Summary: I did not die, just to be reborn as a pink little menace whose job is to fangirl over some emo what's-his-name unable pull himself together.

Tag(s): OC, OC-reincarnates-as-Sakura, gender dysphoria


1. second chance


There are a lot of people in this world who think about death.

They ponder, wonder, marvel, brood over, contemplate and consider. I may not know the accurate number of people who have death lingering in their minds and every constant, waking moment of their lives, but I do know that there are many. Many is a lot and you just know that.

It's like knowing that the cake has been eaten, but you don't know the exact amount of it that has been eaten. All you do know, is that if the cake can be divided into probably eight slices, then three or four slices have already fulfilled their purpose of being a baked, sweet, sugary abomination. You don't find the radius of the cake, get the circumference, use the formula for a circle and do some mumbo jumbo mathematical doohickey, just to discover the actual centimeters of the missing part of cake.

It's all speculation and guess work.

To me, numbers are accurate, as it is vague. As long as I know the general idea, I thought that I didn't need to know anything else. I mean, if you understand the basic concept of addition, you don't go and ask the universe, "hey, why is one plus one equals to two?" right?

Just like how I perceived numbers, it is how I perceived death. To the average person, who is completely content with their lives despite it being predictable and safe, they didn't think much about death. You see, I was that person. I knew about the definition of death and that was it.

"Death was something too far from my reach but I would reach it sooner or later as the years pass by, because it's the cycle of life. You come into this world in light, then you leave it in darkness", is what I thought I knew as.

I was just the average individual you would be able to find on any street, carrying on with my life, not thinking much, not doing much.

I thought that, if I lived the rest of my life like this, I'd be fine.

Somehow, somewhere, the almighty beings above thought I was wrong.

I never thought much about death, which is why I was so unprepared when it happened.

Along the way of life, I died and I didn't even know how or why.

. . .

I thought it was strange, that there was a light to what looked like a tunnel. It looked like I was in a tunnel, or to be more accurate, it felt like it. My eyes were closed and I couldn't open them no matter how hard I tried. They felt incredibly heavy and it made my heart skip a beat for a moment.

What if I didn't die and was blind instead?

I was scared, because I relied on my eyes the most amongst my other senses. It was part of the reason why I couldn't comprehend how someone who had not been blind since birth, could adjust to such a terrible condition. I didn't want to adjust being blind either, because I knew I would miss being able to see and it would be too much of a burden for me to handle.

But the next moment, made me confused. There was a lot of shouting, screaming and sounds of machines beeping meshing together to create a catastrophic symphony and my ears, which I never knew were so sensitive, started to hurt. There was also hands touching me, which scared me as badly as the prospect of being blind, because I was held between these arms.

Impossible, because I was not that small.

Impossible, because I was a twenty year old guy, who would most definitely not fit in these arms.

What the fuck.

Those arms then handed me off to another pair of arms, but surprisingly, this pair did not incite fear or discomfort within me. I was suddenly calm and lulled into a sense of tranquility. It was weird, but I did not complain, because it was comfortable.

I couldn't see but from behind my heavy eyelids, I could make out some sort of shadow in front of me. The curves of the jaw and delicate neck, as far as I could tell, belonged to a woman. The rest were a blur and I didn't attempt to make out what the shapes were. It was just too much effort to be put into something so pointless.

This woman cooed at me and said some gibberish I could not hope to understand, though I did recognize it as Japanese. It was easy to do so, after watching a couple of anime out of boredom, you know.

Next thing I knew, I slept even though I myself protested against it.

. . .

The rest of my days were mashed up into a distorted time frame I couldn't get a grip of. My sense of time was completely out of whack, as well as my sense of direction. I couldn't tell if it was daytime or nighttime. I couldn't tell what was up, down, left or right.

It was as if someone stole my senses and ran off to god knows where. It was definitely frustrating, but this was the least of my worries. My worries, apparently, were a three part process.

The first, is realizing that I was no longer a grown man, but a teeny, tiny thing known as a baby. Hell, I wasn't even a toddler, so there were many who prevented me from moving around too much, or else I'd hurt myself accidentally. I didn't want to be babied, as ironic as it was, but I had to. No one ever said a baby's motor skills were the greatest thing on earth, you know. Also, it is still a very humiliating sight to see someone changing my diapers. It's even humiliating to refer to them as, "my diapers". Cue shudders and shivers.

Second, is realizing that I might have been reincarnated, or was part of some super-secret government project to give someone a second life, since I was in the body of a baby. Both sound equally ridiculous and obnoxious, as well as nerdy, because the first sounded like it came from an anime and the second sounded like a messy, inconsistent super hero origin story. Though I felt more inclined to believe the latter, because reincarnation sounded too much of a miracle to be real.

I mean, come on, reincarnation?

Though that doesn't change the fact that I may have experience my own birth. Gross.

But you know, I was adapting really well and I thought that having a second chance at life wasn't too bad. The downside of it was that I would have to experience puberty and graduating all over again. Which, I can say, is very awkward and pathetic phase of life, but a necessary evil to evolve to adulthood.

Then, the third worry came, at a much later time.

It was an ordinary day, or a calm before the storm, as how stories would like to describe it. The time frame was still hella wonky to me, but I did know I was three years old after being made by people, who were most likely my relatives, to hold out three fingers to say my age. Embarrassing as it was, it was the only way I knew about my age.

"Oh, sweetie, mummy's here." the blonde woman, who was my mother, cooed at me once again. "Oh, lookie how itty bitty you are, you cutie!"

I mentally sighed.

It was a rather sad affair that I prefer her talking to me in what I dubbed as the 'annoying baby talk', because it was easier to understand. I was still trying to understand the Japanese language and it was vastly different compared to English. The grammar system was fucking stupid and don't even get me started on the writing system.

Who the fuck needs three writing systems? Why was Japanese so complicated? Why, Japanese people, why?

This is why I chose Italian as one of my language electives, instead of Asian languages like Japanese, Korean and Chinese. It was obviously the better choice, though I somewhat regret now because I am now a Japanese person, therefore I need to speak my supposed mother tongue.

Though I do often question myself, do Japanese people have blond hair? Or was my mother's hair dyed, like the rest of the family? It was the most logical explanation, though I didn't know that it was acceptable to have shades like burgundy or pale red for hair colors. I remember my parents giving me a very hard time when I dyed the tips of my hair blue for my senior year prom, to commemorate the seniors' inside joke. I shudder at the thought if my previous parents were here right now.

"Oh, Sakura-chan, you're such a cute baby." my mother (?) smiled. All I understood from her words was 'cherry blossoms', 'cute' and 'baby'. I didn't know what a type of plant had to do with me, though. "I wonder why you never answer me when I call you by your name…" she murmured and I could sense her confusion.

It was still very hard for me to understand Japanese, so I tried my best to string them into a plausible translation. 'Namae' was obviously 'name' and the rest were still gibberish to me. I feel as if our conversation is so one-sided, but what can you do, when you don't really know the language?

"I know!" she exclaimed and I was the one confused this time, because I didn't know why she suddenly became excited.

I hope it was nothing too weird, like putting me in yellow and pink frilly dresses when family come over to visit. Do mothers dress their sons as girls in Japan? Was it some unknown, most likely obscure tradition that only certain families followed and my new family was one of them?

She suddenly pointed at me with her index finger and she said the words, "Haruno Sakura".

I blinked in puzzlement, before it hit me. Now, why on earth would she tell me a fictional character's name?

"You." She pointed at me again and her expression was much more firm. I guess she was trying to assert something? "Ha-ru-no Sa-ku-ra."

How many people in the world, or more specifically, in Japan, were named "Haruno Sakura"?

Hahaha.

... What.

"Ha-ru-no Sa-ku-ra." she kept repeating the syllables slowly and her finger was steadily pointing at me. At this point, it was hard to deny it, because she was talking about me, telling me what my name was.

Hell-to-the-fucking-no. I take back what I said about adapting.

This situation was getting more and more ridiculous and in all my three year old glory and sensitive baby feelings, I screamed and cried.


A/N: So, since I've seen many "girl-reincarnated-as-Sakura" fics in the Naruto archive, I thought I should give a try as well and make a twist that instead of a girl reincarnated as Sakura, it would be a young adult man. Thoughts and feedback would be appreciated. ^^