Chapter Text
Well sh*t. It seems I’ve died.
‘How do you know?’, you might ask. Excellent question!
That’s because the last thing I remember is getting literally crushed under rubble during an earthquake. Pretty sure I saw my own inte… nope, not gonna talk about that.
Ugh… why did my brain become hyper-focused just when I laid my eyes on that? The image was instantly seared into my mind and surely gonna last for life.
Though I guess that won’t be a problem; I’m no longer alive after all! Yohohohoho!
Ahem. Sorry, did I sound too casual at my own mortality?
Well, yeah. It’s going to happen sooner rather than later anyway. And no, I’m not being philosophical about it. Y’see, I’ve been unfortunately afflicted with quite a troublesome malady.
How troublesome? Try like incurable kind of troublesome.
Life’s funny like that, y’know? I’ve survived years, more than a decade, of getting tethered on and off to some sort of medical equipment. Then I’ve also survived one of THE global pandemics. Yet it was Mother Terra herself that’s ultimately causing my demise.
Then there’s the state I’m currently in; floating in total darkness. It’s weird, really. I can’t see at all, and weirder still was that I can’t even hear my own hand clapping.
Yes, hand claps.
Like I can actually feel and move my limbs. I can twist my neck around, feel my facial muscles move. Heck, I can even feel myself when I shake my hips. I mean, I can still hear myself speaking, somehow. I can even hear myself breathing.
Physics has left the chat, apparently.
Though weirdly, and thankfully, I also didn’t feel any discomfort nor pain that had plagued me for over a decade I was battling that illness, undoubtedly a plus in this scenario.
From that, at least I’m pretty sure I’m not in a sort of vegetative state. Thankfully. Hopefully. Cause that would be the worst. Worse than death? Yeah, surprisingly there are things that’s worse than death.
So, I’m pretty sure this is some sort of afterlife, even if that was the most unscientific scenario possible. Maybe I’ve read too much isekai lately. I dunno.
Now, shall we address the elephant in the room?
If my internal clock was still reliable in this condition, around three minutes should have passed since I regained consciousness in this floaty state.
The million, or rather, TRILLION-dollar question would be: Will something happen before I lose my sanity? Because even these mere three minutes already feel like an eternity in this endless nothingness.
…Honestly, it’s looking bleak, isn’t it? Pun totally intee…n…ded? Huh?
I’m feeling sleepy? Rather, I can fall back uncon…cious? … Well, that’s nice. I guess … that way my san…ity meter … won’t fall … quickly … all at once. … Good night then….
.
.
.
…I see…. Sigh… Here we go again…
I opened my eyes to a ceiling that was illuminated by morning sunlight. Then I took a very deep breath after I let out one that I had been unconsciously holding. My body starts relaxing in relief for not having to stay in that absolute darkness. For several seconds I was actually all tensed up before finally regaining my wit.
After a minute or so, I finally sat up while holding my temple. Thankfully, the merging of two sets of memories didn’t cause any headache in this scenario. A bit uncomfortable for sure, but not painful.
And yes, you read that right. The merge of memories.
Well, if you’ve read the title and synopsis, you’ve probably already figured it out, haven’t you?
Yup. REINCARNATION, BABY!!!
… I’m going crazy. What am I? Some sort of fanfiction MC breaking the fourth wall?
I looked toward the window in front of me. And there it was, conveniently in my window’s view, the Hokage Rock in the far distance being bathed in a soft golden light of the morning sun.
The Hokage Rock with only four faces on it.
That should give most people reference of what point in time I was currently in, right?
Then I looked back toward the headrest of the bed. Placed on top of it were some photos of a couple, which were my parents in this life.
I picked a frame with a photo that has my parents holding a baby.
My father, Nobu Hashira, was a black-haired man with a lightly tanned skin. He has a somewhat delinquent-looking face, but looked kind and happy in this photo.
My mother, Nobu Tamako, was a purple-haired woman with fair skin. Her charming face looks gentle and serene as she smiles softly in the photo.
Then there’s the baby, which was myself, Nobu Takeshi. A baby with black hair from my father, skin tone like my mother, and a pair of eyes exactly like my mother. I was laughing in the photo, looking a bit dumb.
Huh? What was that? A certain princess would have a word? Well, I’m not calling another baby dumb or looked dumb. I’m saying that about my younger self, so I should be safe. Anyway…
As I kept staring at the photo in my hand, I can’t help but seeing the image superimposed by the faces of my parents from the previous life.
The ones I might have left behind.
“Might”, because I don’t know if they survived the earthquake at all.
If they did, I sincerely wish they can get over the grief and start focusing on themselves after all the time and effort they spend caring for me. If they didn’t, I sincerely wish they ends up in a far better place than mine.
Either way, I just wish they can be happy without me. They deserve it. They truly do.
That wish also extended to my parents from this life, the Nobu couple, for what they had left for me to survive. Even though they stayed with me for only the first five months of this life, as they were both perished on the night of the Kyuubi’s rampage.
Thus, that gave me the classic background for a reincarnated fanfic MC.
…Sorry, that joke was not proper at all, was it?
What was quite funny, though, was the fact that I also almost died because of that incident. Not because of the rampage itself, but because of starvation.
My parents were both out of the house when the rampage happened, and I was left alone in the house, which miraculously survived the rampage and stayed intact.
The rescue efforts at the time seemed to prioritize collapsed buildings instead, so they overlooked my house. Luckily (I guess?), in the end my cry was loud enough to be finally noticed by others. Just in time before I died, again.
Or so I told.
Unfortunately, neither of my parents have any living relatives, even prior to that terrible night. Because of that, I was unceremoniously sent to one of Konoha’s Orphanage along with countless other orphaned children from that tragedy.
Curiously, I don’t think I went to the same orphanage as a certain whiskered blondie. At least I don’t remember seeing him in the times I lived at the orphanage for several years until I moved out before I turned five.
A day before I turned five, to be exact. I’ve since moved back into the Nobu family’s house.
The timing of moving out could not be better as not a day after that, which is today, my memory from the previous life awakened. That is quite a stroke of luck as I can safely process my memory awakening without arousing suspicion from other people in the orphanage.
What sucked was that the earliest memory of this life that I can access, that I remembered, was only after I got into the orphanage. So unfortunately, I have no first-hand memory of my parents in this second life. It was from the orphanage’s staffs that I learnt about my parents’ background.
They said that both my mother and my father were a clanless ninja with the rank of Tokubetsu Jonin. My mom was a medic-nin and my dad was in the barrier division. I think most fans of Naruto would agree that it was quite a respectable background to be reincarnated into, right?
Speaking of reincarnation, some people might protest by the use of that terminology. If I were five years and not several minutes old, wasn’t it transmigration (soul occupied another body) instead of reincarnation (reborn anew)?
Me from the previous life would also said so, but the memory of Nobu Takeshi convinced me that I was indeed reincarnated. It’s just that my reincarnation case comes with a side of delayed memory awakening.
Am I coping out of guilt? Maybe.
But coping aside, every single choice Nobu Takeshi made resonated deeply with me.
For the past five years, Nobu Takeshi thought and acted exactly as I would if I were in his position. Like how he interacted with people, how he reacted to setbacks, how he solved problems, all of it was how I would have done it.
More importantly, everything this body has ever experienced felt like my own experience. It’s not at all like viewing a video from a third-person perspective. I know that I have once gone through them.
One notable experience, which supported that conviction, happened when I was around 3.5 years old. It was how “Nobu Takeshi” reacted in the aftermath of when he was so close to being adopted by Root.
… Yikes.