Summary: Life is hard; it's never easy. You can take one step forward in progress but life likes to backfire and make you take two steps back. But despite this, Sarutobi Asumi finds herself forcing two steps forward in what she hopes is a better future―a future where her twin brother is alive.

A/N: This story is influenced by Catch Your Breath by Lang Noi and Dreaming of Sunshine by Silver Queen. If you're reading my story, I seriously think you should go reconsider and go read those. I'm serious. So I'm writing a Semi SI-OC again so…wish me luck. I want to make this pretty funny and somewhat comedic but I have as much humor as my dog so I can't promise anything. But this time, I promise it'll be better than my other first person SI-OC.

Well…I hope so anyways.

Disclaimer: I've written so many of this from now on I'm just going to say: "Input stupid/witty sentence about not owning Naruto and owning OC's and blah.

"There's pain, Life hurts.
There's a thousand things you think you don't deserve.
When all hope is lost,
When you spend it all and you just can't beat the odds,
I bet you don't curse God."
Christina Grimmie

I Bet You Don't Curse God
01: Welcome to Life, I'm God

Do you want to play a game?

…Ha, I bet you know where that came from. There's nothing like a joke that about a death game that cracks you the hell up, am I right?

Oh, sorry. I'm kinda getting ahead of myself, aren't I? But I really do want to play a game so…you'll be my player. It's called…cue drum rolls please: Guess Who This Strange Person Is! I'll be giving you hints too, 'cause I'm nice like that.

Hint one: Good 'ol pops was Hokage.

Hint two: My twin brother is someone you probably know.

Can you think of anyone? There's no one I can think of once you say Hokage's child, so…

I swear if you can't figure out who I am with these hints I'm going to smack you upside your head.

No? Fine. You see, because I'm the nice person that I am, I'll tell you. Aren't I being great? I know right! I'm such a wonderful person.

Anyways, my beautiful name is Sarutobi Asumi.

What? That's not possible? Dad never had any twins, let alone a daughter?

Yep, you're so right. I shouldn't exist. In fact, this entire world shouldn't exist, if I remember it clearly. Because you see, I wasn't always called Sarutobi Asumi. I was once called a different name in a different world, living in a somewhat safer place where children weren't being trained to kill people. Konoha, Naruto, the people I call family, was only a fictional story purely created from the beautiful mind of Kishimoto Masashi.

Yet, here I am; a living, breathing, person.

If you ask anyone who or where I am―because you obviously want to see proof that I'm not bs-ing you―they'll take you to the Sarutobi Compound―hell, they'll probably just take you to my twin brother, Asuma, or my parents instead. Then, with full confidence, they'll say, "Asumi? Yeah, she's real. Pretty annoying but…alive."

Although…I might not even be reincarnated. For all I know, my so-called "reincarnation" might just be a figment of my imagination, an illusion my mind created in order to combat all the shit I've gone through in my life. But it hardly matters anymore, because even if this wasn't real, it sure feels real and that's the only thing I care about.

So I hope you're sitting comfortably wherever the hell you are because this is going to be a long ass story.

Welcome to Life, I'm God

Death is…weird, to say the least. It's one of those things that people don't know anything about and yet, fight over. It's kinda like religion if you think about it. Useless fighting over something that they know nothing about.

But that doesn't matter anymore, does it? Not when you're dead.

You know…my death was actually very unexpected. My last memory was me just studying for a final in a library―in fact, I can't even recall how I died.

I just did, as morbid as that sounds.

And for the record, I was never a religious person, I didn't know what would happen to me after death. My dad may have called himself a Protestant but he never went to church and my mom was an Atheist. I was like her more than anyone else when came to the topic of believing in the Big Guy upstairs. I also had my reasons that backed up my resolve.

I mean, come on. With all the shit in this world don't you think if there really was something like God, they would have had the decency to stop all the wars that have killed millions, stop all the genocides that nearly wiped out a group of people, cure cancer because it kills the nicest people―just all the crap that surrounds the world in general?

Yeah, like I said. I have my reasons. Sure humans aren't the greatest thing to ever grace the earth but I can think of worse―like wasps, god I hate those things.

But…that's about it. I died and there's no denying that―literally, there really is no point. I could have thrown a hissy fit and stomped my foot and complained about what I didn't have, like fries, or didn't get to do, like go bungee jumping, but there wouldn't be anyone listening…so, no point.

I didn't ascend to Heaven in a golden light with trumpets blaring either and I'm pretty sure I didn't get my ass dropped to Hell―amen to that. There was no Nirvana, and I don't mean the band, so there was no Kurt Cobain awaiting me.

It was just this weird warmth and an occasional thumping that came from next to me. Although...I would hit something every once in awhile. It never scared me though. As weird as it may sound, that thumping actually comforted me to an extent.

I don't know, don't ask.

But if I think about it, warning bells should've started going off at this but I was still a little...slow if I do say so myself.

Wherever I was, I can tell you this: it gave me time to think. I thought about a lot―I thought about the family I ended up leaving behind, the only four friends I had. I thought about the history degree I had tried getting and…honestly, I did think about the things I wouldn't be able to do anymore.

I always wanted a family. As cliché as it sounded, getting married and having a kid while living in a suburb appealed to me. Maybe even having a dog or two. And not being able to do those things made me feel a little pang of emptiness.

But time went on. I floated, sat, stood―whatever the hell I was doing―in this darkness with my buddy next to me until one day…well, I was born.

Obviously, I didn't fully realize this until afterwards―along with a few other things―but I'm just going to put it out here now. Rebirth is gross, it's wet, and it sure as hell traumatized me for the first few weeks of my new life. I don't know about you, but I never want to do it again.

Honestly, the thought of even remembering creeps me out.

But, if you're weird and you really want to know how it felt, imagine being thrown up after being eaten by a snake. There are soft walls around you trying to push you out and squeeze you at the same time, and then suddenly, once you're free, there's a sudden blast of cold air hitting you. You could barely hear but because you're a newborn with over-developed nerve impulses that your tiny developing human brain couldn't control, your body doesn't listen to you. So as much as you wanted to open your eyes to look at your surroundings first, your body's first reaction is to open your mouth and scream.

You scream and scream and scream to your tiny lungs' desire while being cleaned and swaddled, only to stop once you realize that your new mother is now holding you. Your body finally allows you to open your eyes but because you're a baby, eyesight is still underdeveloped and you won't be able to see a thing. You may be able to differentiate between light and dark, but that's as far as your eyesight goes. Then you close your eyes and sleep because there's nothing else to do.

That, my friend, is how it felt being born again.

Now, for both of our sakes, I'll be skipping over the potty training and everything in-between, because quite frankly, no one needs to know about that. Another reason could possibly be my somewhat nonexistent ego taking several blows because of it. Everything I wanted, everything I needed, required my parent's help whether it be from wiping my tiny ass to feeding me.

Like I said, no need to remember it.

Gradually, both my eyesight and hearing did come back to me. The blobs that I had gotten so used to seeing started clearing up into actual faces, into actual people. My hearing, while still shit, allowed me to detect the various sounds around me. What was once muffled voices were now a language that I could somewhat understand. It was Japanese.

That second set of warning bells should have been ringing at this point but yet again, my tiny brain didn't really want to listen to the logical side of my mind.

It was also around this time when I was finally able to recognize how my mom and dad looked like. Mom was a pretty lady with brown hair and crow's feet dusting the corners of her eyes while Dad had more grey than the brown hair that I could see. He seemed older and tired―that goatee he had going on didn't help either.

But there was something about his face…it was so familiar, but why?

Oh well, I'll have time to think about it later.

It took me a while to fully accept having new parents, especially a new mom. I was very close with my…previous mother and I am ashamed to admit that I didn't want a new one. I wanted my old mother, the one who was crazy as hell but cared about my wellbeing.

I loved her and I missed her so much.

But a few months into my "rebirth," I got sick. I don't remember much of it but Mom and Dad always talk about it. They didn't know what was wrong with me, all they knew was that I might not have survived. Mom told me how she slept by my crib almost every night just to make sure I was breathing, to make sure that I didn't die.

It was after that predicament that I realized that it wasn't fair to them. They didn't know I had a full set of memories of a different world, of a different mother and father. I may not have been their first child but they were doing the best they could.

That was what changed my mindset towards them. I started to accept them as my new parents, as people who genuinely cared about me.

This was also when I found out that I had siblings. Not only did I have an older sibling, I also had a twin. That the weird occasional thumping I had heard while being in dear mom's womb? It was actually him. It was no wonder that it was always a comfort having him next to me.

We did almost everything together, whether it be eating, sleeping, bathing, playing. I…I can't really explain it but being near him calmed me down, and vice versa.

I remember that there was this night Mom placed us in different cribs, right across from each other. Both of us were already at a point in our baby lives that we could somewhat sit up on our own―we still couldn't crawl though, to my disappointment, but then again, we were still five months old. The moment she left the room, Brother started crying and of course, with my baby hormones, once one baby started crying another soon followed. Within seconds of leaving us alone, Mom had to come back into the room to see what was wrong.

It didn't take her long to figure it out, she then picked up Brother and placed him in the same crib as me. Almost as if it was a reflex, we latched onto each other and giggled.

I heard Mom laugh for the first time that night.

Welcome to Life, I'm God

"Asumi, I'm sorry that your father isn't around much."

I looked up at Mom and looked at her face. It hurt a little, knowing that my almost nonexistent father not being around much pained her.

"Gah!" I raised my arm trying to touch her face. I didn't want her looking so sad, not when it was hard enough looking after two babies and a ten-year-old at the same time.

Although my tongue felt like a brick, I took a deep breath and shouted: "Ma!" She froze and stared at me, shocked. "Ma! Ma!" I scrunched my forehead. No, I want to say, Mama, not Ma. I can do this; I can do this! "M…Mama!"

…Yes, yes, yes! Accomplishment!

Asumi: One

Tongue: Zero

"A-Asumi?" Tears pooled in Mom's eyes before she gave me a loving smile. "Yes Asumi, I-I'm your Mother." She then did something unexpected.

She sobbed. One by one, tears fell from her eyes as she continued holding me, rocking us both in the chair that we had in the room. I could hear her irregular breathing as she held me to her chest but the steady beating of her heart calmed me. I couldn't do anything because of my current predicament, so I did the only thing I could do as a baby. For the first time that night, I allowed myself to fall asleep in my mother's arms.

I think even Asuma knew that she needed me more than he did.

The following morning, I woke up at the rude banging that was coming from the door.

"Mom!"

"Huh?"

"Mom! I need my lunch!"

Mom's eyes flew to the clock on the wall before she quietly cursed. She stood up, me still in her arms, and opened the door. "Hiro, your obento is in the fridge," she said with a yawn.

"What? It wasn't there when I looked." My older brother looked at me and Asuma and smiled before turning back to Mom. "Dad's was there but mine wasn't."

A few seconds of silence passed between us before she groaned. Handing me to Hiro, Mom put her hair up and fixed her clothes. "Your father must have taken yours instead. Watch over your brother and sister. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"Wait, Mom, I can't―"

She ran down the hall, ignoring him.

Both Asuma and I haven't spent that much time alone with Hiroyuki. Sure our brother played with us once in a blue moon but that was as far as our interactions have gone so far. "Sensei's going to kill me! It's his first day back from a mission and I'm going to be late…" He looked at both of us before shaking his head. "So…Asumi-chan, Asuma-chan, did you sleep well?"

"Gah," was Asuma's answer as he stared at our older brother through the cracks in his crib.

"Ma," was mine. I just sympathetically patted my brother's face.

He just sighed before setting me down on the carpeted floor so he could let Asuma out of his crib. Walking over to the other side of the room, he grabbed a random book from the shelf and sat down in front of us. "I'll be reading you…" He looked at the title of the book before pointing to the cover. "Momotaro!" We both obediently sat next to Onii-chan as he began reading to us the story.

My mind started to wander and it was then when I saw something that peaked my interest. I could see that Hiro had a metal headband on…but I still couldn't see well enough. I could tell that there was a mark of some sort in the middle of it but what was it?

I tried reaching for it, interrupting story time.

"What are you―" His hand flew to his headband as he looked at me curiously. "This?"

"Gah!" I nodded my head and tried reaching for it. He laughed at me before doing exactly what I asked. He untied the headband and handed it to us, but not before giving a small background story behind it.

He pointed to the leaf mark. "This is a hitai-ite from Konoha. It means I'm a shinobi, just like Dad. He's the Hokage, so that's why he's not around much."

I blankly stared at the leaf.

Did this boy just say…Konoha? Like...Naruto Konoha?

Shinobi?

Hokage?

…Oh shit shit shit. My eyes flew to Asuma before I looked back at Hiro.

Asuma…as in, Sarutobi Asuma? Doesn't that mean…that Sarutobi Hiruzen is my father?!

No no no, this couldn't be happening. This wasn't real, this wasn't real!

I did the only thing that my twenty-year-old brain could think of.

I started crying.

I was crying my eyes out, escalating to the point where I was bawling―snot running down my nose and tears streaming down my cheeks. As a baby, anything that came as an unpleasant surprise would result in a crying fit, just like right now.

"A-Asumi?" Hiro quickly took back his headband. "Don't cry!" He picked me up and started to bounce me against his hip. Like that would even help, goddamn it. Off to the side, I could hear Asuma starting to sniffle in response to my own distress.

And poor Hiro, he knew exactly what was going to happen.

"No no, don't cry Asuma please don't―"

Asuma started crying too.

That's how Mom found us, five minutes later. Hiro was carrying both of us―I kinda knew how a ten-year-old boy was able to carry us in each arm without struggling at all but my brain wasn't ready to accept that idea yet―and he looked about ready to cry too.

"M-Mom, do something!" his voice was high with panic.

She snorted as she picked both Asuma and me up. Having her near seemed to have comforted him some so Asuma was the first to stop crying but nonetheless, Mom continued to coax us into quiet. "What happened?"

My crying also started to calm itself down and after a minute, I was just sniffling.

"I don't know," Hiro muttered as he tied his headband back on. "I showed them this." He pointed to his forehead. "And Asumi started crying. A few seconds later Asuma started to cry."

"Hmm…" Mom looked at me but before she could say anything, a weird strangled sound came out of my brother's mouth. "Hiro?"

"Oh my god, Sensei's going to kill me!" He grabbed the obento that Mom had gotten back, kissed us all on the cheek, and shouted, "Ittekimasu!" before running out of the house.

"Well…what a morning," Mom muttered to herself as she stared at the open door. She placed me down on the carpet again and shook her head.

Yeah, she could say that again.

My mind was still numb at the realization that the new world I resided in was one that only existed on paper, a world that people enjoyed to read because it was pure fiction.

T-This isn't some weird dream…is it?

A/N: Honestly, the Sandaime isn't really my favorite character because come on, he practically brainwashed Naruto into loving Konoha despite the hatred the village had for the poor boy. After watching some episodes of Hiruzen and Asuma's interaction, I feel like he wasn't very involved in raising his children. That doesn't mean the Sandaime doesn't love his kids, I just feel like being the Hokage will take up time that he would have spent with his children. I've read some stories where Hiruzen is a very loving father who raises them alongside Biwako but I don't know…I just don't feel like that would logically happen. As a leader to his village, he'd be very busy with his job. But don't worry, Hiruzen will be coming up in the next few chapters and I'll totally justify why he isn't around much!

Please review! That's what motivates me the most to write up the next chapter as fast as I can!

Until next time!~