Chapter 235: Yūgao's Recent Situation
Konoha, Land of Fire.
Konoha Hospital, in Dr. Yuki Haku's room.
Yūgao was lying on the bed with her upper body bare, undergoing an examination by Haku.
The pretty young woman in a white coat placed her hand on the soft skin of her left breast and performed a medical ninjutsu to probe her body.
"Miss Yūgao, has your heart been hurting recently?" Yuki Haku asked.
"Not as much as before," Yūgao said. Her smooth skin was covered in goosebumps from the cold touch on her chest.
This was the first time she had shown her body to an unfamiliar person while she was awake. Although she was no longer a young girl, and though she usually appeared bold, she was actually a conservative person on the inside. Yūgao subconsciously reached for the clothes that had been pulled down to her collarbones, trying to cover the dazzling spring scenery in front of her as much as possible. With a slight blush on her face, she looked at the curtains by the window and said, "But once I exercise a little more intensely, it immediately starts to hurt."
"Hn, after all, this is a heart that was made in an emergency. It can't be compared to a natural one..." Haku said, shaking her head slightly. "But compared to when you were discharged, it's already much more stable. Your body is gradually adapting to this new heart."
"Dr. Haku, my chakra amount has not been recovering. Is it also because of this new heart?"
"That's right. The heart is the source of life, the essence of where physical energy is produced... More than fifty percent of the physical energy that makes up chakra is provided by the heart," Haku said with a sigh. She thought of the internal materials she had seen in the hospital. The examples of ninja whose strength had plummeted after their organs were injured were countless, let alone those whose hearts were injured.
And Yūgao had lost her entire heart. The quality of the new heart was too poor. It could barely maintain her life activities and struggled to withstand even slightly more intense exercise, let alone provide Yūgao with a large amount of chakra as before.
"Will it never recover in my lifetime?" the female ninja lying on the hospital bed asked, staring blankly at the doctor. She subconsciously reached to touch the hair at the back of her neck, but only touched empty air. Only then did she realize that her proud, long, black, shiny hair had been transformed into her own heart in that surgery.
Haku hesitated for a moment, but still told her the truth. "If you persist in treatment, you might eventually be able to recover to about twenty to thirty percent of your original state."
Seeing the light in the woman's eyes in front of her slowly dim and her expression become downcast, Haku also sighed secretly.
She didn't know what to say either. She circulated her medical ninjutsu, and a faint blue light appeared on her hands. "I'll use a ninjutsu to stimulate your heart now, to strengthen its vitality. It will help you recover a little faster."
"Hn," Yūgao forced a smile and replied politely, "Thank you for your trouble, Dr. Haku."
Then she felt a pair of cold, soft, small hands pressing on her chest. The medical ninjutsu released a comfortable healing wave, and her heart, which had been tense and slightly painful, immediately relaxed a lot.
Yūgao felt her whole person relax. Having just confirmed the bad news, her mood was not so gloomy anymore.
This bad news, when she was in the hospital, Tsunade had actually already hinted at it. It wasn't as if she had heard this news without any mental preparation. So after the initial shock, Yūgao's agitated mood quickly calmed down—after all, her heart couldn't withstand too much excitement.
She turned her gaze to the window.
Her focus scattered into the distance. Yūgao's eyes were hazy. She didn't know what she was thinking, and she began to daze off.
After about twenty minutes of massage, Haku stopped and listened to her heartbeat with a stethoscope. "The murmur has reduced a lot. Go back and continue to rest. This is the first follow-up. Remember to come back for another follow-up in two weeks!"
"Hn, I know."
Yūgao sat up and was just about to put down her clothes when a nurse burst in and handed a test report to Haku.
"Oh?" Haku looked at it twice. The corner of her eye twitched, and a faint smile appeared on her face. She looked at Yūgao and said, "Wait a minute, don't be in a hurry. You lie down first."
She then performed a probing medical ninjutsu and pressed a few times on Yūgao's abdomen.
"What's wrong?" Yūgao asked, a little nervously.
"Congratulations, Miss Yūgao."
Haku withdrew her hands, a smile overflowing from her eyes as she said to Yūgao.
"You're having a child."
Yūgao was stunned.
When she finally understood what Haku's words meant, her dim eyes suddenly lit up. Yūgao subconsciously touched her still-very-flat abdomen.
She smiled and turned to look out the window. This news had instantly made the sunlight shining through the window brighter.
I'm having a child.
She repeated in her heart, feeling as if her life had begun a new journey.
However, then again, Miss Yūgao—perhaps she should be called Mrs. Gekkō now—was very efficient... From her return to the village after being injured, to her discharge, it had only been a little over a month.
Of course, this was also thanks to the two-week wedding leave that Lady Tsunade had specially approved for Hayate Gekkō.
In short, there should be a book... ahem, applause here!
Miss Gekkō Yūgao's mood had instantly turned to the sunny side. Her worries about her strength were also temporarily put aside.
Yūgao suddenly remembered what Sakura and Shino had said to her at her wedding...
"It seems you're going to give us a surprise soon!" the girl had said, covering her mouth and smiling as she stared at Yūgao's abdomen.
"Good luck, Yūgao, and Hayate!" Shino had said with a wicked smile, patting the Anbu junior, Hayate Gekkō, on the shoulder and winking.
Yūgao still remembered at that time, she and Hayate had been so amused by the two of them they didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
But after the wedding, Sakura had found an opportunity and had mysteriously leaned in close to her ear and said quietly, "When I get back, I probably have a surprise for you too!"
Thinking of this, Yūgao touched her belly. She had already received the first surprise.
So, what is the surprise that Sakura-chan said she would give her?
She looked up in the direction of the Land of Snow, wondering what Haruno Sakura was doing there at this time.
Deep in the Land of Snow, a place where almost no one had ever been—
The cold wind howled, and a blizzard raged.
Snowflakes as large as goose eggs fell crazily from the sky.
In the snow, two figures were trekking with difficulty in the fierce wind, their capes rustling loudly.
"Sakura! Let's find a place to shelter from the wind first! The blizzard here is too strong!" In the roaring wind, Sasuke had to shout at the top of his lungs. If he didn't speak like this, his voice wouldn't even reach Haruno Sakura, who was only two meters away.
Even for ninja, traveling in such harsh weather was a very difficult matter. The violent and icy cold wind scraped against their faces like knives. They had to maintain their chakra protection at all times to keep their bodies warm.
However, the two of them could not stop. If they stood still, they would probably be buried by the heavy snow in just a few seconds and become a pile of withered bones that would not be discovered for many years.
"I know!" Haruno Sakura walked over and said loudly. "Hold on. There's a cliff ahead. We'll rest there for a bit!"
Sasuke shielded his eyes from the wind and snow with his hand and squinted at the front. "Alright, let's go there!"
The chakra under his feet erupted. He stomped out a flurry of snowflakes in the snow. With a flash of his figure, he disappeared into the distance.
"What an impatient guy!" the girl said, shaking her head. She hugged her windbreaker and then also disappeared into the blizzard.
A few seconds later, under a steep rock wall.
The concave terrain and the narrow rock crevice had formed a natural wind shelter here. The cold wind howled outside the rock wall, but inside the cave, a meter away, it was calm and peaceful, without a single breeze.
Sasuke sat on a rock, shook off the accumulated snow on his body, and panted slightly. After trekking in the blizzard for several hours, even he, whose strength had greatly improved, felt a little pathetic.
Haruno Sakura followed in and found another rock to sit down on. In contrast, she was still neat and graceful. The girl, who was proficient in Ice Style, did not feel very strenuous in this environment.
Sakura casually took off the cloak that was not covered by her Frost Armor, shook off the ice slag on it, and by the way, ripped off the ice armor on her face, revealing the girl's young face.
"Is this the savage world outside the civilized world that you were talking about?" Sasuke asked faintly. He spat out a small fireball, which slowly burned on the ground.
The bright orange firelight illuminated the small cave, and the cold air inside gradually warmed up.
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