Reaching For A Dream by Noodlehammer

Chapter 5

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Naruto was tired. Not so much tired in body, but just tired of dealing with all the thoughts going through his head, the only stroke of luck was that their debriefing was postponed to tomorrow due to a council meeting.

After the long trip back, he came straight home, intending to go to sleep even though it wasn't anywhere close to being his usual bed time. Usualy he would have paid a visit to Ayame, but he was just too tired of everything to do it now. He'd go visit her tomorrow.

"Welcome home Naruto."

He had certainly not expected to see Xanna when he arrived. Don't get him wrong, he was always happy to see her, especialy as it had been a while since she had come around, but he didn't feel like he was in any shape to be having a decent conversation with her. The demoness was sometimes refreshingly blunt and straightforward, but she could also be maddeningly inscrutable and difficult to figure out. He was really not in the mood to play mind games with her. He was still not really over the whole incident with Tsunami and had been hoping that he would have some time for it all to settle before Xanna came around.

She was dressed in her usual red silk yukata that exposed her dusky legs and cleavage, giving tempting glimpses of what was hidden beneath. The whole thing was even more tempting because he knew that she never wore any underwear beneath it.

"Hi Xanna, have you been waiting for me?" Naruto asked curiously, as this was the first time that she had greeted him after a mission.

"You could say that, come with me." The demoness beckoned him, which made him curious. She was acting rather oddly.

She led him towards the table in the living room where he usualy ate whenever he bothered to cook something for himself. On that table sat a large bowl of ramen, very good ramen if the smell wafting from it was any indication. He didn't eat the stuff often, as it was quite unhealthy but it was his favorite food, stemming from the fact that the dish was connected to the first act of human kindness he could remember in his life.

He looked at the red haired demoness in shock. "Did you make me ramen?" There was a vast amount of incredulity in his tone. She had never done anything of the sort before. Aside from the kindness she had shown him during his childhood, she had at most given him only some advice or hints as to how he could do something himself.

"Yes, it was the least I could do, considering the fact that I led you into a situation that had you falling in love and then being forced to make a choice."

"But I didn't...How did...?" Naruto was unable to to even finish a sentence in his shock, not knowing whether he should deny falling in love or ask how she knew about it.

"There is no point in trying to deny it, especialy to yourself. You did fall in love with that Tsunami woman in the short time that you knew her." Xanna cut him off. "As for how I knew...well just because I am out of that seal, doesn't mean that we are not still connected by it. The will of the death god is not going to be undone by the decision of a mortal." She said this while tapping his stomach, causing the seal to appear again after years of being invisible.

"How are we still connected by the seal?" Naruto asked curiously, setting aside the more discomforting issues for now.

"While I was still your prisoner, you had many privileges over me. One of these being the ability to read my thoughts, had you known how to do it. Now that the seal is open, that link goes both ways, though of the two of us, I am the only one who knows how to use it." She explained to him, with just a faint hint of smug pride in her voice, while Naruto just looked at her in shock, having never imagined that she could just read his mind at will.