I woke up. My head felt heavy and sluggish.
For a moment, I didn't even remember falling asleep. The last thing I remember was bingeing on one of the endless streams of videos on YouTube. Attempting to open my eyes acquainted me with a new brand of pain—slow at first, then sharp, like a spike driven behind my eyes. I groaned and tried to turn my head, burrowing deeper into the pillow as instinct demanded comfort. Instead, I got… resistance. Something stiff, unforgiving, far from the plush softness I associated with my comfy pillow. My face mashed into a lumpy surface that felt more like a sack stuffed with hay than anything manufactured by any modern standards.
I suppressed a wince and thought, 'What the hell? Did my pillow shrivel overnight?'
The headache, objecting to my attempt at dry humor, immediately throbbed harder. I cursed and cut my thoughts off halfway— I massaged my head in slow circles, a habit formed years ago whenever hangovers or late-night gaming sessions punished me the next morning. But the pain didn't feel like alcohol or sleep deprivation. It felt… wrong. Raw. Like something inside me was just plain wrong.
...
Then the trickles of memory arrived.
Not mine. Definitely not. Not even close. But familiar somehow.
They slipped into my mind quietly at first—blurry faces, blurry laughter, blurry sorrow, and sadness. A child's cry against the dark night. The scent of disinfectant in tight hallways. The loneliness of small footsteps echoes searching for belonging. Then the trickle became a flood, and instinctively I squeezed my eyes shut as if I could stop it. But the images forced their way through anyway.
My heart lurched.
'This… this isn't me.' The thought burst through the fog of memories as I moved.
I bolted upright with a gasp, the motion so sudden my light body shot upward like a spring. The world spun, and I barely managed to keep myself from falling straight off the futon. Futon—that alone was a red flag. My bed was a mattress, soft and sagging in the middle. This was a thin, padded mat on a wooden floor, barely thick enough to soften anything. I blinked rapidly, forcing the dizziness down.
The room was unfamiliar, yet it fit easily, slotting firmly into the new memories.
Small. Clean in a utilitarian way. Tatami-like flooring, though more worn than well-kept. A single low dresser pushed against the wall. A paper-screen window letting filtered sunlight in. A desk built into the corner with a small stool tucked beneath it. A folded blanket rested neatly at the foot of the futon, too neatly for anything I would've done.
My breath caught when I looked down at my hands.
Small hands.
Slim, tiny fingers. Smooth, unscarred skin most of the way, even though the knuckles held some calluses. Nails trimmed short. They moved with a grace that wasn't mine—I wasn't really clumsy with mine, but they moved with a dexterity that seemed magical, exactly with barely a disconnect between intention and action. I flexed them experimentally, watching how they overshot the delicate motion I intended. Like the feedback loop between brain and body wasn't calibrated right.
'These aren't my hands… This isn't my body.'
The memories struck again—this time sharper, painting a more detailed picture of a young face.
A name.
Yori.
An orphan.
Eight… maybe nine years old. Hard to tell. The years in this place blurred—with the face becoming mine by force. A life spent waking up early, living in an orphanage with other children, helping with chores, doing laundry, and watering the meager collection of plants outside the old building. Then, I attended the Academy with other children in a similar situation.
Trying to keep up with them. Trying not to fall behind. Trying to survive, the learning curve was harsh, but I struggled and survived, gritting my teeth to grow stronger and barely making the criteria to be promoted to the best class at the end of the second year, with all the clan heirs.
I shut my eyes, breathing shallowly as new memories layered themselves over my own—childhood scraps of playing in dusty courtyards, of eating meager meals with wooden spoons, of walking to the Academy in too-large sandals, moving into this standalone apartment after passing the first year while many of my peers were left behind. Faces I recognized from fiction but felt a disconnect with their portrayals—famous shadows of characters whose names I once saw only behind a screen.
Asuma, with his soft frustration and struggles at never measuring up to his father's potential. Not yet given up on meeting that untouchable bar.
Kurenai quietly studies genjutsu theory with too-serious eyes, wholly focused on fulfilling her dream of specializing in the art.
Shizune was always holding medical texts almost as big as her torso as she struggled with the physical portions.
Ibiki Morino, a happy-go-lucky kid, is completely unmarred by the scars as shown in the original story.
Ebisu was the only character that matched his final vibe perfectly, a kid who liked to hang around Asuma and pretend to be someone important.
There were others, too, supporting characters. Background cast. People who didn't make it to the main story, likely buried somewhere on the continent over the next couple of decades. And I was suddenly supposed to be one of their classmates. One of their peers had the job of supporting the giant tree that was Konoha.
I was one of the children is waiting for the next academy graduation exam.
'Oh god.' I nearly flattered as the next batch of memories came swiftly, the integration speeding up as they flashed by, yet remained crystal clear to me. The memories continued to pour in, no longer slow, now harsh and urgent—every piece of context asserting itself in my new mixed psyche.
Kakashi, the prodigy, had already graduated years earlier despite his young age, stories of his legend already left behind by Asuma's gritted teeth. Might Guy, the taijutsu fanatic, had followed not long ago. Genma, too, I had barely managed to get into the class, and they graduated with the previous batch. The genius trio moved ahead like comets racing into adulthood, while the others, like us, struggled to meet minimum expectations.
The war outside swallowed squad after squad, driving early graduations like a furnace demanding fuel. And according to these new memories… the next exam was in a month.
My mouth dried. My stomach turned icy as it churned.
The Second Shinobi War.
The realization hit like a kunai to the gut—sharp, fast, unavoidable. This wasn't a peaceful era of bright-eyed children learning how to throw shuriken and make friends like the one Naruto grew up in. Sure, he had to deal with a war, too, but by then, he was 16. This was the time when graduates were shoved into the meat grinder of the Second Shinobi World War.
When missions weren't D-rank chores but lethal deployments to be canon fodder at the front lines. When the mortality rate for fresh genin was sickeningly high. The world I knew from anime didn't explore this time period much—just fragments, filler, hints. The rest? Unknown. And dangerous.
I pushed myself to move on instinct, though the sudden movement made my head spin slightly. The cold wooden floor under my bare soles grounded me, snapping my attention away from the rising panic. For a few precious seconds, the sting of chill helped me focus.
Yori's memories stretched the boundaries of my own thoughts—like two souls trying to fit inside the same container. Slowly, the rising tide of memories settled, forming something that felt like a new whole. Not fully him. Not fully me. Something wedged in between. I had memories of a peaceful life and one of struggle, one of partying through the night, buzzed out of my mind, and one of smacking my bare knuckles against a training log.
'Let's calm down, one thing at a time.'
I swallowed hard and took in the room again. This was my starting point weather I liked it or not. The futon was neatly in one corner, the room didn't have much of anything, and the little furniture there was arranged as cleanly as possible. By Yori. By me. Habitually tidy, another trait that differentiated us. The dresser held only a few folded clothes. On the small desk sat a cup of pencils, a cracked ink stone, parchment paper, and… something that absolutely didn't belong in this era.
A rectangular object.
Plastic. Grey. Familiar in ways nothing else in this room could be.
A Nintendo. A fucking Nintendo.
My throat tightened. The DS rested there innocently, closed, as if waiting for someone to pick it up. The sleek lines of its casing looked out of place against the crude wood grain of the desk. It didn't seem like anything special, but from my memories, I know Yori never had anything like it. It didn't do anything and was supposed to exist in this time—utterly out of place yet utterly real.
'Boruto had access to a handheld gaming console, right, with an RPG game or something like it?' I searched through my memories. Boruto the movie had been an anticipated thing of the past, but I hadn't really cared about the protagonist's son after the movie; it didn't have the same vibe as the original.
A wave of instinct to move toward it, taken by familiarity, overwhelmed me to move toward it, but I forced myself to look away. Now wasn't the time to lose myself. I had bigger problems.
I stepped toward the window, each motion deliberate, and pushed the screen aside. Sunlight flooded in, gentle warmth touching my face as if welcoming me to a world that wasn't mine, hiding the brutal setting behind the warm facade. Outside, rooftops stretched like neat rows, warm clay tiles reflecting the morning light. Trees swayed softly in the distance. Birds chirped. Civilians busied themselves in the streets below.
And towering above it all—the carved faces on the mountain.
My breath stopped as I took the scene in. The First. Second. And the last face carved in, the Third Hokage's stony visage stared down on the village, along with the other Hokage's like a guardian, silently watching over every soul within its walls.
My heartbeat quickened as adrenaline rushed through me. This wasn't a dream. Not a delusion. Not some fevered hallucination brought on by a migraine.
This was Konoha. The Village Hidden in the Leaves.
The place I once knew only as fiction, one of my favorite places to fantasise about, but now that the prospect of living within its walls was actually here. My hand trembled against the window frame.
'I'm… actually here.'
The weight of the truth pressed down on me—heavy, suffocating, undeniable.
I had transmigrated.
Into a child. An orphan. Into a wartime era where death loomed closer with each passing month. Into a world where I was neither special nor powerful. Just another boy destined for an exam that would send him to a battlefield.
...
I was in Konoha.
...And I was in danger.
---
AN: As expected, the Nintendo DS is a bit of a cheat because I'm a bit infatuated with gamer novels of old, but I'm trying to do it a bit differently. More will be revealed in the upcoming chapters.