Cold. Dark. It felt like being crushed under a thousand pounds of wet sand.
Then, suddenly, the weight vanished. A blinding, hazy light stabbed through my eyelids, and my brain felt like it was trying to reboot after a fatal system crash.
My consciousness struggled to surface from the fog. I tried to move, to figure out why my limbs felt like lead pipes, but I had zero control. I couldn't even force my eyes open. I felt hands huge, rough hands lifting me up. Around me, voices were shouting in a language I didn't recognize, but you don't need a translator to understand panic. The urgency in the air was thick enough to choke on.
Before I could wrap my head around what was happening, a wave of pure exhaustion slammed into me, dragging me back down into the black. Right as I slipped under, I heard a woman scream a sharp, ragged sound of pure agony followed by the frantic thumping of boots on stone.
I don't know how long I was out, but when I finally drifted back to consciousness, I managed to crack one eye open.
Everything was a blur. A dim lamp smelling faintly of burnt oil flickered on a nearby table, casting long, dancing shadows against walls made of rough, sandy-brown stone. The air was dry as a bone and tasted like dust and old medicine.
I tried to turn my head, but I didn't even have the strength for that. My body felt incredibly fragile, like every breath was a marathon I wasn't trained for.
Where the hell am I? I thought, my mind racing through the last thing I remembered. I was at the plant... I was debugging the new automated assembly line.
I could still picture it: the hum of the CNC machines, the green glow of the monitors, the endless lines of code. I was thirty, a mechanical engineer who lived for two things: high-end automation and the dream of eventually building a functional, life-sized bipedal mech in my garage. It was a nerdy, expensive hobby, but it was the only thing that kept me going through sixty-hour work weeks.
Then... my chest had tightened. My vision had gone fuzzy. Overwork? A heart attack at thirty?
Is this... reincarnation? The thought was ridiculous, something out of a bad late-night Reddit thread, but it was the only thing that fit. I looked down well, I tried to. I saw tiny, wrinkled hands and stubby limbs.
I was a baby. A very, very weak baby.
"Haruko... please, Haruko..."
A man's voice cracked beside me, thick with a grief so heavy it made my own chest ache. I strained my eyes toward the sound and saw a guy with broad shoulders slumped over a bed. He was wearing rough, slate-gray gear and had a metal headband tied around his forehead. His shoulders were shaking violently, his face buried in the edge of the mattress while he gripped a hand that looked way too pale.
On the bed lay a young woman. She was beautiful, but her face was the color of ash. Her eyes were closed, and she looked peaceful, but the sharp smell of blood and the soul-crushing silence in the room told me everything I needed to know. My mother in this life was gone.
Even though I'd only been "Logan" five minutes ago, a weird, primal pang of sorrow shot through me. It was like the DNA in this new body was mourning a connection I hadn't even had the chance to realize.
"Sigh..."
I hadn't noticed the third person until she spoke. An older woman was standing on the other side of the bed. She looked exhausted, her face lined with years of stress, but she carried herself like someone who was used to giving orders. My eyes locked onto her hands they were still stained with blood.
"Sharyu, you need to pull it together," she said. Her voice was steady, but there was a hint of kindness underneath the steel. "Haruko was a fighter. She stayed alive just long enough to make sure this kid had a chance. Don't waste that."
The man, Sharyu, looked up. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was a mess of tears and desert grit. He looked at me the tiny, shriveled thing in the blanket with a look that was a messy cocktail of love and total devastation.
"Lady Chiyo..." he croaked. "I don't... I don't know if I can do this."
The woman Chiyo stepped over and checked my vitals. She frowned, her fingers feeling cold against my skin. "He's premature. He's weak, Sharyu. His constitution is... well, it's not good. He's got a steep hill to climb."
That hit Sharyu like a physical blow, and honestly, it didn't do much for my confidence either. I understood the language it was Japanese, which I'd picked up fluently after years of dealing with heavy-industry firms back home.
Chiyo looked at the broken man and sighed again. "Look, in the state you're in, you're no good to anyone on the front lines. You'd be dead in a week, and then this boy would have no one."
Sharyu didn't argue. He just stared at the floor.
"Maintenance Squad Four needs a lead," Chiyo continued. "The old man retired last year and the position's been vacant. You'll take over puppet maintenance. It's safe, the pay is decent, and the hours will let you actually raise your son. Haruko was family to me, in a roundabout way. I want to see this kid make it."
Sharyu looked at me, then at his wife, and finally gave a heavy, slow nod. He reached out with a calloused finger and gently brushed my cheek.
"From now on... your name is Sayo," he whispered, like he was making a vow to the empty air. "I'm gonna take care of you. I promise."
Sayo, I thought, the name echoing in my foggy brain. Wait. Sayo? Chiyo? Sunagakure?
The realization hit me like a freight train. This wasn't just some random fantasy world. This was the Naruto universe. I was in the Hidden Sand Village the place that's basically 90% lethally hot desert and 10% political nightmares.
I felt a massive wave of "oh, come on" wash over me. Other guys get reborn as Uchiha prodigies with magic eyes or get dropped into the main cast with a "System" that gives them superpowers. Me? I'm an underweight, sickly infant in a village that's famous for being broke and brutal. My only "cheat code" was a degree in mechanical engineering and a weird obsession with DIY robotics.
No superpowers, no legendary bloodline, and I've got the 'frail health' debuff right out of the gate... this is literally Nightmare Mode.
My brain started to fuzz out again. An infant's battery life is absolute garbage, and I'd used up my percentage for the day.
Just gotta survive, was my last coherent thought as the room faded to black. First step... don't die.
The swaddled infant closed his eyes, breathing faint but steady as though those brief mental efforts had drained every ounce of strength. In the dim lamplight only the stifled sobs of his father Sharyu and Elder Chiyo's silent sigh remained.