Six months later
Unfortunately, I haven't been counting how many days I've been alive since birth, but during my, moderately short, life, there have been events worth a fleeting mention. I was moved several times to different rooms with other peers living there. Now I spend most of my time in a private room in the same hospital. Occasionally, I'm dragged off to a common room for the conditionally sentient vegetables. That is, to my age-mates.
After some time, my paws became mighty enough that I learned to walk. It was when I was taken to my peers that I showed particular physical activity. After all, it was harder to concentrate on anything more mentally taxing in an environment of constant, unintelligible babble. Which meant there weren't many alternatives for what to do. Usually, I would crawl around and stare at the babies for minutes on end like some kind of creep. Maybe my behavior was found strange from the outside, but I found it amusing sometimes.
But now…
By my crib, leaning over the bars of my "prison," stood a young man with a bored expression. He was showing me cards with pictures and characters, and then saying what I was almost one hundred percent sure was written on the card.
"Yoru," he said, showing me a night sky with stars and a moon. Below was the character 夜.
"Yyo-ru," I repeated. As I understand it, that was the word for "night."
He said another word, then pointed at the moon. I was completely thrown by this, so the guy, not waiting for a response, repeated himself and pulled a card with a huge moon on it from a stack on the nearby nightstand and showed it to me.
"Tsu-u-ki-i," he drew out the word, repeating it.
Aaaah… it dawned on me that I had just misheard him. Tsuki. (月)
And so, my language training began recently. Actually, priding myself on my outstanding intellect—among infants, for sure—I at first pretended for a while that I didn't understand what they wanted from me. Though not for too long. Because I remembered that in the world of Naruto, which is now my world, there were certain geniuses who could do a great deal at a very young age.
For the first half hour, it was on purpose; the other two… was it because of my enunciation?
I hadn't practiced speaking before, and over time, I had forgotten about it. But since they came to teach me, it meant my body must be capable of something like that.
It was a fact that my body's vision had developed enough for this by that time.
And I also wanted my first word to be something special.
That's where the "enunciation" issue came in.
Imagine my surprise when they handed me a card with three whole characters 査克拉 and showed me a picture familiar to my memory of a little person with channels and a flame in their stomach. "Cha-ku-ra," if written in transcription. Not to be confused with "sa-kura," which means the local cherry tree with pink leaves. The first has three syllables, the second has two, and the words sound different.
It was the word "chakra" that I said first, and for some unknown reason, I am now proud of it.
At first, I doubted that there were supposed to be characters on these cards. What business do infants have learning to write? But, as it turned out later, they have plenty.
After about a month, when I had learned a couple of hundred words, the training began in groups of three. That is, besides me, there were two of my peers, and still just one instructor. And there I realized that it seemed I had either somehow subconsciously started to underestimate my intellectual abilities, and by a lot. Because these peers of mine, as I thought, were not just a little behind, but had even surpassed me. The brains in the two skulls on either side of me were working so nimbly that they were beating me to the answers! Which meant I had to strain myself for the first time, before our pace evened out, and then I pulled ahead.
Were children at this age supposed to be capable of this? We're not even a year old, I think.
Apparently, yes. But the record of how I lost to infants will forever remain a shameful stain on the history of my life… Just like every time I went in my diaper… The only consolation is that no one will ever know about it.