Chapitre 2: CH_2

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Finding himself in a fictional world without any warning or reason wasn't the toughest part of the day for Takuma. After he had calmed himself down and had accepted the situation on the surface— there was still a part of his mind that wanted to believe that this was nothing but a lucid dream— he made his way back to the classroom, once again bewildered by the fact that he somehow knew how to return even.

He entered the classroom and made a split-second eye contact with Kibe, who didn't address him and continued to teach the class. Feeling lucky, Takuma climbed up the steps to his seat on the last bench. On his way, he roamed his eyes over his classmates who were of similar age to his current body. He recognized none of them.

He swallowed the bitter feeling that rose up and sat down on his seat with his head down. He wasn't unfamiliar with his current circumstances— transmigrated to another world— he had read enough light novels to recognize the situation, but that didn't make his situation any better because of the world he had been transmigrated to. Naruto. The world of constant war and strife fought with element-wielding super soldiers, each one with the potential of becoming a weapon of mass destruction. The cherry on top, there existed monsters, each capable of destroying countries on their own if they felt like it. Not to mention, there was even a god-like existence sealed away, whose release would spell the end of civilization and life on the planet.

'Why Naruto?!' Takuma lamented inside.

He was well acquainted with the Japanese media of anime, manga, and light novels. He would go back to it from time to time when something caught his interest. Yet, Naruto, one of the so-called Big-Three, wasn't one of his interests. The first time he had come across Naruto, he was intimidated by the length of its anime and had chosen not to commit to such a long show and had left it to the side for a rainy day. It was long after he had gotten into manga that he had chosen to indulge in Naruto through the original media, the manga— it might have taken a week or so for him to complete whatever many volumes and chapters there were. It was easier that way, much less time-consuming than watching hundreds of eighteen-minute long episodes. And that was it. He had read the manga once. Nothing more and nothing less.

It was an enjoyable read, but it wasn't his cup of tea. Maybe he would've enjoyed it more if he was younger or had picked it up when he was still new to the Japanese anime/manga scene.

The result? He didn't remember a lot of it.

Takuma grabbed his head and pressed it hard against the wooden desk. Binging was terrible for retention, especially when interest levels weren't at their peak. He was in an extremely dangerous world and he didn't know anything much about it— he couldn't even recall the names of the characters outside the main cast.

'Shit! Shit! Shit!'

He closed his eyes and tried to focus. Try to find out more. But after a few minutes, he couldn't deny the second outrageous problem that had presented itself to him.

He had no memories of 'Takuma.' The boy, whoever he was, had left behind no memories of himself or anything of his past or even basic general knowledge. He looked at Kibe teaching in the front; Kibe was the only one whose name he knew, and that too had popped up in his mind. Was Kibe special in some way? Why did he know Kibe's name, the language, and the way around the academy, yet he couldn't recall anything when he consciously tried to remember?

Takuma sighed. Without information, he was like a man on a wooden plank in the middle of the ocean with heavy rain making his life miserable and possibly short.

'Let's... Let's start with what I know.' Takuma looked around his desk for a bag, but he couldn't even find a notebook or even a pen. Did the boy not bring any stationary to the lesson? What was this, college? He sighed deeply.

Academy students graduated at age twelve. Given that information, Takuma needed to figure out how old he was so that he could find how many years he had left in school— how many years he had left... safe. Takuma patted himself down for any form of identification and found empty pockets. He clicked his tongue. The child had come out with nothing but clothes on his back.

'Next.' He had seen four faces on the mountain, which meant Fourth Hokage had taken office. 'What was his name?' Takuma frowned at his failure to recall the name of such an important figure. He then wondered how long it took to carve the face on the mountain, was it done manually by hand, or did they use chakra to speed up the process? The presence of the Fourth Hokage's face on the mountain meant that the Third Shinobi War was over, which was good for Takuma— no war participation in the near future. But was the Fourth Hokage alive? If he was dead, then for how long? Was he closer to Naruto's birth or to the Third Hokage's death? 'Or somewhere in between...' Takuma sighed— he had no way of knowing... yet.

The clock on the wall showed it was already past lunch (lunch that he had emptied out), but he didn't know how long a typical academy day ran. He couldn't wait to leave the academy and return home.

Home, Takuma sucked in a cold breath. He didn't know where home was. How would he make his way back when he couldn't remember a dime worth of memories. What about parents; will they come looking for him if he stays put somewhere around the academy? Once again, his head began to feel heavy with all the problems surrounding him. It wasn't even an hour since his arrival, and he already felt like he was drowning.

"Okay, class," Kibe clapped his hands to gain the students' attention, "let's move out to the training yard. I'm going to test your shurikenjutsu today; I hope everyone has been practicing; I would be very disappointed if you have not."

Takuma's heart leaped into his throat. He looked around, and everyone was already getting up from their seats. He followed suit and walked as part of the crowd as the students followed Kibe outside to the backside of the academy building. The training ground was devoid of grass except for some weeds popping here and there. Wooden stumps stood on the edges of the space, some thin and others thick; some looked like they had been slashed, others looked like they had been bashed in. Kibe gathered the class in front of five stumps standing adjacent to each other in a line; every stump had four bullseyes drawn on them with white paint— some were painted right in the middle, others were skewed some measure to the side.

"You'll know the drill," Kibe said. "Split into five lines and line up in front of the targets. You throw five. The first row throws at the target and then sprints to the target to retrieve their shurikens and sprint to the back of their line." He gave his students a stern look, "Only after the first row has run back would the second row throw their shuriken, not a second back, break the rule and be ready for hell. Do you all understand?"

The class chorused with a "yes."

"Good," Kibe smiled. "Before we start throwing practice, I want all of you to give me twenty rounds around the ground to get the blood pumping and sweat dripping. I told you last time, today's going to be tough," he grinned. "Now, what are you waiting for! Run! Run! Run!"

The students didn't need to be told twice as everyone took off running around the grounds. Takuma followed after them and placed himself right in the middle of the pack, letting the group decide his pace. He didn't know the body's physical condition; he assumed since the boy was studying in the academy, he should've enough physical endurance to not embarrass himself.

Takuma was all but lying on his back, wheezing his life out. His lungs were on fire as he stood with his hand on his knees, looking down at the ground wet with the sweat that dripped from his nose, chin, and hair. He was wrong. Sure, the boy's body had been conditioned enough to complete twenty rounds, but not enough to hold a middle-of-the-pack pace. He looked at others who were running behind and slower than him, and even they didn't look anywhere near as taxed him.

"Form the lines, quickly!" Kibe barked an order.

Takuma, still heaving, positioned himself at the back of the line. There were five wooden crates of shuriken, one for each line. The glint of the sharp metal made the panic from earlier come back, and without the running distracting him, it rose up like a tsunami over the shore. He didn't know how to throw a shuriken, he could barely throw a baseball properly. Throwing carriers of sharp death was out of the league for him, not even in the same stratosphere.

"Next!"

Takumi's eyes bulged when Kibe's voice snapped him out of his spiraling trance. He looked and found himself next in line. He watched as the girl in front of him picked up her shuriken and threw them two at a time and one solo towards the stump. They weren't dead center, but they weren't far from them.

"Very good," Kibe said with a smile, praise not hidden in his voice. He looked at Takuma, and the smile vanished. "Next," he said.

Takuma bent over the crate and carefully took out the shuriken to not cut his fingers on the edge and make a mockery out of himself. But he didn't need to worry about that as he made sure it happened a few moments after. Takuma stared at the stump several feet away from him, and he swore it didn't look that far when he was looking from behind. As he was looking, the others in the row all began throwing. Takuma panicked when he saw the others thrown and haphazardly picked a shuriken in his throwing arm and awkwardly threw it... and didn't even make it to the stump.

The snickers and laughs from behind made Takuma flush like a boiled lobster. He was the only one who had failed to cover the distance, even those who had missed the target had at least thrown it far enough. He glanced at Kibe, who didn't look shocked at his performance. No, the teacher looked like Takuma's abysmal performance wasn't anything special.

"What are you looking at? Continue throwing," Kibe frowned with his arm crossed when he saw Takuma looking at him. Kibe offered no advice or input.

Takuma straightened up immediately, and after four more throws that each failed to reach the stumps, he wanted nothing more than to be like an ostrich and bury his head in the ground to escape the mocking laughter from his classmates and the look of harsh disapproval from Kibe. It was even more embarrassing when only he had to cross halfway to recover his shuriken and come back quickly when everyone ran all the way to the stump to retrieve theirs.

The same humiliation was repeated multiple times over, and between the physical exhaustion and the red-hot shame, Takuma felt tears trickle down from his eyes. For the rest of that day, even after they returned to the classroom after another long set of laps around the training ground to finish the shurikenjutsu training, Takuma didn't raise his head. He kept it down until the end of school, until he was left in the classroom... alone.

Even with no one remaining to judge him, he couldn't raise his head.

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[ A/N: Yuta Okkotsu from Jujitsu Kaisen in the cover image is there for purely aesthetic features. It's how I am currently imagining Takuma— you're free to imagine him in any way you desire. Note: Takuma is currently is much younger than the portrayal in the cover image.]

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Chapitre 3: CH_3

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The sun was setting by the time Takuma trudged out of the academy. His eyes were red and puffy as he looked at the street outside academy grounds. A caretaker had found him in the classroom alone and had asked him to leave as it was time for the room to be cleaned and locked for the day.

Takuma walked around the block to see if he could find a park where he could sit and wait for the boy's parents to arrive. Fortunately, there was a park beside the academy. Takuma picked a bench directly visible from the park's entrance and sat down. He watched children play in the sandbox, on the swings, playing chase with each other, carefree from the realities of life. As the sun pulled further down, some children left the park on their own while others were picked up by their parents.

Takuma waited and waited, and soon, the red in the sky was replaced with blue until the moon climbed up high, and as he saw the stars glittered against the black backdrop, Takuma knew no one was coming to pick him up. It was a half-deduction, half-gut feeling. He stared at the sky and gazed at the stars; he hadn't seen stars so clearly in a very long time. The cities he lived in always had pollution obstructing the star's light.

It seemed he would need to find his own way back home... or he would've to spend the night on the bench. 'I can find another bench somewhere; why not give it a shot.'

As he stepped outside of the park, Takuma frowned at the street. He looked left, and a street light illuminated the path; he looked to the right, there was no light on that side, but he felt a strong feeling from the direction. Like something was calling him. He looked between the two paths, light and dark, before pursing his lips and walking right into the darkness.

He kept to the side of the road and walked like a jumpy rabbit, ready to jump on any indication of any nearby presence. Soon, he arrived at a fork in the road, and once again, he felt a sensation towards one side. He took it. And after following the path indicated by the gut feeling for fifteen minutes, he arrived at an old apartment building standing five stories tall with watermarks dripping down the sides from exposed pipes that had algae growing on the walls. Ignoring the logical part of his brain, Takuma entered the property and found himself standing in front of a door on the third floor.

This was his house; he could feel it. The boy had left something behind, not exact memories, but there was clearly something that had guided him here. It wasn't him, so it could only be the boy.

'I don't have a key,' Takuma squatted and pulled up the floor mat to check underneath but got dirt instead. There was a bulb with a cover atop near the door. Takuma jumped up and tried to reach around to find a key, but again he came down empty-handed. He sighed n-th time in the day and closed his eyes, trying to keep the frustration down and away from showing.

He was exhausted, and his stomach had started protesting from the lack of food. Takuma leaned against the door with his forehead, feeling the cracks in the paint due to the shoddy paint job. He grabbed the doorknob and was about to turn it violently to release his frustration when the first turn made the door open up. Takuma watched with a dropped jaw as the door swung open slowly with the loudest creak he had heard from the door.

The stupid kid hadn't locked his door. Takuma entered the door and entered the dark apartment, only to be hit by a wave of a heavy and hot smell that bogged down the entire apartment. Takuma groaned. He knew the smell; it was the same as a boy's dorm room when they kept the room closed with no ventilation.

After spending minutes fumbling around for a light switch, Takuma turned on the lights to find himself horrified at the state of the apartment. It was a small studio apartment that opened up to the lounge-slash-dining room. Upon entering, he saw an old dirty two-seater couch with laundry piled upon it. On the side was a round dining table with two chairs that had eaten ramen cups and packaged lunch boxes lying on the tabletop as if the concept of a trash bin didn't exist in the house. Even though he was wearing shoes, Takuma could tell by eye how dirty the floor was and didn't want to think when was the last time it was cleaned. Behind the dining table was the kitchen, and he was expecting a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, but all he found were some dirty glasses and mugs, and then it dawned on him— the kid didn't cook. The mess on the table was how he ate.

Takuma sighed. Beyond the living-slash-dining space was the bedroom. It only had two things— a closet and a single bed. The closet was open and half empty, not surprising seeing that half of the clothes were on the couch outside. The bed was worse; there was no sheet on it, and half of the space was covered with miscellaneous junk that Takuma couldn't be bothered with.

He pushed the mess aside as much as he could and fitted himself into the narrow space. He was worn and weary and was in no mood to clean the house. Future-Takuma could handle that punishment. Right now, all he wanted to do was sleep, and hopefully, when he woke up, he would be back in his home world... and not here.

Alas, fate was a cruel mistress.

Takuma looked at himself in the bathroom mirror that one week ago used to be so dirty that it took a complete hour just to get it cleaned enough to see a decent reflection; getting it spotless was a mess of another magnitude. He lightly touched the small bruise on his shoulder from the taijutsu spar in the academy earlier in the day. Just like shurikenjutsu, Takuma was abysmal at best in hand-to-hand combat and kissed the floor in every sparring match he had been a part of.

Takuma now knew he was ten years old from his date of birth on his academy id-card that he found in the corner of the closet and the date of the latest newspaper he saw on a newsstand. Even though he was sparring against similar ten years old— they were ten years old who had been learning how to combat since they were six years old, some even before and he was a bum who had never picked up a fight in his life and only knew to haphazardly throw out punches. He was terribly outclassed by literally everyone among his peers.

It didn't help that the majority of the people had a weight advantage over him. Takuma was above average in height for his age, but the boy must not have liked eating, for he was so skinny that even a shirt on a hanger would feel good about itself. Takuma had ribs showing, slightly sunken cheeks, and limbs with no meat on them.

Takuma narrowed his eyes on himself in the mirror. His hand moved up the new bruise, tracing the almost invisible scarring on his clavicle. The cut that caused the scar was either not deep, or the wound had been healed exceptionally well and had only left behind a white line on his medium fair skin. A scar wouldn't have been out of place, given that he was enrolled in a shinobi academy, but when a ten-year-old's body was riddled with faint scars that could've been made through cuts, Takuma couldn't help but wonder where they came from.

As he was tracing his fingers on the scars, a horrid pain erupted in the back of Takuma's head as if someone was slicing his brain with a hot knife. He choked on the air in his windpipe as an image flashed through his mind of a blinding light with shadows looming over him.

The pain eventually left, leaving behind a throbbing sensation in his head, and Takuma was left in a coughing and wheezing fit as he used his hand on the mirror to prevent himself from ending up on the floor. It took a minute for Takuma to come to his senses, and the first thing he saw was his reflection in the mirror— for some reason, the scars seemed deeper and more visible.

'What the hell was that?!' Takuma wondered with his hand over his chest, feeling his racing heart. He had no idea and could only associate it with the boy's poor health.

In the past week, Takuma learned a lot about his situation. Firstly, he was now a ten years old orphan living alone in a state-allotted home on an allowance also provided by the state. It seemed in the Leaf village, orphans who enrolled in the shinobi academy left the shelter of orphanages at the age of ten and were made to live on their own. They were still available for adoption, but when the children were not living in an orphanage, the chances of getting adopted were close to zero. From the documents he had found lying about the apartment, the boy had been living alone for about four months.

'And that's all it took for him to trash the place.' Takuma was still resentful because it took him five days to clean the place from top to bottom. But Takuma couldn't blame the boy— it was tough to muster enough energy and will to clean up after being beaten up and humiliated in the academy.

Takuma had visited the orphanage once to see if he could find more about the boy. It was interesting since he didn't know the way to the orphanage, what it was called, or what it looked like. But somehow, he was able to get it anyway, and that without asking for directions. Takuma had realized in the last week that even though he hadn't inherited the boy's memories, he had inherited something to a gut feeling, a special sense that communicated the boy's experience to him. Directions to frequently visited locations? His body would tell him where to turn. Names of people the boy knew? A whisper-like thought would inform him of their names. He didn't know when the special sense would come to him or how to invoke it, but he was grateful for it because he would've been dead without it.

At the orphanage, the matron was surprised to see him. It seemed the boy hadn't visited since he had been made to leave. Takuma had spent some time talking to the matron before leaving. He wasn't able to find much about the boy. He couldn't broach the topic of the boy's parentage. But he did come to know that the orphanage was relatively new and was made after Kyuubi's attack on the village, which had left many children without families, and thus the majority of children in the orphanage were victims of the aforementioned attack. Takuma assumed the boy was just another one of those unfortunate children.

Kyuubi's attack... A piece of information that had cleared a lot of questions for Takuma. He knew exactly what time he was in... or he knew exactly how far he was from the main story.

'Seven years,' Takuma thought bitterly. Seven years from now, the main cast would turn twelve and graduate from the academy, and that would mark the start of a particularly dangerous time in an already dangerous world. Currently, he was ten years old, and the main cast was five years old— a five-year difference, not that it meant anything. 'They must've entered the academy this year.' There wasn't much interaction between different years, so he hadn't seen the main cast. Takuma was tempted to go have a look, but he couldn't find the time and energy.

Takuma groaned as he made his way out of the bathroom to his bedroom. He pulled a tracksuit out of his closet and pulled it on. It was time to go running. He had seven years left, and only two more years in the academy, and he was already running late. If he wanted to increase his chances of living, he had to make use of every second of his time.

Because when he turned twelve, he was going to be put on active duty, and it was only time before he would be in situations where his life was in danger.

———

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