"Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality."

-Edgar Allen Poe

That moment seemed to set the tone for the next few days of literally nothing in the world making sense.

It was a daze of unintelligible conversation, being pricked and prodded and having oddly dressed doctors try and get me to communicate with them while I took to miming as best as I could through an oddly persistent headache. No one would tell me where I was, I wasn't allowed to leave, and I didn't recognize anyone.

It was miserable.

The days passed slowly, and I spent them dipping in and out of consciousness, partially to escape the throbbing behind my eyes, but more so to escape the ever-present boredom that seemed to crawl into my chest and camp for the summer. There wasn't even a tv, and it wasn't like I could ask for books. I didn't have my phone, they had apparently not contacted my parents, and for the first time in my life I was alone.

I could barely remember what had happened before I had woken up, the memories, when I could dredge them up, burned in a way I was pretty sure memories weren't supposed to. All I could recall was the screech of tires and- rain?

My only hypothesis had been that I had been in an accident of some sort, but even that didn't explain me suddenly waking up on a completely different continent, never mind without any way to contact anyone.

I had been referred to as Naruto a few more times as well, much to my consternation. The first two days, I was intensely hoping I'd just been brought in wearing a Naruto shirt or something and not in full cosplay, partially because there were some things the general public didn't need to know about me, and also because that would mean it had been ruined.

It had been too expensive for such a fate.

It wasn't until the third day that I was finally given leave to take a shower in the interconnected bathroom. It hadn't been too pressing of an issue as of then, but I couldn't help the anxiety that ran up my spine at the thought of how greasy my hair had to look by this point, let alone my skin.

Standing for the first time had been an experience, to say the least. Hopping down from the highly mounted bed had been difficult enough with the help of one of the nurses that came by fairly often, an older woman with black hair streaked with grey. Her hands were gentle as she held onto my arm, and after days of nothing but clinical hands checking my pulse and IV, it almost ached.

I missed my mom.

My legs wobbled like a newborn calf's as I struggled my way across the tiled floor, feeling as though I'd been sitting on them for days straight. The nurse, thankfully, opened the adjacent door and I was able to stumble inside, plopping down onto the closed toilet seat with a sharp exhale.

There had been a mirror hanging above the sink, one of the types built into the wall itself, a fact I didn't notice until later. The moment I looked up to see just what days without grooming had done to me, I lost a good decade off my life.

It wasn't me.

I immediately squeaked, turning around quickly enough that my neck let out an alarming pop, but there was nothing but an empty shower and wall. But then-

I turned my head to the mirror more slowly, a sinking feeling in my gut. The girl in the mirror turned as well.

Her eyes were a dark blue, with smudges of purple underneath. Her skin was darker than mine, with a grey sheen to it that spoke of illness more than anything. Her hair was a rats nest, cut short and cut badly, greasy and sticking in a million different directions and blonde.

She has three black lines across each cheek.

My hands shook as they reached up to my face, watching with a muted sense of horror as the fingers of the child in the mirror mimicked my movements. I let a finger trace along one of the black lines, and paused, feeling a raised line on my skin. A moment passed.

I didn't take it well.

I can only assume that when minutes passed without the shower turning on, the nurse outside grew concerned. When I didn't answer the knock at the door, she had opened it to see me shoved beside the toilet and the shower, covered in snot and tears, not even able to blurt out the stream of panicked words running rampant through my mind.

I may have passed out. They may have put me to sleep.

All I know is that I woke up that night, alone, in a bed too big, in a country I didn't recognize, in a body that wasn't mine, and decided it was bullshit.

It was bullshit!

Stuff like this didn't happen, it wasn't like people just woke up someday as a fictional character. It wasn't possible. Life didn't work like that.

But then what was going on? I knew myself well enough to know that I spent too much time reading, daydreaming, too much time in my head just hoping. It wasn't unlikely like I could dream something like this up. And whos to say that all dreams don't feel this realistic while they happen? For all I know, every dream I've ever had I've been convinced it was real until the moment I woke up and it faded away.

And, well-

the squeal of tires against wet pavement and the press of my seat belt against my chest and I can't gET AWAY

A car accident. I wasn't the worlds best driver, so it wasn't as though it was impossible. If I'd been in an accident, it would explain why trying to remember is difficult, and if I hurt my head at all, it would explain the constant headache.

Who was to say that I wasn't in a coma? Maybe all comas were this vivid. It's not like I'd ever been in one before, maybe all the people convinced they met god or whatever in a coma were just very vividly hallucinating. I wasn't a doctor, I didn't know.

And even further than that, you can't dream of faces you don't know, right? Maybe my mind just tried to make fictional character real people. Or Lee was trying to wake me up by playing anime or something and I managed to osmosis myself into a weird dream. It was a million times more likely than this being real.

So I decided to roll with it until I woke up. It was like lucid dreaming, I reckoned. I could play out my Naruto dreams or whatever and then wake up and deal with the fact that I had wrecked another car within a year and that my step-mom was probably going to kill me.

Joy.

The days after what I have tentatively labeled my realization were a bit awkward. Now that I was aware of the situation, I couldn't help my curiosity – the so-called nurses I'd been seeing around were supposed to be medic-nins, apparently. I didn't think I'd seen them use chakra as of yet, but it wasn't like I'd been paying that much attention either.

The downside was that after my freakout in the bathroom, they were paying just as much attention to me as I was them. The older lady who'd found me seemed to hover every time she brought water or medicine, tutting when I only picked at the food they brought as I rarely recognized it and wasn't exactly feeling brave. Even the other two nurses that came around seemed to give me pointed glances when they checked my vitals, however reserved they were.

I noticed that they all looked exhausted. They noticed that I noticed that they looked exhausted. I noticed that they noticed and I got a bit apologetic because I couldn't even be mean to people in Sims let alone in a bizarrely realistic fever dream. They noticed I noticed they noticed and then got apologetic and they seemed to get offended and then I felt even more bad and well-

I added a third reason to sleep the days away now, not that there was much else to do most of the time.

It wasn't until what I believed was a week had passed before anything truly interesting happened, and it came in the form of a stranger whose apparent job was to teach me Japanese.

I didn't recognize him as a character, which was still a bizarre thought, even after the realization that I had apparently met the Hokage already. They looked like real people you'd run into on the street, or see on a pinterest board for portrait references, not like something you'd find in a manga.

Even so, from the pale blonde hair and the bizarrely pale pupils, I wagered that he was supposed to be a Yamanaka. It had been a bit of a culture shock to look into his eyes at first – he did have a pupil, but instead of being black, it was more like a dark grey, which blended in uncomfortably well. How could he see like that?

It was a dream. Genetics and biology had no place in dreams.

I had been dozing when he walked in, my blanket covering everything below my nose, comfortable and warm but not truly asleep. Even so, I hadn't even realized anyone was in the room until I heard someone clearing their throat and about had a heart attack.

Luckily, they had taken my IV out the day prior, so I didn't yank a needle out of my vein as I jerked into a sitting position, eyes wide and heart thudding uncomfortably in my chest. I couldn't resist the urge to narrow my eyes ever so slightly at the man, mollified when he sent back a small smile that may or may not have been apologetic. Maybe it was amused, I was shit-all at reading faces.

Without missing a beat, the man dragged the chair from the desk near my bed and dragged it over, sitting in it backwards like I'd seen many a boy do in class. With his slicked back hair and the stubble along his jaw, it made him look kind of like a douchebag; all he needed was khaki shorts, Nike socks, and ugly neon shoes and he'd fit right in, if you'd age him down a good what, six years?

I was also shit-all at telling ages, oops.

Regardless of my observations, the man seemed friendly, resting his arms on the back of the chair and sending me a cheerful smile which I returned hesitantly. It felt awkward smiling with a face that wasn't mine, not feeling the apples of my cheeks touch the rim of my glasses or the slide of my chapped lips against each other. Still, it was only a dream, so it wasn't too hard to deal with. Not as bad as a drowning nightmare by a long shot.

He opened his mouth and, as usual, Japanese came out. I had discovered over the past few days that it wasn't necessarily traditional Japanese, not that I knew much of that either. I hypothesized that it was maybe just a bizarre dialect, and then further realized that if I didn't know Japanese of course the people in my dreams weren't going to be speaking fluent Japanese – it was probably all just gibberish.

Nevertheless, I could tell it was supposed to be a greeting of some sort by the, "Uzumaki-chan," tagged on to the end of it.

I brought up a hand to wave hesitantly, uncomfortable at how sharply his eyes followed the movement.

He paused for only a moment – maybe giving me time to respond? – before talking once more, this time a short statement. He gestured to his chest, and said, "Yamanaka Isao." I couldn't help feeling smug because I had totally guessed that, before I realized he was looking at me expectantly.

I furrowed my eyebrows. I couldn't speak, he should probably know that. Lord knows I'd tried asking for help these past few days, and discovered that the words just didn't seem to work, almost like if the path from my brain to my mouth was a river, and someone had raised the draw bridge. I knew what I wanted to say, but I just couldn't- I just couldn't. I hoped it was just some bizarre side effect of the fever dream.

The man, Isao, repeated himself. "Yamanaka Isao. Isao. I-sa-o." He spoke slowly, gesturing towards himself once more as he did so. I gave him a pointed look, but as he didn't seem to plan on doing anything else, I figured I'd at least prove my point.

I opened my mouth, waiting for the inevitable lack of anything, when- "I-sa–" my voice broke, having been but a rasp, and I could feel my eyes widening in surprise. What the fuck? In what world does that make sense?

Coma logic.

Isao seemed pleased. He pointed at the glass of water still resting on the raised bar on the side of my bed and I tentatively grabbed it and took a sip, watching him as I did so. He waited for me to set the glass back down before he spoke once more.

"Isao." He announced. I cleared my throat, licking my lips and figuring what the hell, why not.

"I-sa-o." I sounded out, pleasantly surprised that it actually sounded quite accurate, regardless of the rasp in my voice from disuse. Isao gave me a thumbs up and a bright smile, and went for another round.

"Ya-ma-na-ka."

Another sip of water later, and "Ya-ma. Ya-ma-na-ka." The syllables felt award on my tongue in a way that was hard to describe, like linking your fingers together one finger off. It's not like it didn't work, but it was mildly unpleasant.

It still didn't explain why the fuck English didn't work. What magic bullshit explained that one?

Seemingly oblivious to my plight, Isao had me repeat both parts of his name, separately, and then together. And after that, I had oodles of fun slowly sounding out the syllables to 'Uzumaki Naruto,' which was remarkably easier than his name had been. It's not like I didn't say it enough in my everyday life I supposed. Who even knew at this point.

After that, the fun began – prepositions and other grammatical happenings. Isao would place his hand on his chest, and say, "Watashi wa Isao. Anata wa Naruto." And after a moment of realizing what that was supposed to mean, I'd mimic it back, slowly forming the words on my tongue, and was pleasantly surprised when my accent actually seemed pretty good. Better than my German accent at least.

This went on for what I would tentatively wager was about an hour and a half, the sentences getting longer and overtime the subtle throbbing in my skull making an abrupt reappearance as I tried to process the information.

I didn't know Japanese. How on earth can I be taught Japanese in a dream when the mind making the dream didn't know Japanese? Unless my earlier theory that Lee was trying to wake me up with anime was accurate, or this guy was basically teaching me Simlish and I'd forget everything when I woke up. Or maybe someone was playing "How to Speak Japanese" lessons for me as I slept, trying to osmosis some knowledge into me.

Whatever the case, real language or not, trying to learn a language when you can't ask questions is remarkably difficult and not good for what is turning out to be a chronic migraine.

Isao seemed to be able to tell, at least, which I appreciated. He nodded after I mimicked back what I thought to be something along the lines of ,"I am here," but may have been, "This is a floor." He said something to me, nothing recognizable except 'I' and the name Naruto with a -chan tacked onto the end. I gave him a dull stare which he returned with a quirk to his lips, and he reached out to ruffle my hair which I flinched away from without meaning to, immediately cringing when he paused.

Regardless of how nice he was, I was a young woman and he was a very tall man I did not know very well. I barely liked my friends touching me, I was not enjoying this incessant need for people to pat my head.

Isao's expression blanked, but he retracted his hand, and I gave him a apologetic look, tugging absently at my hair. The man smiled once more a moment later and instead of touching me this time, he simply waved. "Mata ashita, Naruto-Chan!"

I could wager that that was a goodbye of some sort, so I mimicked it after a moment. "Mata a-shi-ta, Isao."

The man waggled a finger at me. "Mata ashita Isao-san." He corrected and I pursed my lips slightly, unable to prevent the sting of irritation at being corrected on my level of formality by a figment of my imagination.

"Mata ashi-ta, Isao-chan." I repeated in a, still slightly hoarse, deadpan. The older man puffed his cheeks out slightly, his nose wrinkling a bit – it was all a bit exaggerated, though I could only assume it was because of how young this body was. It was a bit grating though, I had to admit, being a legal adult. I suppose it was nice to see he was good with kids?

"Gaki~!" Isao announced, before waving at me and walking towards the door with one last phrase I didn't recognize. After a brief moment, the click of the door closing sounded through the otherwise quiet room, and I let out a soft sigh, rubbing at my face once more, the pads of my fingers dragging across the raised lines on my cheeks.

I hoped I woke up soon.

So I decided I'm not going to go through and say what every individual Japanese phrase is, mostly because it kind of interrupts the narrative flow.

Sorry its been like/ 10 months oops. Inspiration did finally strike though! I do have most of this story plotted out, but I started college this fall so its been a bit hectic adjusting :o

Anywho, please feel free to leave a review! Be gentle, or don't, as long as you're saying something~!

Question of the Chapter: If you had a specialty as a ninja, what would it be?