk lamp painting his skin.
“Stop,” he said, and his voice was low, firm, utterly different. “I will not have sex with anyone in this room. Not now, not later, not ever again, if this doesn’t stop right now.”
The effect was instantaneous. Tsunade’s furious posture softened into alert attention. Ino’s crying hiccupped into silence. Sakura’s analytical gaze became focused, intent. Kaguya’s eyebrow arched, a spark of new interest in her pale eyes.
They were all, suddenly, in line.
“You’re all wrong,” Naruto said, looking at each of them. “Tsunade, you’re wrong that owning me is the same as valuing me. Ino, you’re wrong that loving me means you get to hurt me first. Sakura, you’re wrong that this is a logistics problem. And Kaguya… you’re wrong that you’re above it. You’re here. That means you’re in it.”
He took a deep breath. “So here’s how it’s going to be. We’re having a competition. A fair one. You compete for #1.”
“What does #1 mean?” Ino asked, her voice small.
“It means priority. First call. The chair next to mine at the ramen bar. The right to plan the fancy dinner, or the cozy one. The assumption that you’re my plus-one, unless #2 or #3 has a compelling argument. It comes with perks. And responsibilities. You have to look out for the others, too.”
“And how is #1 determined?” Kaguya asked, her head tilted.
“By me,” Naruto said simply. “Based on everything. Who challenges me. Who supports me. Who listens. Who teaches me something. Who makes me laugh. Who doesn’t slap me, or let me get slapped.” He glanced at Sakura, then Ino. “It’s fluid. Anyone can overtake anyone else, anytime. Your position tonight means nothing tomorrow. The only way to lose completely is to try to make me choose, or to hurt each other out of spite.”
He looked around at their faces, each woman processing, calculating, reassessing. “So. Are you in? Or are you out?”
Tsunade was the first to speak, a reluctant, grudging respect in her eyes. “A contest of merit. That is… acceptable.”
Ino nodded slowly, a fierce, competitive light replacing the hurt in her blue eyes. “I’m in. I’ll win it, too.”
Sakura gave a single, crisp nod from her perch on the counter. “The parameters are clear. I agree.”
All eyes fell on Kaguya. She was silent for a long moment, her gaze resting on Naruto’s naked, confident form. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched her lips.
“An ongoing experiment with dynamic variables,” she murmured. “Very well. I will participate.”