Prologue: you will lose
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You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken,
and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved.
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Dying and being born is a lot like forgiveness. Koharu thinks one day when she stumbles across the image of a llama in the picture book she had begged for. If the thought borders on the hysterical side of things, well, no one has to know. Screaming, then silence.
Then she nearly cries because, even after six years, she still grieves for Before.
In that particular moment, Koharu aches for glossy, colorful pictures instead of the ink drawings currently found in books. It's a gateway though and soon she aches for food like hamburgers, tacos, lasagna and even chicken nuggets from McDonalds instead of what she's fed now. She aches for a computer, a phone, a television, a video game, a radio belting out songs or just a familiar book like Harry Potter. She aches for the sound of cars passing by on the street, the odd helicopter buzzing overhead and the infrequent, distant roar of a train.
Most of all, though, she aches for her life - her family - from Before.
Her family, with her mother whom humphed and talked about running away and bemoaned having children in the first place but always left food and clothes and messages from anything like don't stay up too late to eat your vegetables! With her brothers, one whom she couldn't even talk to without arguing or insulting each other yet never ignored her nonsensical midnight texts and one whom demanded or resented her attention at a whim yet was still small enough to sit in her lap and cuddle. Her family, with her mother and brothers and aunts and uncles and grandparents and army of cousins, that she lost when she lost the life she had before.
She doesn't even have people who could become a second family, instead she is Koharu who had been abandoned at barely more than a year old and was now just another child in a crowded orphanage full of overworked caretakers.
This is depressing, Koharu sighed, closing the book. She let herself fall back into the grass, the early morning light strengthening steadily as she blankly stared up at the sky and tried to simply not think until, eventually, others moving about drew her attention. Natsuki-san said we were going into the village today.
The last time she had been in the village was the hurried journey to the outskirts where the orphanage she now lived was placed. It was the last time she saw the woman who could have eventually became her mother, instead that woman was simply the one who gave birth to her and passed on the purple hair coloring that Koharu now had.
No more, no less.
"Koharu! Come and eat breakfast before we go!" Natsuki, a plump woman with mouse-brown hair, called with her head poking outside briefly before a crash sounded and she turned with a, "Tamaki-kun! How many times have I told you-!"
Koharu got up and went inside, ignoring the Tamaki being scolded for the nth time about running inside. The tables were full of kids of all ages, the youngest being a toddler clumsily hand feeding themselves under a caretaker's supervision and the oldest being a surly teenager who had almost saved up enough money at his part-time job to move out (Satoshi having real job that paid real money was a hot topic even months after the fifteen year old got it), and she inwardly cursed herself for not getting up earlier. Now she'd either have to wait for a spot to open up or elbow and shove her way into one-
Wait, she paused mentally even as she absently accepted the plat of food Masaru handed her, there's a bunch of seats opened in the corner.
It was the farthest corner away from where she usually sat, right by where the caretakers handed out food, and even had a flickering light that gave a few sputtering seconds of light before finally giving out. The boy, a blond in a white shirt, who seemed to be the only one sitting at the corner table jerked when the light went out but did nothing else.
Maybe this is the punishment table and I never noticed? Koharu wondered as she rounded that last table that still had a light shining over it and made a beeline for the edge seat of the table the blond was at. Punishment table or no, she would rather not have to fight for a seat or wait to eat. Especially, she thought, tray set down with a soft click, since I can't just stand and eat.
Her proficiency with chopsticks wasn't that good.
"You-" the boy next to her, well more like down the table but no one was between them so technically he was still next to her, started and she turned. As soon as she saw his face, Koharu froze. "Why are you sitting here?" Uzumaki Naruto asked her.
"I-..." She started then trailed away as she had no idea what to say to the fictional character - a child version of the character at that! - in front of her. "Eating." She eventually managed to bite out.
From the way the boy hunched into himself, it probably sounded angry.
Should I say sorry? Koharu wondered, worried suddenly that doing so would cause Instant Friendship and being dragged into things she didn't know she wanted to be part of. She shoved a clump of rice into her mouth to keep from having to say anything, she needed time to think. Quite suddenly, the years until teenagerhood that seemed so far away just minutes ago now seemed to be far too close because Naruto looked to be her age and Things happen when the boy is a teenager. Like an invasion and the end of the world.
They ate in silence until Natsuki called for them - Koharu for her but Uzumaki for him - and she wasn't even surprised to find out that the trip to the village - to Konoha, Hokage faces on the mountain side and ninja racing across rooftops and everything - was to sign up all of them for their first year at the Academy.
Orphans, apparently, didn't get to choose if they wanted to try at being a ninja or not.
.
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Alternately: Wherein there is no Instant Friendship and everything is the fault of a substandard Chopstick Usage skill proficiency