Life goes on.

I attended the funeral with bandages covering my cheeks, neck, and arms, the skin still raw from whatever happened to me. It was quiet, the only attendees being Mom and Dad's jounin friends, and I recognized no one but the jounin that delivered the news of their death. Imiki held my hand in hers in a shaky but tight grip, and the twitch of her shoulders could be felt.

It was raining. Mom would've liked that.

I felt eerily calm as the man up front delivered a speech that registered only as noise in my ears. All I could hear was the pitter-pattering of rain against the pavement and my own heart thudding in my chest.

It didn't even feel like a proper funeral. Mom and dad's bodies hadn't been recovered from the mission. We were just gathered around a rock with names carved into it.

After the funeral was over, the more nitty-gritty official side of things had to be addressed, starting with the transfer of my custody to Imiki. There was no way we could pay for the house anymore, so I would have to move in with Imiki at her apartment.

All of this went in one ear and out the other, my mind being elsewhere the entire time. Man, I could practically hear the Sadness and Sorrow playing in the background. This entire fucking situation was ridiculous; we were standing around mourning people that were never even real to begin with. No one around me was real. Imiki wasn't real.

The only real one here was me.

The next few days passed in a blur, mostly consisting of moving my stuff from the old house to Imiki's apartment. Different people came to see us and offer their condolences. I wanted to offer my condolences for the fact they didn't know they weren't real.

Imiki started concealing her grief after the first few days, becoming more concerned about me instead. I didn't see what there was to be concerned about. It looked like I was grieving normally, didn't it? Shuu and Kouko had also stopped by on multiple occasions, opting to quietly keep me company instead of suffocating me with I'm so sorrys and you poor things. I appreciated this more, but it was hard to even look them in the eye anymore.

I didn't know what I was doing here. The existential pit I had tripped into had me snared tightly.

"Futaba?"

I met the charcoal eyes of Shuu, who frowned huffily. He'd been hanging around a lot lately. I wondered what happened to the Shuu that couldn't sit still, constantly seeking new ways to get better, get smarter than Sasuke.

"I've been calling you for the last five minutes," he complained. "What, are you deaf now?"

"What is it, Shuu?" He was worried, I could feel it—but that only irritated me more.

Shuu frowned, looking at a loss for words. "You've been...just…" His hands came up to his head in frustration. "Argh!"

I had started to turn back to the open expanse of yard I had been staring at when Kouko entered my field of view. I heard Shuu stand up next to me and felt a little more hollow when I remembered that he, too, was going to leave. They've gotten tired of me already.

Not that it mattered. They weren't real either, right?

Kouko stopped in front of me, the concern in her eyes most evident of all. "Futaba-chan," she started. I didn't look up. Sighing, she continued, "We're your friends, okay? You can talk to us about anything and we'll listen. Even Shuu." She slung an arm around her little brother's neck playfully.

I nodded, still not looking into her eyes.

They departed shortly after, Shuu looking over his shoulder before leaving. Imiki met me outside, her legs obscuring my view of the yard. She crouched down so she was looking me in the eye, and all I could think of in that moment was how tired her eyes were.

"Futaba-chan, I know it's hard, but giving up our lives for the village is just a reality of our world we have to face."

This wasn't my world, though.

"Your parents loved you very much, and they're still with you in here." She pointed at the center of my chest. "They always will be."

Their faces flitted through my mind against my will. My mother with the amber-honey eyes, my father with the tufty brown hair, my mother with the unwavering serene temperament, and my father with his clumsiness unfitting of his occupation. The two that had raised me for four years even though I was nothing but an imposter in this life that shouldn't have been mine to live.

For the first time in days, the backs of my eyes stung, but no tears came.

Imiki's mouth was set in a firm line at my lack of response, and she stood up again. "It looks like it's going to rain again. We should head home." She tugged me to my feet, walking with me like I was a toddler again. The skies rumbled as we walked away from my old house for the last time and towards Imiki's apartment building.

It had just started to rain when we made it to the apartments. In my past life, rain had been so common it was just annoying, but in this life, it brought back memories of waking up clammy and panicked and falling asleep to Amefuri and the sound of raindrops hitting the roof. We managed to get inside before we got too wet, after which Imiki finally released my arm and started preparing for bed, leaving me to my own devices.

After cleaning up, I ambled into my new room, which was once a walk-in closet—we had to make do with what space we had in the apartment—and plopped down on the floor. My little closet had a little futon against the far wall and a few framed pictures salvaged from the old house lying on the floor, as well as the child-sized bō my dad had gotten for me propped up against the wall near the door. The letter entrusted to me by the jounin that had stopped by that fateful night had remained unopened.

I picked up one of the framed pictures, a family picture with my dad hoisting me onto his shoulders and my mom posing cheerfully for the camera. We were clad in traditional summer festival wear. Setting the picture down in my lap, I breathed in slowly. Even farther from my spot on the floor, stashed under my bed, was my mother's hitae-ate. Imiki had given it to me, explaining that it was all they could recover of either of my parents, and I stared blankly at the metal plate fastened to stained white fabric. This closet was full of them.

"Rainy day, rainy day, rain a little more…" I hummed softly to myself. My voice cracked and sounded alien to my own ears. "Kaa-san's bringing my umbrella, it can rain and pour."

I continued to sing to myself, the tears finally springing to my eyes. I kept singing until my voice was too warbly to continue, my face wet with tears. Even after my tears had dried, I hummed the tune until I drifted off to sleep, the picture still in my lap.


The blackness of Enma's chamber was what I opened my eyes to, the wheel creaking in a way that was once unsettling but was now familiar.

It has been a while, mortal.

I wasn't in the mood for Enma's games. I sat down in the blackness and drew my knees up to my chest, burying my face in them.

A beat or so passed before I heard the god shifting. You are awfully quiet today.

"Enma-ō, can I ask you something?" I finally said, lifting my face from my knees but still keeping my gaze downcast at the infinite blackness. The towering man didn't say anything, so I continued, the smiling faces of my parents in the photograph still flashing in my mind's eye. "Do the characters in this world...have souls?"

I hoped they did. I hoped my parents had already been reborn in kinder worlds, with better lives ahead of them than the ones they led this time.

But I was nothing more than a naïve child with too many hopes and stupid coping mechanisms.

There was another silence, followed by Enma shifting in his seat once more, before I was given a response.

It is ignorant to assume that only the mortals of your world possess souls.

I lifted my gaze. Enma's mask-like face remained motionless as he spoke, as always.

The soul is a universal concept, just like language.

"Language?" I muttered to myself. Come to think of it, what language was Enma speaking? "Can you speak all the languages, Enma-ō?"

No. I cannot speak any, said the voice that resonated all throughout this limitless space.

"T-then how…" I frowned, trailing off. This conversation was starting to get a bit too abstract for me.

You hear me in a language you can understand. But I myself cannot speak any language.

That must have been why his face never moved as he spoke. "I see…" I pulled at my fingers, a nervous habit I developed in my first life. "But Enma-ō, there's still something I don't understand. In my old world, a man came up with the universe I live in now. Every detail of it. How could a fictional world contain people with souls? How could a fictional world be real at all?"

Enma leaned down so he was a little closer to being level with me, but as that was physically impossible for someone as large as him, he ended up still having to look down his red nose at me. Impudent fool, do you really think any world a mortal from your dime-a-dozen home universe could conjure up has no chance of existing in the infinite expanse?

I blinked, my voice catching in my throat. Enma was intimidating from a distance, but petrifying up close.

There are endless worlds, just as there are endless souls and endless possibilities. Uncountable variations of any of your worlds exist, but no universe is any less real, nor are their inhabitants any less real. Enma eyed my gaping expression with distaste. It would be good of you to get that through your skull, lest you drive yourself mad prematurely and waste away in insanity for the rest of the six years I have so generously gifted you.

I could only stare at the perpetually snarling features of the god before me for a good minute. Then, something I hadn't felt in ages came over me—relief. And then something even more foreign to me happened. I smiled.

"Thank you, Enma-ō."


I woke up feeling lighter than I had in weeks. I thrusted my arms up in the air, stretching, and noticed how sore I was all over. Wait, dammit. I'd slept on the floor all night. Good job, me.

I pushed myself to my feet, the picture of me and my parents sliding off of my lap as I did so. With a moment of thought, I bent down to prop up the frame against the wall.

I got dressed and ready to head out in record time, dashing back to my room to kneel before my family photo, which I had decided to arrange with the rest of the remnants I had left of them so I had a little memorial in the corner of my room. The display was complete with other photos, the letter from my parents that had gone unopened, and of course, Mom's hitai-ate.

"Thank you, Otou-san, Okaa-san," I started, my voice feeling stronger than before, "for raising me so well. Otou-san, your bravery in the face of Okaa-san when she was mad won't be forgotten. I hope I can channel that same bravery in the future." I turned my gaze to my mom's picture. "Okaa-san, I won't forget your strength and wisdom. Wherever you guys are now, I wish you the best in your new lives." I clapped my hands to punctuate my statement.

Then I ran out of my closet, making my way to the door of the apartment. A desperate urge to get outside, to breathe fresh air, had overtaken me. As I passed the kitchen, where Imiki was currently busying around in, I called out, "Imiki-nee, I'm going out!"

"F—Futaba-chan?" Imiki dropped her wooden spoon, eyes widening. "You...you're feeling better?"

I grinned at her bewildered expression. "Yeah!"

Imiki's face, painted by sorrow and grief for so long, started to lift in relief. "That's great! Well, then...be careful out there, okay?"

"Yup!" I bolted out of the door without further ado.

Gotta love the ninja world for being so cool with the idea of letting four-year-olds wander the town by themselves.

I made a beeline for my favourite public playground, tracing the route to Shiro's Soups and veering onto the woodchips that surrounded the playground equipment. The sky was a calm blue, paler due to the fact it was still morning and the sun hadn't reached its place high in the sky yet. I sucked in a lungful of air and sat myself down on a swing.

All this time I had been split in two, one half mourning the deaths of my parents and wanting to reach out to my friends for comfort, the other calling myself an idiot for mourning people that just couldn't be real.

My parents may have been gone now, but they were probably out there in the 'endless expanse', as Enma had put it. That thought alone brought me more peace than I could ever ask for.

Alright. It was time to really get back to business. Asagiri Futaba was back.

First order of business was to get these bandages off. My face had healed up pretty quickly, but the rawness on my arms had taken longer to heal. I unravelled my bandages, delighting in the refreshing feeling of air meeting my bare skin.

I was just about to kick off the ground and swing on the swingset when I saw a dark-haired blob approaching the playground from far-off. Burying my feet in the woodchips, I stopped myself. Was that Shuu?

I decided to wait until he had drawn closer, and sure enough, it was him. He held a basket and a determined look in his eyes that was too typical of Shuu. "Futaba. Onee-san and I, we've been...worried about you and I wanted to make sure you were...alright." Though the words sounded somewhat rehearsed and seemed to take effort to force out, his expression softened as he spoke, and he held out the basket in his arms towards me. The heavy-looking basket was filled to the brim with desserts and stuffed animals. "Haha-ue made you a recovery basket. S—she does this for a lot of people."

I took the basket, eyes scanning its contents emotionlessly—wait, was that dango? Sick—before looking back up at Shuu. He looked more jittery than I'd ever seen him, the worry he'd been too stubborn to show before coming through now. Unable to suppress my emotions any longer, I let the joyful grin break my cold facade. "Tell her I said thanks, Shuu."

Shuu startled at my sudden change in mood, and I giggled, setting the basket down to the side and leaping out of my swing to hug the boy in front of me. "Futaba!?"

I drew back, poking his cheeks. "Aw, you were worried about me!"

"Shut up!" Shuu shoved my hands away, pinking. He looked more embarrassed than I'd meant for him to be, so I suppressed my mischievous urges for a minute to give him a genuine smile.

This kid was really something else, huh? Who knew the snooty Uchiha kid I'd fought with over a swing would end up as one of my only friends?

I sat back down in the aforementioned swing, calming down again. Shuu had started to rant about how my weirdness had been worrying everyone and it wasn't just him, but I cut him off. "Thanks, Shuu."

Shuu blinked a couple times. Then, he scoffed, looking elsewhere. "Y—yeah, whatever." He then sat down in the swing next to me, shooting me a challenging smirk. "Hey, Futaba, you think you still have what it takes to beat me in a swinging competition?"

I smirked back. "Bring it on!"

As we started what was undoubtedly a very unsafe competition, I thought over things in my mind. Things weren't all okay now, but they were definitely better than they were before. Though I had no idea where the future was going to go from this point onward, one thing was for sure at this point, thanks to Uchiha Shuu (and maybe even thanks to Enma).

My life's purpose was about to change a little.


sorry, you'll have to bear with this long and sort of slow chapter, but it was definitely necessary for futaba—from here on out, things get more interesting :)

also i really love shuu, he's always lowkey been my favourite. just me? ok...