Darkness.
It was the first thing he registered—no light, no form, no sense of direction. Just a thick, inky void that stretched on without end. It felt like being submerged in deep water, suspended in a viscous, chilling silence that clung to him like oil. The sensation wasn't painful. In fact, it was curiously neutral—numbing, even. There was no panic, no desperate scramble for air. Just the feeling of weightlessness, of being trapped somewhere between the world of the living and... something else.
But he wasn't breathing. He didn't need to.
'Am I drowning?' the thought flickered through his awareness, small and tentative like the ripple of a pebble hitting still water. It didn't feel like he was dying, not anymore. If anything, he felt like he was stuck—adrift in an endless sea of not-quite-anything.
A limbo.
The silence pressed down on him, and in the absence of sensation, memory began to rise.
'I died… didn't I?'
Yes. The thought struck him with sudden, brutal clarity.
His name had been Ren Kitamura—thirty-one years old, a software engineer in Tokyo. Long hours, short nights.
A cluttered apartment that always smelled faintly of instant ramen and whiteboard markers. His life hadn't been particularly remarkable, but it had been his.
The memory came flooding in, jagged and bright.
A crosswalk. A blaring horn. Screeching tires.
He remembered turning to the sound, his hands full of grocery bags, his earbuds blaring lo-fi beats to drown out the city noise. The Truck had jumped the curb before he could even react. One moment he was walking home with dinner and the next—nothing.
Just this.
This cold, heavy nothing.
'Truck-kun 1, Ren 0.'
Ren thought as he began to gather himself. His thoughts whirled, slow and syrupy, but persistent. 'So this is what happens after death? No lights, no tunnel? Just… the void?'
The realization settled over him like a wet shroud. There was no heaven. No hell. No field of flowers or lake of fire. It was all fiction—sweet stories we told ourselves to soften the inevitability of oblivion.
'Reincarnation, maybe?' he mused dryly, with the same bitter amusement he used to apply to online debates. 'Back into the cycle, the wheel of samsara. Maybe I'll come back as a bird, or a slime… or worse, a middle manager.'
But even that felt like a reach. There was no light drawing him in, no karmic checklist. Just… waiting.
And yet, something stirred.
A faint pressure.
It started deep in his chest, coiling outward like smoke. A presence he hadn't felt before. And then it hit—an overwhelming, primal instinct to breathe.
It made no sense. He didn't have lungs, not here. He wasn't even sure he had a body. But the sensation grew, sharp and merciless until he felt as though something were sitting on his chest, forcing the breath from him, forcing the panic into him.
He thrashed—or tried to. Limbs he could no longer feel flailed against the suffocating void. The nothingness resisted, like tar, and panic bloomed like wildfire in his mind.
'I can't breathe! I can't—!'
His scream was silent, but it tore through the silence like thunder. The pressure in his chest became unbearable. The need for air, for something real, surged until—
GASP!
He bolted upright.
Air flooded his lungs in a ragged, wheezing torrent, and he coughed violently, curling forward as his body remembered how to function. Cold sweat drenched his skin, clinging to him like a second layer. His vision swam, the room around him tilting drunkenly before settling into focus.
Wooden beams. Faded wallpaper. A cracked window frame.
He blinked, struggling to anchor himself. Everything was too sharp, too vivid. The sunlight streaming through the window was blinding. The chirp of birds outside was deafening. The rough wool of the blanket on his legs felt like sandpaper.
He was alive.
Truly alive.
'What the hell…?'
His hand—small, trembling—reached up to his head, and he winced as his fingers met rough bandages wrapped around his forehead. Pain flared beneath the gauze, dull and pulsing.
He froze.
His hand.
It was too small. The fingers were stubby, and delicate. The skin unblemished and soft.
This wasn't his hand.
His breath caught again, this time not from panic but confusion. He looked down at himself—his arms, his legs beneath the thin blanket—and a slow, creeping horror settled in his gut.
'Did I… did I get younger? Is this—am I dreaming? No, no, this isn't right. This isn't my body.'
His thoughts ran in circles, trying to rationalize the impossible. 'Maybe this is some weird memory from childhood I'd forgotten. Maybe I hit my head harder than I thought in that accident and this is some sort of regression. A coma dream.'
But the ache in his skull was real. The sweat was real. The way the mattress dipped beneath him was real.
Everything was real.
Then the door creaked open.
A woman stepped inside, holding a bowl of water and a small towel. She looked to be in her thirties, though the lines of fatigue etched on her face made her seem older. Her dress was simple, faded by too many washes, and her hair was tied in a loose, hurried bun.
When her eyes landed on him, they lit up with gentle concern.
"Oh! Are you awake, Satoru?" she asked, stepping quickly toward the bed.
His mouth worked, but the name stunned him into silence. "Satoru?" he repeated, voice hoarse. "Who the hell is that?"
The woman stopped in her tracks, alarm flashing in her expression. She quickly placed the bowl on the window sill and moved to his side.
"What do you mean?" she asked, her voice rising slightly. "Did you lose your memories after the fall?"
Her hands hovered uncertainly, then gently began probing the bandages on his head, her touch soft but frantic. "Oh no… I thought it was just a bump. But if you don't remember your name…"
He stared at her, stunned. Everything about this moment was wrong. The way she spoke to him—with familiarity, with affection. Like she'd known him for years.
But he didn't know her.
And he sure as hell wasn't Satoru.
He should have answered. Should have said something to calm her rising panic. But his voice caught in his throat, the confusion and nausea tangling together into a tight knot in his gut.
His gaze drifted.
Out the window.
And then he saw them.
The cliffside.
Massive stone faces carved into the rock wall overlooking the village.
He blinked once.
Twice.
The first face was wide, noble, marked with a gentle smile and flowing hair—Hashirama Senju.
Next to him, the stern visage of Tobirama, etched with precision and cold brilliance.
And beside them, the wrinkled but wise face of Hiruzen Sarutobi.
His stomach dropped.
He knew those faces. Knew them from anime episodes watched in his teenage years, from fan art, from memes and wikis and character guides.
"No…" he whispered.
There was no mistaking it.
Those were the Hokage.
He was in Konoha.
This was the world of Naruto.
He didn't know how. Didn't know why. But every bone in his newly small body screamed the truth.
He had reincarnated.
He, Ren Kitamura, was now Satoru—some child who'd suffered a head injury in the Hidden Leaf Village.
The woman beside him was still talking, still asking questions he wasn't hearing. The bandages on his head itched, and his heart thundered like a taiko drum in his ears.
But all he could do was stare out that window, slack-jawed, his mind buzzing with a single, irreverent thought:
"Shit."