I don't like to think about my childhood very much. It wasn't exactly pleasant.

My mother died a year after my birth and all I could remember about her were her pink eyes and strawberry scent. My father was, and probably still is, a hopeless alcoholic.

He told me that the world was a bad place. He told me people were evil, they couldn't be trusted. I was to love myself and no one else. Perhaps that was the only reason that I cared for my father; he didn't force me to do anything. Not to believe him, not to obey him, not to love him. For that, I was glad.

For the most part, I ignored him. I understood what he was telling me. You really could trust no one but yourself.

And yet, in this world full of ninja, even you could betray yourself. It was a fairly disturbing concept.

I mostly hung around the orphanage. The matrons didn't care and the children couldn't tell whether or not I was one of their own. It was noisy, crowded, dirty and downright awful, but I stayed because there was nobody to take care of me.

I retained my memories from my past life. Yes. I could clean up after myself. Yes. I could still cook a mean beef stew. Yes.

But I didn't want to.

In my past life, I'd forced myself to be mature because the environment wasn't always favourable. I'd been childish into my adult years. Yes. I always looked happy. Yes. Yet, I wanted to feel and act like a child.

That wasn't wrong.

Right?

I knew I couldn't be childish forever. There were things I had to do, people I had to save, kill or simply befriend, places I had to go to. I had work to do.

There was a certain thrill I had when I started chakra training. It was excitement, mixed with foreboding, and a fear of failure being the cherry on top. I didn't have large reserves, so naturally I couldn't do much. But I did try.

I don't know how to describe the feeling of chakra. It was warm, I guess, like the small hum of the air conditioner. It was always there, like a second skin. If I concentrated enough, I could feel dozens of needles poking endlessly inside me, painful yet soothing in a way. Sometimes I liked it, and sometimes I didn't.

By the time I turned 4, my father stopped coming home. While I was worried, I was also slightly unconcerned. He didn't do much for me anyway. Besides, there was no way of finding him with how small I was.

Nobody took my home away. Nobody was bothered about a little girl living all by herself. Nobody cared enough. People had other things to worry about, like getting food in their stomachs, finding a place to lay their head and staying alive till the next day.

This was Kirigakure, for Kami's sake, not a fücking playground.

At this point though, I mostly lived at the orphanage. I ate, took my baths and played there. As far as everyone could see, I was a bright and happy child. I knew the names of everyone there, and they knew mine. I loved the feeling I got when I walked in and lit up the room. I loved attention. I craved it.

When it was time to train though, I went home. I had no intention of joining the ninja academy and being slaughtered by Zabuza Momochi.

I had to basics of chakra down. I could do only the bunshin but I couldn't walk up walls or trees because it took too much chakra that I didn't have, and I was easily distracted.

When I turned 5, I made my first real friend. He was new to the orphanage. His parents had been killed by rogue ninja, he said. I didn't believe his story, I felt there was something more, but it was quite believable considering that this was Kiri. I made no comment on it.

And besides, there wasn't really much known about him back when I used to surf the net like nobody's business.

He was a year older than I was, and would be starting the academy in two months; September. He had short messy grey hair, cute pupil-less pink eyes, a love for the color green and a smile that turned my knees into jelly.

I'd always had a crush on him, since I started watching the anime 'Naruto'. I read every fanfiction where he was represented well. I had billions of wallpapers on my phone, of him alone.

OK, maybe I was a tad bit obsessed.

His name was Yagura, and I liked his eyes because they reminded me of my late mother.