i don't usually do A/Ns at the start of chapters, but i feel the need to warn anyone who may be affected by the following—this chapter contains material that may be sensitive, including suicidal ideation.


The apartment had been silent ever since we returned from the hospital.

I was given a week off from class so that I could properly recover from my burns, which still throbbed angrily if I dared to even stretch out my arms. Amidst the confusion of what was real and what was fabricated, the pain offered me clarity—at least the sting of the burns was real enough to make me spit.

Imiki's injuries were much more severe than my own, putting her on leave from work for at least a month. She hadn't spoken a word to me ever since, nor had she so much as moved from her bed. Waki dropped by almost every day to tend to her wounds, appearing and disappearing like a fleeting shadow. Something about this experience was affecting her in a visceral way. She hadn't even reacted like this when my parents passed away. Overnight, a self-sufficient young jounin had been reduced to a woman that could barely function.

Imiki was shell-like. For that matter, so was I.

I felt like a third-party observer watching my body go through the motions of preparing rice, applying ointment, and replacing bandages. Setting bowls of rice on Imiki's bedside table, checking her for signs of life each morning as she stared blankly ahead, and replacing the cool compress on her head when needed. It was like I was the one-man audience to a hellish, neverending show, forced to sit and watch helplessly as I slowly lost my grip.

At one point, the elderly couple that ran Shiro's Soups dropped by with a care package, having noticed the absence of their most loyal regulars. The coupon they had given me was accumulating dust on the equally unused dinner table.

"Oh, Futaba-chan," the elderly lady had crooned when I opened the door. Kogou, if I remembered correctly. "It's been so long since you and your aunt visited, whatever happened to you two?"

I tended to visit at least twice a week, or whenever Imiki wasn't home and I had the pocket change to, so our absence would have been noticeable. I couldn't find the words to face the old granny, with her face wrinkled in a smile and eyes containing kindness that a coward didn't deserve.

I wordlessly took the basket in her hands and, with some difficulty, managed to place it on the table without irritating my burns.

"Shirotane misses testing his new dishes on you," Kogou continued heedlessly. "The old man won't stop bothering me about it." At my lack of response, the smile finally faded and was replaced by worry. "When you two feel better, feel free to come by anytime. We won't charge if money is an issue—we wouldn't charge family."

I kept my eyes fixed on the floor as I nodded and slowly shut the door.

When I wasn't wandering around the apartment blankly, I would retreat to my closet and stare at the scraps of paper I had meticulously thrown together on my wall. The scraps of paper that bore useless information about shit that hadn't even mattered in the end, because nothing had happened like it was supposed to.

Was this world playing a joke on me, changing the timeline in ways I wouldn't notice until it was too late?

It's not real, anyway. None of this is. I placed a hand gingerly on the wall. It clenched into a fist around a piece of paper connected to others via string, then tore away. My mind tuned out as the timeline came apart piece by piece, falling to the floor like dead leaves until nothing remained.


After a dreamless sleep on the last day of my excused absence, I dragged myself to the academy. Perhaps the stares of others as I hauled myself in, bandages and all, would have bothered me before—maybe in a past life—but now, it was all noise. It was all so loud, from their stares to their whispers to the sun beaming down on us in the sky. And yet, even amongst the noise, it still felt quiet somehow, like something was missing. Something that made my chest constrict when I realized it, so I stuffed that thought in the back of my mind and took a deep breath.

There wasn't much point to me coming here anymore. Maybe I should consider dropping out.

The bell rang as I slowly made my way down the hallway. As soon as I slid the door open, the eyes of everyone in my class were on me—as were my teacher's. Vaguely, I noted one empty chair a few rows back from mine.

Hyouroku looked ready to say something when he saw me standing dumbly in the doorway, his mouth already pulled back in a snarl, but his voice died in his throat when he took in my state. "Sit down, Asagiri," he eventually dismissed.

I obliged, keeping my eyes trained to the ground.

As the lesson progressed, something prodded my arm gently. When I didn't respond, it began to prod more forcefully until I bit out an involuntary hiss. I turned my stare to the kid next to me.

His big, blue eyes were full of confusion and slight concern. The blueness of his eyes spread and grew the longer I looked at them. "Say, Futaba-chan, what the hell happened?"

Futaba. That was my name. This was the protagonist of this world. The hero. The fictitious underdog that would eventually prevail over the universe. Who was I when he existed?

I turned away, electing to stare back at my desk. It was all I could do to ground myself as the world churned and wriggled in my peripheral. God, I felt sick.

"F-Futaba-chan?"

You're not real.

"Hey!"

You're not real.

"Fu—"

"Uzumaki! Quiet." Hyouroku slammed his pointer against the board. Cowed, Naruto reluctantly stepped down and refrained from prodding me any more during the lesson, but his conspicuous glances every few minutes persisted until the end of class.

After the bell rang, I let my feet carry me to my next class, which was held in a room with so many open windows I thought my eyes and ears would start bleeding from the sheer intensity of sunlight filtering in. Numbly, I shifted into the seat closest to the door and waited for it to end.

Another voice was quick to interrupt my solace, a girl this time. "U-um, Futaba-chan," she squeaked. "W-what happened to y-you? A-are you alright?"

It was easy to tune her out, at least—her quiet voice was barely audible over the noise of the class, the blinding sunlight, and the groaning that reality itself seemed to be emitting as it convulsed at the edges of my vision. I closed my eyes and desperately tried to stabilize myself.

It's not real.

It's not real.

"Ne, Futaba!" A voice as loud as the light filtering through the windows cut through the fog, painfully bringing me back to attention. Ino had Hinata pushed aside in her seat, forcing herself into my space. A tuft of pink hair accompanied by a red ribbon from just over her shoulder told me Sakura was hiding behind her, too. "Snap out of it already, Hinata has been trying to talk to you for ages!"

Her voice made the lines of reality spin with more gusto, and I felt a rush of vertigo. I forced myself to look into the pale blue of Ino's eyes, but my mouth felt like it had been sealed shut with plaster.

Ino recoiled, her eyes widening in...fear? "You're creeping me out," Ino said in a quieter tone. Her voice still sounded like high-pitched shrieking after being amplified by our surroundings.

It's not real, I repeated in my mind, but it didn't ground me this time. Nothing is real. You're not real. No, no, no, no—

"Futaba?"

"No, no," I found myself murmuring. When had my hands found their way into my hair? Ratty as it was, my hair had survived my meltdown, unlike Imiki's. A painful throb in my temple had me closing my eyes tightly, but nothing I did helped with the ache. "This isn't real."

Ino still stood where Hinata's seat should have been, her hands twitching into fists at her sides. "What the hell is wrong with you, Futaba?" She sounded scared, her voice now a shadow of what it once was.

The pounding in my head continued, even as the silhouettes of my classmates faded away.


School finally ended once the sun had dyed the sky a vivid shade of orange. As I walked out of the building, feeling grimy from the humidity under the bandages, Hinata tailed me determinedly. She had been anxiously hovering near me all day ever since kunoichi classes, and I would have snapped at her to leave me alone, but I couldn't find the words to.

I felt myself drift through the crowd, people naturally giving me a wide berth due to my appearance. The hordes of kids and noise were wearing me down, and I still felt vaguely nauseous. I couldn't do this all again tomorrow. I'd have to drop out somehow.

"Oof!"

My shoulder roughly connected with someone else's, sending a shock of pain through my charred skin. I was violently thrust back into my body as I struggled to regain my balance. Someone's hands grabbed mine gently—Hinata, who avoided my gaze when I looked at her.

The boy I'd collided with had fared worse, now on the ground with a sour grimace on his delicate face. Dark hair and pale skin that was even paler than I remembered it being before, now an almost sickly pallor. He hadn't been in class today. The dots slowly connected themselves, the empty seat coming to mind. He was heading against the crowd, trying to enter the academy, hence why I'd knocked into him.

"Sasuke," came my voice. It almost sounded foreign to me.

He opened his eyes at being called and slowly looked up at me from his spot in the dirt. His eyes widened minutely in alarm when he registered my state. Were people only capable of making one expression when they saw me?

I wasn't sure what I was doing as I stared at him wordlessly. If it was possible to feel a gaping hole in my chest, then it definitely ached right now. Like I was possessed, I felt my lips move. "Sorry."

What happened to you was my fault.

He must have seen something on my face that he didn't appreciate. Sasuke snapped back from whatever daze he'd been in, and what crossed his face was a mixture of dark bitterness, pain, and anger that I'd never seen in my entire life. I was frozen where I stood as Sasuke climbed to his feet. "Don't waste my time," he said lowly. "You're always around, getting involved in my business. When will you get lost?"

His words blended together like smoke and smog, their actual meaning lost on me, but my eyes instinctively fell from his face to the crest on his dark shirt. The red and white fan seared itself into my brain, the world heaving around it.

Red and white. Red eyes.

An intense spike of energy coursed through my tattered arms and legs, breaking the ice that had encased them just moments ago. I surged forward, gripping the collar of his shirt with blistering fingers. I couldn't feel my face or discern the expression I was making. All I could see were dark, dark eyes and the redness that lay beneath them. They had been brimming with bitterness and misplaced anger seconds before, but now they looked surprised. Almost afraid. I saw my eyes shining in the reflection of his. Shining a little too brightly.

"Futaba-chan!"

I dropped the boy's shirt like it was made of hot coals, the skin of my fingers deciding now to sear in pain at the joints punishingly. The kids around us had backed away, watching us from the sidelines and spectating from a safe distance. Among them, one stood out and seemed to be the source of the cry that had shattered my trance just now. Bright blonde hair and blue eyes. Whisker-marks marring the sides of his face. It was the protago—no, my mind argued. I knew him. No, I didn't. What was I thinking? Pain gripped my head, my skull practically splitting with it, and I couldn't hold back a grunt as my hands shot to my temples.

Naruto took a step forward, like he was about to approach me, but my feet moved on their own by instinct. I had to get out of here. The stares of other kids were making me even sicker than before. My heart thrummed and lurched in my ears as I pushed out of the crowd and broke away from the academy grounds.

I wasn't alone, though. "F-Futaba-chan!" Hinata was still in tow, panting with the effort of keeping up with my brisk sprint.

Where was I going? Where could I go? What was one supposed to do when the entire world was falling apart around them? I need to go home.

"It's not real," I bit out to myself between pants. The pain intensified and vibrated in my head. "It's…"

"Futaba!"

I heard a boy's voice, but it was too clear to be coming from anywhere but my own mind.

"Oi, Asagiri!"

My legs finally gave out when I reached a bridge that overlooked one of the many rivers that split the village in pieces. I fell to my knees, crying out at the irritation I'd caused my burns, and caught my breath. "Shut up," I breathed, the indescribable nothingness in my chest throbbing again.

Why was it me that had been reborn in this world with a cheat sheet about its tragedies? All I'd ever wanted was to just live and grow up like a normal human being, goddamnit. Yet here I was, facing the reality that I'd failed, and my best friend, a boy who had hopes and dreams and a future, was dead because of me. Because I hadn't done anything to stop it. Dead. Gone, forever.

No, he wasn't real. None of this was. This dream had gone on for long enough. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!

"Urgh," I groaned, clutching my head again. After the pain faded, I felt a sudden calm blanket my emotions. My eyes drifted over to the bridge of their own volition.

What if…

I stood up.

What if I could start again? Like a video game, couldn't I just reset time and start over? None of this was plausible in any way, from me being reborn without dying to me waking up in a world I knew the future of. Surrealism was reality now. Who was to say that if I died here, I couldn't strike a deal with Enma, start over, and change everything?

I could go back. I could save Shuu.

Worst case scenario, this would all end and I'd be able to go home.

My hands met the metal railing and I stared down into the river below. It had to be at least twenty feet from here to the water's surface, and I swallowed with a dry mouth.

"F-Futaba-chan!"

Hinata had caught up with me and now stood at the very end of the bridge from where I'd come. Her white eyes were wider than I'd ever seen before, and like a wake-up call, I felt my survival instincts kick in and my legs began to tremble.

"Scared, Asagiri?"

No. I couldn't be scared. There was nothing to be afraid of, after all. Clenching my jaw, I clambered over the rail.

Then, I fell.


happy new year!

it's nice to see that so many people have decided to tune in to this silly little story—we have over 300 faves now which is. Wow! thanks so much for reading.. i'm only writing this for fun, but it's nice to know that this is entertaining so many people..

funnily, i was looking through my google drive today and i found that i had written something like 15 more chapters that i'd never posted nearly 2 years ago? i don't remember why i never posted these, but rest assured that more story is on its way! ...maybe.

please stay healthy and safe out there!

alts