The fluorescent lights of the Shibuya Station platform buzzed with a mechanical hum that matched the static in Takeshi Yamada's mind. 11:47 PM. His phone screen glowed with another message from his manager.
Where is the revised proposal? We need it by midnight.
His fingers trembled as he stared at the text. Midnight. It was always midnight, or 6 AM, or during lunch breaks that didn't exist. Three years at Mizushima Trading Corporation had aged him a decade. The bags under his eyes had bags. His hair, once thick and black, had started falling out in clumps during his morning shower.
Twenty-six years old, and he felt like a corpse that hadn't realized it was dead yet.
The platform was nearly empty. A salaryman dozed against a support pillar, tie loosened, briefcase clutched to his chest like a shield. Two schoolgirls giggled over their phones near the vending machines. None of them looked at him. Why would they? He was invisible, just another drone in a city of millions.
Takeshi's hand went to his jacket pocket, fingers brushing against the folded paper inside. His resignation letter. He'd written it seventeen times over the past month, each version slightly different, but always ending the same way: unsent, unread, meaningless.
He'd tried to quit six months ago. His manager had smiled that plastic smile and said, "Yamada-kun, you're too valuable to lose. Think of the team. Think of your career. One more project, then we'll discuss your concerns."
One more project became five. His concerns were never discussed.
The warning bells rang. A train was approaching, still distant but growing louder. The sound vibrated through the platform, through his bones, matching the rhythm of his exhausted heartbeat.
I'm so tired, he thought. The words felt too small for what he meant. Tired didn't cover the bone-deep exhaustion that made every breath feel like dragging a boulder uphill. Tired didn't describe waking up disappointed that he'd woken up at all.
His phone buzzed again. Another message. He didn't look at it.
Instead, he thought about Naruto.
Last night, he'd watched episode 133 of Shippuden again, the one where Jiraiya dies. He'd cried, actually cried, over a fictional character's death while sitting on his apartment floor with a convenience store bento growing cold beside him. Jiraiya died protecting something he believed in, surrounded by purpose and meaning.
What did Takeshi have? Spreadsheets. PowerPoint presentations. A studio apartment with a broken air conditioner and walls so thin he could hear his neighbor's every movement.
The train's headlight appeared in the tunnel, a growing white eye in the darkness.
He thought about Satoru Gojo next, from Jujutsu Kaisen. The character he'd been watching just this morning on the train ride to work, earbuds in, volume low, hoping no one would see him watching anime like some teenager. Gojo with his Six Eyes, seeing everything, understanding everything, standing above the world with absolute confidence.
What would it be like to see clearly? To understand? To have power that meant something?
The train was closer now. The warning bells intensified. The salaryman jerked awake, checking his watch with bleary panic. The schoolgirls moved toward the platform edge, ready to board.
Takeshi's feet carried him forward. Not toward the boarding area. Toward the yellow safety line. Past it.
His phone buzzed. Buzzed again. The world reduced to simple sensations: the vibration in his pocket, the rumble of approaching wheels, the stale recycled air of the underground, the white light growing brighter, brighter—
I'm sorry, he thought, though he wasn't sure who he was apologizing to. His parents, who'd paid for a university education that led to this? Himself? The stranger who would have to scrape him off the tracks?
I just want it to stop.
He stepped off the platform.
The world became noise and light and pressure. Something massive and unstoppable collided with him. He felt nothing. No pain, no fear, just a distant surprise that it didn't hurt.
Then even that faded.
White.
Not the white of walls or paper or clouds. Pure white, absolute and endless, stretching in every direction without boundary or horizon. Takeshi stood—was standing? He looked down at his hands, solid and real, though the ground beneath his feet was as white and textureless as everything else.
"Well," a voice said, "that was certainly dramatic."
Takeshi spun. A figure stood nearby, having appeared without sound or movement, as if they'd always been there and he'd simply failed to notice.
They were tall, wrapped in robes that seemed to shift between colors without ever settling on one, simultaneously present and distant, clear and hazy. Their face was kind but ancient, young but weathered, male and female and neither.
"Where..." Takeshi's voice came out hoarse. "Am I dead?"
"Technically yes," the figure said. "You're currently in what you might call an 'in-between' space. I'm what you would understand as God, though that term is rather limiting."
Takeshi laughed. It came out bitter and cracked. "So there is a God. That's hilarious. Were you watching? Did you enjoy the show?"
"I don't watch," God said quietly. "I feel. Your pain, your exhaustion, your despair. All of it. From all of you, all the time." They tilted their head. "Do you think you're the only one who's suffered? The only one who's stood where you stood?"
"Then why didn't you help?" The words burst out of him. "Why did you let it get that bad? Why did you make a world where people like me have to—"
"Free will," God interrupted. "And consequences. And systems that humans build and maintain themselves. I don't make your societies. You do." They paused. "But I can offer something now. A second chance."
Takeshi stared. "What?"
"I was moved by your suffering, Takeshi Yamada. And by something else." God gestured, and images flickered in the white void. Scenes from anime: Naruto standing against Pain, Gojo facing off against cursed spirits, heroes rising and falling and rising again. "You found meaning in stories. Hope in fiction. Even at your lowest, you still cared about people who don't exist."
"They felt more real than my actual life," Takeshi whispered.
"Perhaps because they represented what you wished for: purpose, growth, change." God stepped closer. "I'm offering you that change. Rebirth into another world. But there's a condition, a limitation to keep things... balanced."
Takeshi's mind raced. This was insane. Impossible. Had the train scrambled his brain? Was he hallucinating as he died?
But if it was real...
"What's the limitation?" he asked.
"You may choose one ability from any universe, any fiction you know. One. It will accompany you to your new life, fully functional, fully yours." God's eyes, infinite and swirling, focused on him. "Choose carefully. This gift will define your new existence."
One ability. Takeshi's thoughts spiraled through possibilities. Super strength? Immortality? Magic? Devil Fruits? Sharingan?
No. Those were either too limited or came with too many catches.
His mind kept returning to the same answer, the same character he'd been thinking about in his final moments.
"The Six Eyes," he said. "From Jujutsu Kaisen. Gojo's ability."
God nodded slowly. "Interesting choice. Most would choose raw power."
"The Six Eyes isn't about power," Takeshi said, his thoughts crystallizing. "It's about perception. Perfect understanding of energy, prediction of movement, analysis of techniques. In a world with magic or chakra or any kind of supernatural energy, it would be..." He paused. "Versatile. Adaptable. It wouldn't make me invincible, but it would let me understand everything I faced."
"And that's what you want? Understanding?"
"I spent three years not understanding why I was suffering," Takeshi said quietly. "Why the world worked the way it did. Why I couldn't escape. I don't want to be ignorant again. I want to see clearly."
God smiled. It was warm, genuine. "Very well. The Six Eyes it is. But I'll modify it slightly. In the original story, it comes with drawbacks, exhaustion from overuse. Your version will have none of that. Perfect perception without cost."
The white void began to shift, darkening at the edges. Takeshi felt a pull, like gravity reasserting itself after floating in space.
"Wait," he said. "Where am I going? What world?"
"You'll see," God said, their voice growing distant. "Live well this time, Takeshi Yamada. Or should I say... your new name will be Renji Yoshida. Make it count."
"Wait! I don't—"
The white shattered like glass.
Warmth. Softness. Voices, muffled and unclear. Takeshi—no, someone else now—tried to open his eyes and found the world blurry, unfocused, too bright.
A face swam into view. A woman, young, with dark hair and exhausted eyes that lit up when they met his.
"Kenji, he's awake! Our baby's awake!"
Another face, this one male, rough around the edges but smiling. "He's got your eyes, Hana. Look at that."
Takeshi tried to speak and produced only a gurgling sound. His limbs flailed weakly. Everything was too big, too loud, too overwhelming.
I'm a baby, he realized with dawning horror and wonder. I actually got reborn.
The memories were there, all of them. His past life, his death, the conversation with God. But now they existed alongside new sensations: hunger, warmth, the feeling of being held.
And something else. Something behind his eyes, a pressure that wasn't painful but present, like a new sense he'd never had before.
His vision suddenly sharpened. The world snapped into perfect clarity. He could see... everything. The way light bent through the window, the dust motes floating in the air, the minute expressions on his parents' faces, joy and worry and exhaustion all mixed together.
And more. Something flowing through them, invisible but visible to him, like rivers of light running through their bodies. Blue and white and alive.
Chakra, he thought. The word came with certainty. I can see chakra.
The Six Eyes. They were active, working, showing him a world no normal person could perceive.
His mother cradled him close. "Renji," she said softly. "Our little Renji."
Renji Yoshida. His new name. His new life.
Through the window of what appeared to be a modest home, he caught a glimpse of a massive stone face carved into a mountain.
The Hokage Monument.
No, Renji thought, his infant heart racing. No way.
But there it was. Four faces staring down at the village. Four Hokages.
He'd been reborn in Konoha. In the Naruto universe.
A world of ninjas and chakra and battles that would shake nations. A world where children became soldiers, where wars killed thousands, where threats like Madara and Kaguya waited in the future.
A world he knew. A world whose story he'd watched, whose tragedies he'd mourned, whose heroes he'd cheered for.
God had given him the Six Eyes and dropped him into a world where he could actually use them.
Renji closed his eyes—it took concentration to shut off the overwhelming input of the Six Eyes—and tried to process.
Okay, he thought. Okay. I asked for a second chance. I got one. Now what?
His mother hummed a lullaby, rocking him gently. His father said something about getting dinner ready. Normal parent things in an abnormal world.
I know what's coming, Renji thought. The Nine-Tails attack. The Uchiha massacre. The wars, the Akatsuki, all of it. I could change things. Save people.
But should he? Would interfering make things better or worse? Could he even make a difference as a child with no combat training?
The Six Eyes showed him the chakra flowing through his own tiny body, pathways just beginning to form, potential waiting to be realized.
He had time. Years before canon began. Time to learn, to grow, to figure out what kind of person Renji Yoshida would be.
I wanted to see clearly, he thought, watching the play of light through his enhanced perception. I wanted understanding. Now I have both. And a whole new life ahead of me.
Let's make it count this time.
Outside, the sun began to set over Konoha, painting the sky in shades of orange and red. Somewhere in the village, other children played, unaware that their world would one day need heroes.
And in a modest house on the village's civilian side, a boy with white hair and brilliant blue eyes that saw too much opened his new life's first chapter.