The warm morning sunlight slipped through the window of his small room, illuminating the dust particles dancing in the air. For any normal six-year-old in Konohagakure, this was a sight that promised a new day full of adventure and play. But for Yamashita Yuji, whose soul was that of a life-weary twenty-three-year-old man named David Gerald, the sunlight felt like an interrogation spotlight.
Yuji propped his small chin on his palm, his elbow resting on the slightly worn wooden window frame. His gaze was fixed on the one thing that dominated the village's skyline: the Hokage Monument. Four giant faces carved into the mountain cliff stared down with silent majesty. Hashirama, Tobirama, Hiruzen, Minato. The heroes, the legends, the guardians of the village.
To David, no, Yuji, they were a constant reminder of the hell he was now trapped in.
"This isn't fair," he muttered to himself, his childish voice sounding strange even to his own ears. "Of all the possible universes, of all the reincarnation options available. I could have been a cat in a rich old lady's apartment, sleeping all day. Or maybe a dolphin. Dolphins are cool. But no, I had to end up here."
His gaze swept over the stone faces once more. He had watched the series. Of course, he was a fan. From the comfort of his shabby sofa in his cramped apartment, with a bowl of stale cereal on his lap, the world of Naruto was a fantastic escape. Full of cool fights, heartwarming friendships, and impossible jutsus. It was the perfect entertainment for a college student who spent more time procrastinating on his final thesis than actually working on it.
But being a fan and actually living in it were two very different things. It was like being a fan of shark movies and then being thrown into the middle of the ocean with a piece of raw meat tied around your neck.
In his old world, his biggest problems were paying rent on time, dealing with a weird roommate, and figuring out how to pass without actually studying. The biggest threats in his life were credit card bills and the possibility of food poisoning from a street-side burrito. Here? The biggest threat was the possibility of having your internal organs gouged out by a twelve-year-old with a vacant stare or your body being used as fertilizer by a giant tailed beast.
He let out a long sigh, a breath too heavy for his small lungs. Despair felt like a thick blanket weighing him down. For six years, he had tried to deny it. He tried to convince himself that this was all just a very long and strange fever dream. Maybe he was still in a coma in a hospital after that car accident, and his dying brain was projecting this elaborate anime fantasy.
But the hunger in his stomach felt real. The warmth of his blanket felt real. And the gentle voice of his mother calling from downstairs felt very, very real.
"Yuji! Breakfast is ready, sweetie!"
Yuji tore his gaze away from the damn monument. He got off the small chair by the window and walked out of his room. The aroma of miso soup and warm rice greeted him, a scent that should have been comforting but somehow only added to his anxiety.
In the small kitchen connected to the dining room, his mother, Yamashita Kaori, was setting the table. She was a woman with a smile that could light up the darkest room, with long brown hair tied back neatly. Next to her, his father, Yamashita Kenji, was reading the Konoha newspaper while sipping his tea. He was a sturdy man with hands roughened from working with wood all day, but his gaze was always gentle whenever he looked at his only son.
They were good parents. Very good. They were patient, loving, and never asked for anything from him other than to be a happy child. And that, somehow, made Yuji feel worse. He felt like a fraud. A cynical, lazy old man trapped in their child's body, tainting their small family's innocence with his dark thoughts.
"Morning, champ," Kenji greeted, folding his newspaper. "Sleep well?"
Yuji just nodded, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "Morning, Dad, Mom."
Kaori placed a bowl of rice and soup in front of him, ruffling his hair gently. "Eat up, okay? You look a little pale today."
"Just a bad dream," Yuji replied, an easy lie. Every day was a bad dream.
"Oh?" Kenji asked with a raised eyebrow. "About what? Monsters?"
"Something like that," Yuji said, spooning rice into his mouth. He thought for a moment. "About... homework."
Kenji and Kaori laughed. Their genuine, light laughter filled the room. "You're already worried about homework? The Academy hasn't even started for you," Kaori said, amused.
"I just... like to plan ahead," Yuji mumbled. Planning how not to die before hitting puberty, more like.
The Yamashita family was a family of artisans. They didn't have a prestigious clan name or an extraordinary kekkei genkai. They made and sold masks. Their small shop was at the front of their house, a place that always smelled of paint and wood varnish. It was a simple, honest, and peaceful life. A life that would have been perfect in any other world. But here, in Konoha, 'simple' was a synonym for 'defenseless.'
After breakfast, which he spent more time brooding over than eating, Yuji walked aimlessly into the shop. Wooden shelves lined the walls, filled with a variety of masks. There were cheerful kitsune fox masks for festivals, tengu masks with their characteristic long noses, and Hyottoko masks with their funny mouths. There were also more serious masks: replicas of the cold, emotionless ANBU porcelain masks.
Yuji picked up one of the ANBU replicas. The surface was smooth and cool under his small fingers. He knew what this mask symbolized. Covert operations, assassinations, the dirty work that maintained the village's 'peace.' In his old world, this was a cool cosplay prop. Here, it was the work uniform for a government black-ops agent who very likely suffered from severe PTSD.
He placed the mask back carefully, as if it might bite him.
His father entered the shop, humming a tune, carrying some new blocks of wood. "Ah, Yuji. Admiring your old man's handiwork, are you?"
Yuji forced a small smile. "The masks are nice, Dad."
"Of course they're nice!" Kenji said with pride, patting a red oni mask with menacing fangs. "Each of these masks is made with soul. To bring a smile to a child's face, to add to the festivity of a festival, or to be a beautiful souvenir for travelers."
Soul. Yuji almost snorted. His father was a good, naive man. He saw masks as art, as a source of joy. Yuji saw them as a facade. A cover that hid the bitter reality of their world. Everyone in this village wore a mask, both literally and figuratively. The civilians smiled and pretended everything was fine, while the ninja wore masks of stoicism and died on distant battlefields.
"Dad," Yuji began, his voice hesitant. "Is... is being a mask maker a safe job?"
Kenji stopped his work and looked at his son, a little surprised by the question. "Of course it's safe, son. It's an honorable job. We don't fight, we create beauty."
"But... what if there's a fight?" Yuji pressed. "What if... bad people come to the village?"
Kenji's expression softened. He knelt down to be at eye level with Yuji, placing his large, warm hand on his son's shoulder. "Yuji, we don't have to worry about that. We have Hokage-sama. We have the great ninja of Konoha. They are our shield. They will always protect us. That's their duty."
Shield. Duty. The words sounded hollow in Yuji's ears. He knew the history. He knew about the Nine-Tails attack six years ago, which happened right as he was born into this world. He knew about the Third Great Shinobi War that had ended not long before. He knew about the coming invasion from Orochimaru, about the pain Akatsuki would inflict. That shield could crack. That shield could break.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to shake his father and say, 'No! You don't understand! The shield isn't enough! The Third Hokage will be killed by his own student in front of the whole village! There's going to be a giant crater in the middle of Konoha in a few years! We could all die at any moment!'
But he couldn't. He was just a six-year-old boy in their eyes. They would think he had a fever or had read too many adventure stories.
"I'm going for a walk," Yuji said suddenly, needing to escape his father's suffocating kindness.
"Sure, but don't go too far, okay," said Kaori, who had appeared in the doorway. "And wear your sandals!"
Yuji nodded, put on his sandals, and stepped out onto the streets of Konoha.
The world outside felt more real and more threatening. The air was filled with the hustle and bustle of village life. Merchants shouted their wares, housewives gossiped on street corners, and children ran around laughing. On the rooftops, shadows flitted by at unnatural speeds. Chunin and Jonin on their way to missions or reports.
To the villagers, it was a normal, reassuring sight. A sign that their protectors were always vigilant. To Yuji, every one of those leaps was a reminder of the immense power gap between himself and almost everyone around him. Those people could kill him with a flick of a finger before he even had a chance to blink.
He walked past a small training ground. There, a group of kids who were maybe only a year or two older than him were practicing under the supervision of an instructor. They threw kunai at wooden targets, some hitting the mark, others missing by a wide margin.
A boy with spiky hair managed to stick three kunai in the center of the target. He cheered, and his friends patted him on the back. The instructor nodded in satisfaction.
Yuji stopped and watched from a distance, hiding behind a post. His stomach churned. They were just kids. They should be playing tag or climbing trees, not learning how to stab people with knives. They were being trained to be weapons, to be pawns in the Kages' game. And they were doing it with smiles on their faces, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
He remembered himself at twenty-three. He couldn't even assemble a bookshelf from IKEA without very detailed instructions and several curse words. These people, at twelve, were expected to risk their lives on C-rank missions.
This was insane. This whole world was insane.
He continued his walk, buying a stick of dango from a small stall just to do something normal. The sweet, chewy taste of the rice cake calmed him slightly, a remnant of simple pleasure in a sea of anxiety.
He sat on a bench near the river, watching the water flow. He tried not to think. He tried to just be a six-year-old enjoying his snack. But his mind wouldn't stay quiet.
What's the plan? he thought, David's cynical voice echoing in his head. You can't be a mask maker's son forever. When Pain's invasion happens, being 'the mask maker's son' isn't going to stop Shinra Tensei from flattening you and your entire block. You need a plan.
A plan. David Gerald was never good at making plans. His plans usually involved procrastinating until the last-minute panic set in. But here, the last minute meant death.
He could try to run away from Konoha. Go somewhere far and remote, where the ninja would never find him. But how? He was a six-year-old with no money and no survival skills. He'd probably be eaten by a wild bear before he even made it out of the Land of Fire.
He could try to remain a civilian. Keep his head down, not draw attention, and pray to whatever gods were listening that he'd survive every coming disaster. It was a gamble. A very big gamble. It was like living in a building you knew was going to collapse and hoping the pillar above your head would hold.
Then, there was the third option. The option that made him want to throw up.
He looked at his small, useless fists. Hands made for holding a paintbrush, not a kunai. Hands more familiar with a laptop keyboard than hand seals.
The fear was like cold water creeping up his spine. The fear of helplessness. The fear of seeing his kind parents get hurt because he couldn't do anything. The fear of being a nameless casualty in someone else's flashback.
And in the midst of that fear, a terrible, unavoidable realization began to form. A realization he had tried to suppress for six years.
If you can't beat them, join them.
If you live in a world full of monsters, you have to become a bigger monster, or at least be competent enough to run away from them.
The only way to have any small measure of control over his own fate in this cursed world, the only way to possibly protect his naive and precious new family, was to do the very thing he hated and feared the most.
He had to become one of them.
He had to enter the Academy. He had to learn to throw kunai and shuriken. He had to learn about chakra, about ninjutsu, genjutsu, and taijutsu. He had to learn how to kill.
He had to become a ninja.
A goddamn ninja.
Yuji finished his dango in one last bite, the sweetness now tasting like ash in his mouth. He stood up, dust clinging to his shorts. His gaze returned to the Hokage Monument in the distance. The stone faces no longer looked majestic or ridiculous.
They looked like a challenge. A destiny he couldn't avoid.
He walked home, each step feeling heavier than the last. He no longer felt like the trapped David Gerald. He no longer felt like the confused Yamashita Yuji. He felt like a condemned man walking to the gallows.
When he arrived home, his father was still in the shop, carving a new mask with intense concentration. His mother was watering the flowers in the pots out front. Their peaceful, oblivious life felt so fragile.
Yuji walked past them, went into his room, and closed the door. He returned to the window, staring at those Hokage faces one more time.
"Damn it all," he whispered to the cold windowpane. "Fine. Whatever."
It wasn't a heroic declaration. Not a fiery promise. It was a sigh of defeat. It was the grumble of a man forced to do a job he didn't want because the alternative was so much worse. It was the most reluctant and pathetic agreement in the history of his two lives.
He was going to be a ninja. And he was going to hate every second of it.