Seven days before the graduation exam, Konoha's sky was orange, like Ichiraku's best miso broth.
On top of the Fourth Hokage's stone head, a loud kid in orange laughed to himself.
"Yosh! Eyebrows of JUSTICE!" Naruto yelled, dragging a fat black line over the stone face.
The First Hokage now had big round glasses.
The Second had a giant snot bubble.
The Third had messy lipstick all over his mouth.
And the Fourth—Naruto gave him huge, bushy eyebrows.
Naruto leaned back, hands on his hips, grinning.
"Hehehe… perfect. I'm a genius."
The wind tugged his jacket as he plopped down and kicked his legs over the edge, looking at the village below: shops, houses, people walking around, lights turning on.
They never looked up at him and smiled.
They glared. They whispered. They pulled their kids away.
Naruto's grin slipped for just a second.
"…Tch. I'll show you," he muttered. "I'll pass the exam, become a genin, then Hokage! Then you won't be able to ignore me, believe it!"
He imagined himself in a long white coat, hat on his head, everyone cheering. It made his chest feel warm.
Then:
"THERE HE IS!!"
"THE BRAT PAINTED THE HOKAGE FACES AGAIN!"
Naruto blinked, leaned over the edge, and saw chunin and a few angry villagers pointing up at him.
"…Ah. Right. That part."
He stuck his tongue out. "YOU'LL NEVER CATCH THE FUTURE HOKAGE!"
He turned and ran, feet pounding along stone, hopping from ledge to ledge. This, at least, he was good at. He'd been chased his whole life.
Down the mountain path. Around a fence. Over a wall.
"STOP!"
"GET BACK HERE!"
"NOPE!" Naruto yelled, laughing.
Heart racing, breath coming fast, he cut through a side street and ducked into a narrow alley.
Dead end.
Naruto skidded to a stop, shoes scraping on dirt. Boxes and trash bags blocked the way forward. The walls on both sides were high and tight.
"…Oh crap."
Footsteps thundered behind him. A shadow fell over the entrance of the alley.
He turned.
Three chunin and one angry shopkeeper blocked the way out.
"You've gone too far this time, Naruto!" one chunin snapped.
"You think it's funny to disrespect the Hokage Monument?!" the shopkeeper shouted, face red.
Naruto puffed his cheeks out. "I wasn't disrespecting! I was making them cooler! You guys don't know art!"
"Enough," another chunin grunted, stepping forward. "You're coming with us. No more running."
Naruto backed up until his shoulders hit the cold wall. His mouth went dry. He didn't mind getting yelled at, but their eyes… their eyes always felt harsher than the words.
One of the chunin pulled out a kunai, maybe just to scare him. The blade gleamed.
Naruto flinched.
"Wh-hey! Y-you don't gotta pull that out for a prank!" he stammered, voice cracking.
They kept coming.
His chest hurt. His head buzzed.
I wanna get out of here…
I wanna run…
I want everything to just—
"STOP!" he shouted.
The world listened.
---
Sound vanished.
The wind stopped.
The tiny drip from somewhere above stopped.
The chunin's foot in mid-step stopped.
Everything was… still.
And right in front of Naruto's face, hanging in the air like a ghost, something else appeared.
Big glowing numbers, floating in front of his eyes.
10000
They shone a faint bluish-white, like someone had stuck a tiny see-through sign in the air just for him. Naruto jerked back in surprise.
"EH?!"
The numbers hung there, not blinking, not moving. Just… there.
Naruto forgot the chunin for a second and waved his hand through the glowing thing. His fingers passed right through it like smoke.
"Wh-what is that?!" he yelped. "Oi! Go away!"
The numbers ignored him.
He tore his eyes away from it and looked at the chunin in front of him. The man was frozen mid-shout, mouth half open, eyes angry and stuck like a picture. The kunai in his hand hung in the air, not moving even a little.
A scrap of paper in the alley floated halfway down from a window… and just stayed there, hanging in the air.
Naruto stared.
"Eh…?"
He waved a hand in front of the chunin's face.
Nothing.
He poked his cheek.
Still nothing.
Naruto's eyes went wide. "H-Hey… oi…!"
No blinking. No yelling. No movement. No sound.
Just Naruto's breathing. And the weird glowing number in front of his face.
"W-what the… what is this…?" he whispered.
He looked at his own hands. They were shaking. He could hear his heart. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump. So loud in the silence.
He glanced back at the numbers.
They had changed.
9000
Naruto blinked rapidly.
"Eh? It… moved?"
He squinted at it, leaning closer, even though it wasn't really "there" to lean closer to. The numbers stayed just out of reach.
"Gen… genjutsu?" he muttered. "I-Iruka-sensei said you can get trapped in illusions…"
He clapped his hands together in the release sign like they'd been taught.
"Release!"
Nothing changed.
Paper was still floating mid-air. The kunai was still hanging. The chunin was still stuck.
The number in front of him flickered once.
8000
Naruto's mouth fell open.
"Huh?! Why's it getting smaller?!"
He didn't know what it meant. He just knew that every time he blinked and took a breath, the glowing number dropped again.
7000
His body suddenly felt a bit heavier, like he'd been running for a while. His chest burned a little.
Naruto's brain wasn't good with big ideas, but even he could tell this was weird.
He swallowed.
"…Can I… move?"
He took one step forward. His foot made a soft sound on the ground.
He took another. The sound of his steps existed. Everything else was quiet.
The number dropped again at the edge of his vision, sliding down without him touching it.
6000
Naruto's face slowly split into an unsteady grin.
"Heh… hehe… HEEEH?!"
He started giggling. Then laughing.
"I—I can move and they can't! This is awesome! And this… this floaty number thing… what even is that?!"
He darted past the frozen chunin, waving his hands wildly in front of their faces. Nothing.
"Oi! Look! I'm right here!" he laughed, getting right up in one guy's face, pulling it into a dumb expression. "Bleeeh!"
The number shifted again.
5000
For a second, he forgot to be scared.
Then a sharp pain stabbed through his head. His legs wobbled.
"W-whoa…"
His body suddenly felt heavy, like he'd run ten laps around the village. His chest burned. It was a tired feeling he knew well—like when he used too much chakra trying to do the Clone Jutsu.
The number flickered at the edge of his vision again.
4000
He gritted his teeth.
"A-alright, alright… enough…"
He didn't know how to turn the weird glowing number off. He didn't know what it was counting. But the second he wished everything would stop being weird—
The number blinked out of existence.
Sound crashed back. The air moved. The paper finished falling. The chunin's step landed.
"—listening, brat?!" the chunin yelled, voice picking up right where it had left off.
But Naruto wasn't at the back wall anymore. He was already behind them, hiding behind a stack of boxes by the entrance of the alley.
To them, it was like he'd vanished in a blink.
"Huh?!"
"Where did he go?!"
"He can't have just disappeared!"
Naruto clapped a hand over his mouth to hold back a laugh, eyes wide.
I… I just… everything stopped. And there was that… number thing…
He didn't think "time stopped." Big words like that didn't even pop up. It was just:
World freeze.
Everyone but me… stuck.
And some weird floaty number going down for no reason.
The chunin checked the alley, muttering. One grumbled something about a "demon brat," but their voices were already fading.
Naruto stayed where he was until the footsteps were gone.
Then he slipped out of the alley, legs still shaky, and stumbled away.
His heart wouldn't calm down.
---
That night, Naruto lay on his old mattress, staring at the cracked ceiling. The small room was dim. Ramen cup on the table, crooked lamp flickering, his orange jacket half on the floor.
His body still felt tired—like he'd run all day.
But his mind was buzzing.
He grabbed his blanket and pulled it over his head, whispering into the dark.
"…That was real, right? It wasn't a dream…"
He remembered it clearly—the quiet, the frozen paper, the stuck faces.
And the glowing number hanging in front of his eyes.
"Everything really froze. Only I could move," he whispered. "And that… that weird number thing…"
He rolled over, grabbed his cheap alarm clock from the crate he used as a bedside table, and stared at it. The second hand ticked.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
He squinted at it, tongue sticking out slightly in concentration.
"What if… I can do it again?" he muttered.
He set the clock on the floor in front of him, sat cross-legged, and leaned close.
"Okay… stop. Stop, stop, stop," he said at the clock, like shouting would help.
Tick.
Tick.
"…Rude," he mumbled.
He scrunched up his face. He thought about being trapped in that alley, about wanting everything to freeze. That feeling. The tight chest, the panic, the "Stop!"
He wasn't good at controlling chakra on purpose, but he was good at being loud and stubborn.
So he grabbed onto that feeling and yelled inside his head:
Stop!
The air went thick.
Naruto blinked.
The second hand on the clock was stuck between two marks. No ticking. No movement.
The lamp's flicker was gone mid-flicker. Even the little dust pieces in the air stopped.
And there it was again.
Right in front of his eyes, the glowing number popped back into existence.
10000
Naruto flinched. "You again?!"
He waved his hand through it. Just like before, his fingers went straight through.
"Why are you here?!" he demanded. "What even are you?!"
The number didn't answer him, obviously.
It just sat there, big and bright.
Naruto's jaw dropped.
"EEEEH?!"
He looked around quickly. The curtain was stuck in the middle of a sway. The little steam curl from his leftover ramen cup hung halfway up.
He poked the clock. It didn't respond.
"Okay okay okay this is real this is real this is REAL!" he whispered, bouncing slightly in place.
The number flickered.
9000
Naruto stopped bouncing.
"…Huh? You again… dropping thing…" he muttered.
He pushed himself up and walked around the room, just to check. The floor creaked. His breath came out loud. Everything else stayed frozen.
As he moved, the number ticked down again.
8000
"Why are you changing?" he complained. "What does eight-thousand even mean? Eight bowls of ramen? Eight… thousand… punches? Tch, whatever!"
He started counting out loud, just to see what happened.
"One…"
7000
"Two…"
6000
By "three" his legs were getting heavy again. His head felt fuzzy, like when Iruka made him practice chakra stuff for too long.
"Four…"
5000
Sweat rolled down his temple.
He squinted at the glowing thing.
"Is this… some kind of… super dumb ghost number…?"
The room snapped back.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The number vanished mid-thought.
Naruto dropped onto his butt, panting.
"Hah… hah… ow…"
His muscles screamed a little. Like he'd jumped roofs all afternoon instead of sitting in one place.
But his face broke into a huge, wild grin.
"I DID IT AGAIN!" he yelled, throwing his hands up.
He flopped back, arms spread on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
"I've got… a secret trick…" he said, the words slow and a little awed. "Everyone else… can't move. Only me. And this weird floaty number thing… hehehe…"
He frowned a bit.
"But… it makes me super tired…" he muttered. "If I do it too long I'll probably pass out… that'd be lame. And I still dunno what that number is. Is it… my coolness? My awesomeness? Hah, it'd never run out then."
He rolled onto his side and hugged his pillow.
He didn't know what this power was called. He didn't know why he had it. He didn't know about any fox or seals or anything like that.
All he knew was:
When he really, REALLY wanted everything to stop… it did.
A weird glowing number showed up… and slowly went down while everything was frozen.
And when things started again, nobody else noticed anything.
Naruto's brain wasn't good with numbers. He had no idea what the number meant. He only knew his teachers sometimes said he had "a lot of chakra," whatever that was, and this felt kind of like using too much of it.
He didn't care about understanding it right now.
He cared about this:
A secret.
His secret.
He hugged his pillow tighter.
"If anyone finds out, they'll… they'll get weird," he muttered. "They already look at me funny. If they knew I had a crazy… freeze thing… and a creepy ghost number…"
He imagined being locked in some underground place. Poked and prodded. Used like a tool. He shivered.
"Nah. Nope. No way," he said firmly, shaking his head. "No one can know. Not Iruka-sensei. Not the old man. Nobody."
He nodded to himself, eyes half-lidded.
"This is my super awesome secret jutsu… even if I don't know what it's called…"
He yawned.
"I'll just call it… uh… 'Everything Stop Thingy'… and 'Annoying Ghost Number'… for now," he mumbled sleepily.
His eyes closed. Tiredness from using it twice in one day finally dragged him under.