It was early morning—a Saturday morning. The sun had yet to rise, and the chill of the passing night still lingered in the air.
Pre-dawn. The best time to commune with the heavens and the earth. Or at least that's what all the manhwa and manga I used to read claimed. Maybe not the most reliable source of information, but I'd been running on DnD logic for a while now, and things seemed to be working out.
Still time to unite my essence with the universe in the age-old tradition of gooni—I mean, meditation.
First, some good old self-reflection. Why self-reflection, you might ask? Because chakra is half spiritual, and the more spiritually mature I became, the more powerful my chakra would be. But that was mostly a side benefit. The main reason was simple.
Wizards were wise.
More than anything else, that's what being a wizard was about. Magic was just the most common avenue for attaining wisdom. Technically speaking, anyone who made the pursuit of wisdom a part of their life was a wizard—or at least on their way to becoming one.
And I was going to be a fucking wizard. I was committed now, no matter how long it took.
That brought up the question of what wisdom actually was, and that was hard to quantify. I liked to think of it as a type of understanding—an understanding of yourself and the world around you. Not just knowledge—understanding.
Understanding was different from knowledge. Knowledge was knowing something intellectually. Understanding was knowing it in your heart—making that knowledge part of your personality and worldview.
Wisdom was found in the sweet spot between understanding yourself, the world, and your place in it.
I liked to think of myself as a wise person—mostly because I had a decent grasp of myself and of other people, both individually and in relation to me. But sadly, that understanding was gone.
The dulling of emotion—the fading of the pains and calluses of my old life—meant that most of the knowledge I'd gained in that life remained surface-level. There was no integration of that knowledge into who I now was.
No inner understanding.
I thought I had it.
Then I went and put on that display against Lee in our sparring match, attracting more attention than I ever intended. All of this led to one plain and simple conclusion:
I was still a child.
Not just physically, or because of brain chemistry, but spiritually—I was young. Easily excited. Easily distracted.
The wisdom from my past life gave me advantages—the kind of discipline few children my age could match—but I wasn't a man in a child's body.
I was a child with a man's experiences.
Part of me was relieved—my conscience no longer burdened by the moral dilemma of being attracted to girls my physical age. That part, as it turned out, was smaller than I expected.
A much larger part of me was distraught.
What did this mean?
It meant I'd been operating with the judgment of a child this whole time. I felt so smug when I deceived the academy instructors. But was that just childish pettiness?
The pointless rebellion of a toddler against a government that only existed in his mind—and in another world?
Was my decision not to be a shinobi based on faulty judgment?
Maybe.
And that possibility frightened me.
But it didn't matter. I had made that choice, and I wouldn't go back on it unless real, serious evidence proved me wrong.
If there was one piece of wisdom I had actually internalized from my past life, it was to always finish what you start.
Whew. Well, that sucked, and to think I would be doing this every day now.
The things I did for magic.
Having contemplated my mental state enough, it was time to shift focus—toward understanding the outside world.
That started with my body.
It sounded counterintuitive, but it made sense—at least to me and my world view.
We weren't just our bodies, even though our bodies were a large part of who we are. Just like we weren't our titles, yet those dictated much of our identity.
I tried to stay as still as possible while my chakra flowed through me, taking on that sensory tang the Ram sign helped me achieve—though I was starting to replicate it with just thought.
I was already intimately familiar with my chakra system. Years of fervent study at the academy ensured that.
But I wasn't as familiar as I wanted to be—especially with the components that made up chakra.
Spiritual and physical energy.
The academy didn't go into much detail. Physical energy was described as how healthy you were. Spiritual energy? How smart.
I had no doubt that was a child-friendly oversimplification, but it probably captured the basic gist.
We didn't deal with it much after that. All metaphysical studies focused directly on chakra, not its components.
But that leap in logic always stuck in my mind.
How can you master something without mastering its components?
And even then, the ease of accessing chakra baffled me.
Again, I was drawing from DnD—but it offered a surprisingly detailed and balanced view of mysticism.
In DnD, monks had to meditate for tens of thousands of hours to produce their first flickers of Ki. They had to master their physical and spiritual energies before becoming even remotely superhuman.
But here? A toddler could manifest chakra after a few minutes of explanation and light meditation?
No. That didn't make sense.
The only explanation was that something was doing the conversion from internal energies to chakra for me.
But wizards didn't accept unknown, automatic processes.
I wanted to understand every step of how my magic worked.
I wasn't a fucking sorcerer.
To do that, I had to understand my internal energies.
This wasn't an endeavor I started today, but I'd been making progress recently—especially since learning that chakra had a mutable nature, its characteristics shifting with the user's intention.
I used that property to create a kind of trail—one that could lead me back to these energies I'd been told about since childhood but had never actually felt.
I tried to stay perfectly still and shaped my chakra into two distinct qualities. One cool and thoughtful—what I imagined mana to feel like—and the other, a blazing bonfire of vigor.
I channeled both through my chakra network, observing how my body responded.
Sadly, the golden glow of my physically aligned chakra led me nowhere.
There was something there, but the reaction was too weak to pinpoint—probably because my body was still recovering from the malnutrition it had suffered at my hands.
Malnutrition I wasn't even sure had been necessary.
I shifted focus, discarding my attempts to sense physical energy—for now, and turned instead to the mentally aligned chakra.
It shouldn't have surprised me how quickly I found it.
Regardless of my actual maturity, I was still far more spiritually potent than a child my age had any right to be—and my academy eating habits only exacerbated that difference.
As soon as my chakra reached my forehead, my awareness was siphoned away, and in the blink of an eye.
I was drowning.
Physically, I could breathe, but I was drowning all the same—in happiness, sorrow, pain, fear, forgiveness, and nostalgia.
Sinking into thought and memory.
I was drowning in identity.
I was drowning in myself.
Panic overtook me. Reflexively, I reached out for something—anything—enhancing my grip with chakra in hopes of finding a surface to cling to.
My hand breached the waves with a violent thrash, but no matter how hard I kicked or struggled, I kept sinking.
But necessity is the mother of innovation.
I knew I could push and pull with chakra. I'd used that technique in battle to gain leverage and strengthen my footing.
I hadn't considered other applications—not yet.
But in this moment of desperation, I didn't think. I just did.
I felt my palm break the surface again. This time, I pushed—pushed with chakra as soon as I touched the water.
I failed at first.
But I didn't stop.
I couldn't.
Slowly, my hands found purchase. Then my elbows. Then my knees.
And finally, I was out of the water—choking on liquid that wasn't liquid, but would've drowned me nonetheless.
Then I looked up.
And my breath caught in my throat.
A stunning sunset stretched before me—a sky painted in pinks and purples and oranges, with a brilliant yellow sun kissing the horizon.
A horizon of water. Violent, turbulent water as far as the eye could see.
It crashed against itself in gigantic, unpredictable waves—a pattern that should have made no sense.
But I understood it perfectly.
This entire ocean was me.
The awareness felt like it had unlocked something. I was on the verge of… something.
Then—yanked inward. Back into consciousness.
By the cold zap of foreign chakra in my system.
I gasped awake, lying flat on my back. At some point during meditation, I had fallen.
Above me loomed the white mask of my personal ANBU escort and guard.
Dog.
"You really are a precocious one, aren't you?" he said in a lazy monotone that gave nothing away.
I rolled over and got to my feet. My body felt stiff.
A quick glance out the window showed that barely any time had passed at all. The sun was just peeking over the Hokage Monument.
"What happened?" I groaned, cracking my back.
"I should be asking you, shouldn't I?" Dog said, pulling out that damn orange book.
And no, I was not jealous just because I was too young to buy one.
Anyone who said otherwise was a lying liar who lies.
"I was trying some stuff out." I said after some thought
"Hmmm," was all he said, flipping a page with one hand, looking for all the world that he couldn't care less. I did not doubt the Hokage would be hearing of this.
"I'll have some questions for you later," I said, glancing out the window. "For now, I have an appointment to make."
He shrugged.
"You're the client," he said—and disappeared from view.
I shook my head at how laid-back he was about me passing out in front of him.
But I had a fair idea of what had just happened, so I wasn't worried.
Regardless, I had a goth girl waiting for me at a training ground.
Best not to keep her waiting.
Scene break
The rest of the day was packed. It was Saturday, and my schedule was full: first, a meeting with Hidachi about our project; then helping Naruko with her clones; and finally, clothes shopping.
I was on my way to meet Hidachi at Training Ground 27, which also doubled as a public park. I'd just finished a filling breakfast. Dog was most likely hidden in my shadow—or somewhere out of sight. My mind, however, kept drifting toward my partner for the project and what I actually thought of her.
There wasn't much to draw from. I didn't know her well. I knew she liked shinobi, harbored a certain disdain for her peers, and had probably developed a crush on me—most likely rooted in our shared rebellion against elitism and her affinity for ninja.
But I didn't know much about Hidachi the person. I didn't know much about Hidachi the girl. Heck, I couldn't even remember her first name! Whenever I thought of her, those few facts were all that came to mind. And yet… I felt a strange unease about this meeting.
There was a gut feeling telling me that something wasn't quite right about her. And in a world where magic was built on spiritual components, gut feelings—while not always accurate—still held weight.
So, I told myself to be cautious.
That resolve lasted until I saw her—and my pubescent brain decided to do its best impression of dancing monkeys.
Hidachi was pretty. I'd known that the moment I first saw her, but seeing her outside the semi-formal context of school was something else entirely. In a nation where goth and grunge didn't exist, her commitment to that aesthetic was striking. Strange, yes—but the strangeness didn't take away from how undeniably pretty she was.
Her skin was pale and clear, and her dark shaggy hair—normally styled to a rigid degree at school—was now free, swaying loosely in a long mane that fell past her thighs. Her eyes, pure onyx, stared back at me like twin abysses.
She was beautiful in a way that made my lizard brain both freeze in fear and howl at the moon—like she wasn't entirely human.
As usual, she wore all black. Her yukata had an odd pattern to it, stained and frayed in places like a garment worn far too many times. The only splash of color was the deep crimson sash at her waist.
She looked like a very pretty ghost—and I suspected that was intentional.
"Good morning, Hanama-kun!" she greeted, her smile radiant and just a little too fang-filled.
"Good morning, Hidachi-san," I replied.
"You can call me Korumaru-chan, or Koru-chan. Don't sound so stuffy," she said with a pout.
I gave her an awkward smile and decided to indulge her. "Of course, Koru-chan."
She beamed.
"Come on! I've got a place set up for us to study," she said, leading me through a copse of trees to what looked like a luxury picnic setup—white blanket on the grass, a neatly stacked bento on the side, and a bottle filled with some kind of blue liquid.
We sat down, and I pulled my bag forward, laying out my notes in front of us.
"These are my ideas for the business pitch—"
"Oooh! What's this?" she said, flipping through one of the books that had spilled out of my bag.
"Oh, that?" I said, fighting the urge to fidget. "Just some book ideas."
"You write?" she asked.
"Just a little," I replied.
"Can I read it?"
I glanced at the book in her hands and raised an eyebrow.
One of my ideas for quick cash was plagiarizing books from my past life. Unfortunately, convincing publishers to take a chance on a literal child was tough. So I'd just been quietly filling notebooks with stories until I was old enough—or rich enough—to publish them myself.
Not all of them were age-appropriate. Like the one Hidachi was now holding: A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. Definitely not children's reading material.
But before I could stop her, she flipped to the first page.
"They execute someone in the first scene?!" she exclaimed, though her tone was more intrigued than scandalized.
I reached forward and gently closed the book in her hands.
"This stuff isn't for kids, Hidachi," I said, taking it from her.
To her credit, she let go—though she pouted.
"We're the same age," she pointed out.
"Yeah, but I'm shinobi-trained," I said with a shrug.
"And I want to be like you."
"And I promised to help with that. Doesn't mean you need to read this kind of stuff."
She tilted her head thoughtfully. "Will reading it make me a better shinobi?"
She was watching the book in my hand with a strange intensity.
I paused. Game of Thrones explored a lot—politics, human nature, deception. Valuable lessons for anyone aiming to succeed in a cutthroat world.
Why was I even hesitating? This wasn't Earth. I'd practically been a child soldier. Still was, beneath all the layers of bureaucracy and civility. What exactly was I protecting Hidachi from?
"Yes," I finally said.
Her eyes lit up.
"Here," I said, handing her the book.
It grated against every modern instinct I had, but reality was reality. Better she learn from stories than experience.
Scene Break
POV Shift – Koru-chan
She wanted a dragon now. And Faceless Man training. And daggers. Lots of daggers.
Korumaru had decided Arya and Daenerys were role models worth emulating.
And honestly, she couldn't blame the Targaryen queen. She might have burned down hundreds of thousands too, if the love of her life rejected her.
Daenerys did nothing wrong.