Chapter 3:
Being reincarnated was hard—just not in the ways I had prepared for.
I hadn't starved. I hadn't been left somewhere to die, nameless and unnoticed. For all the dread I'd carried into that final spin, it hadn't come to that. I was born in Japan, placed—quietly, deliberately—into a system that was already waiting for children like me.
That was the part I hadn't expected.
There were places for us. Not kind in any sentimental, storybook way—but structured. Clean. Functional. People whose job it was to take in what others had let go of. I had assumed distance, indifference at best.
That assumption didn't last long.
Care, I realized early on, didn't always look like warmth. Sometimes it was routine. Measured hands. Regular feeding times. Checkups that came like clockwork. People who didn't smile much, didn't linger—but never mishandled, never careless. It was a quieter kind of attention, one that didn't ask for attachment to exist.
And somehow, that made it harder to dismiss.
Four years have passed since then—long enough for memory to settle, long enough for the strangeness to stop being constant and start becoming something I only noticed in the gaps.
I remember thinking I understood places like this. Orphanages, children's homes—whatever name you gave them. Stories had a way of simplifying things: either cruel institutions or improbably kind refuges, nothing in between.
The reality was… flatter than that. But also, more honest.
No one here was secretly waiting to mistreat us. No one was especially interested in us either. We were looked after because that was the system working as intended—because someone had to be responsible, and this was where that responsibility landed.
And yet—
They paid attention.
I learned that in small ways. The way injuries were noticed before they were mentioned. The way fevers didn't go ignored. The way new arrivals—like I had been—were checked, cleaned, monitored without delay. There was an efficiency to it but not neglect.
I didn't have the full picture back then. Still don't, not completely. Most of what I understand comes from overheard conversations, half-answered questions, fragments pieced together over time.
Children like me don't just… disappear into the system. Not here. We're processed, documented, assigned. The state takes responsibility, at least on paper. That much was clear even to someone who wasn't supposed to notice these things yet.
It's strange, realizing you're being taken care of by something that doesn't know you—and isn't trying to.
Stranger still is realizing that it works.
Not perfectly.
But it works.
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The first quirk I ever saw belonged to the doctor who examined me on my second day alive.
He had the head of a deer.
I knew what quirks were. I still wasn't ready for that.
It's one thing to understand something in theory. It's another to be barely conscious, stuck in a body that can't even sit up, and have antlers in your face like that's normal. I remember staring at him, trying to make sense of it through a brain that wasn't fully online yet.
I freaked out a bit.
Not that it mattered—crying was about the only response I had available.
The weird part is how quickly it stopped feeling weird. Not right away—but sooner than it should have. After a while, things like that just blurred into the background. Horns, glowing skin, moving hair… none of it really stood out for long.
Most people didn't even look that strange. A detail here, something off there—but otherwise, they were just people.
Just people with quirks.
And somehow, that became normal faster than anything else.
One thing I am genuinely proud of in this life is that I was already walking by ten months and talking properly before I even turned one.
Not to make a big deal out of it or anything, but that is truly a feat worthy of a future global sensation—me, now named Itsuki.
Yes, I was given a name too—伊月, Itsuki.
The kanji is interesting. On its own, the character usually suggests "tree," but written this way, it means something else entirely: moon. Elegant moon, to be precise.
Given that I've inherited the eyes of an Uchiha and spent my previous life wanting to reach space, I'd say that fits.
There's also a small, moon-shaped mark on the back of my left hand. A coincidence, probably.
Yeah… no. It's most likely the Yin Seal Sasuke had—you know, the half of a mark that literally helped create a moon to seal away a goddess bent on wiping out humanity.
Hopefully there's nothing like that waiting for me here.
But that's a problem for future me. Infant me had other priorities.
Most of my infancy, when I wasn't sleeping, was spent doing exactly what you'd expect from someone with access to chakra and absolutely nothing else to do—sticking to the mattress, trying to breathe fire, the usual.
I'd assumed it would take years of dedicated training just to access it—some long, painful process of unlocking something dormant. Instead, on my first real attempt, it just… came. Extraction, then molding—the whole process. Instinctual, like it had always been there, waiting.
As big a Naruto fan as I was, I hadn't even realized that chakra had to be extracted first and then shaped depending on its use. And yet, somehow, I did it anyway.
Honestly, that surprised me more than anything else.
And now, here I am—four years old, the age when most children are just beginning to awaken their quirks—and I'm walking upside down on a wall.
The other kids are losing their minds over it,
which, I won't lie, does an excellent job of boosting my ego.
There's nothing quite like the unfiltered admiration of children to make you feel like you've already won at life.
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Author's note:
Third chapter here. hope you enjoy and please feel free to share your opinions about this story.