A story originally made by Os/Beta for Lang's birthday back in 2018. — Vy
Otoha perched on the top of a power pole, the solid wood kind they had grown up around in their old life, and in their new one.
Realities shifted, Otoha glitched between them. Some things stayed the same. Some things changed.
Their memories, their existence the only constant.
Otoha perched on top of the wooden power pole, chakra suppressed to background levels, invisible to the radar type sensing of one Keisuke Gekkō as the wooden bombers were in WWII.
They were just fictional characters in a fan-made story of another story of more fictional characters in another fictional world. None of it was real.
Not Otoha. Not their memories. Not their present. Not anything.
So none of it really mattered, right?
Below, in the harsh neon-light of the cafe, Kei laughed. The inside was lit by the warm light of electric lighting, so familiar, but distant filtered through the glass and rain.
Even the words were hard to make out. Kei was surrounded by too many people, too many laughs and hugs and family.
None of it was real. Right?
Otoha closed their eyes and let the light and bubbly chakra sources flare brightly in the senses. Like a candle on a distant hill. Like hearing music through the ceiling.
The homesickness, for a reality that actually mattered, for a world that actually existed, for people who were actually real.
The after-pain, the memory of it, cut at Otoha's chest, but they ignored it. None of it was real, right? They weren't real.
Still.
Everything around them seemed so tangible.
The lights. The rain. The cold. The soft wood of the pole as they dug their nails into it. The chakra flares and voices that escaped through the door as it opened and Kei stepped out into the street.
It was November 20th and none of it was real.
Yet, somehow, Otoha existed. The world around them existed. Kei existed.
For a moment, Otoha's concentration on their chakra faltered, just enough to let it seep out into the air, let it exist like the flash of light from a camera.
They weren't real. None of it mattered, right?
It didn't stop the jolt of adrenaline from shooting through Otoha's body. From reaching for the chakra to do the body flicker jutsu and disappear.
Kei's attention though was quicker. She just looked up, eyes slightly narrowed.
Otoha was just another shinobi. Just another ANBU agent wearing a mask.
Otoha was nobody. They weren't real. None of it mattered.
Kei shrugged it off and turned back to her brother, hand ruffling his hair as she walked down the street.
"Happy birthday, Lang Lang," Otoha whispered before disappearing.
It was November 20th. Otoha didn't exist.