The first thing Hokata felt was pain.
Not the sharp kind that makes you cry out, but a dull, heavy ache that spread through his whole skull, like he'd been knocked out cold. His body didn't feel like his own either—too small, too light, and somehow… fragile.
He blinked against the sunlight leaking through the roof. Instead of the white tiles of a hospital ceiling, he saw rough wooden beams. Cracks lined the planks, and thin streams of light cut across the dim room, dust motes drifting lazily through the air.
"…Where… am I?" His voice sounded strange, higher than it should be.
Then it hit him.
Not just a memory—memories. A flood of images crashed into him, too fast, too vivid. A boy crying alone in the woods. The face of a mother, soft and warm—then gone, blood pooling around her. A father's scream cut short by a blade. A stranger's laughter, and then the strike of Konoha shinobi arriving too late.
His chest tightened, breath coming quick and shallow. He clutched at his head, trying to force the storm of thoughts away, but it only pushed harder. The small house, the cold nights, the whispers of villagers. Loneliness. Hunger. Grief.
And then another life entirely.
Bright screens. Instant noodles. Anime marathons that stretched until morning. Naruto, over and over, until the lines between fiction and reality blurred. The screech of tires. The glare of headlights. A sudden impact.
Darkness.
"…I… died." The words slipped out of him before he could stop them.
The boy's memories and his own tangled together until it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. And in that mess, one truth dug itself deep: this wasn't a dream. This wasn't some weird hallucination.
This was the Naruto world.
Hokata sat up slowly, his small hands trembling as he stared at them. They weren't his old hands—no calluses from years of typing and work, no familiar scars. Just thin, childish fingers. Ten years old. That much he knew from the memories. Ten years old, parents gone, living in some forgotten border town in the Land of Fire.
And if his memory of the timeline was right… he swallowed hard.
The Third Great Ninja War was three years away.
He let out a shaky laugh, though it sounded more like a cough. "You've gotta be kidding me…"
He wasn't some Uzumaki with endless chakra. He wasn't a genius like Itachi, or even someone with a decent clan backing him up. The body he'd landed in had chakra, sure—but it was nothing special. Below average, even. No kekkei genkai. No hidden bloodline. Just a kid who would've lived and died nameless.
If he did nothing, he'd be swept aside like trash when the war came.
But Hokata wasn't just that boy anymore. He had his own mind—older, sharper, and full of knowledge no one else in this world had. He knew the faces of heroes and villains before they ever earned their names. He knew which clans would rise and which would fall. And more importantly, he knew the future was not some bright fairytale.
This world was cruel. Always had been.
His lips pressed into a thin line. "Then I'll be crueler."
He didn't come here to chase Naruto's dream of bonds and friendship. He wasn't here to play the hero. All those ideals? Nice for the story. But for someone like him, they were nothing but chains.
No, he'd use Konoha—not out of loyalty, not out of respect for their so-called Will of Fire. He'd join the academy, learn their jutsu, earn their trust, and bide his time. When the war broke out, he'd turn chaos into opportunity. If he had to lie, manipulate, or stab someone in the back to get stronger, then so be it.
Because survival wasn't enough.
He wanted power.
Lying back on the thin straw mat, Hokata stared at the ceiling, dust floating lazily in the golden light. His small fists clenched tight.
"I won't die nameless," he whispered. "Not here. Not ever."
And with that vow, something settled inside him. Not hope, not warmth. Something colder. Sharper. A resolve that cut deeper than fear.