CH_3

CH_3The sun was setting by the time Takuma trudged out of the academy. His eyes were red and puffy as he looked at the street outside academy grounds. A caretaker had found him in the classroom alone and had asked him to leave as it was time for the room to be cleaned and locked for the day. Takuma walked around the block to see if he could find a park where he could sit and wait for the boy's parents to arrive. Fortunately, there was a park beside the academy. Takuma picked a bench directly visible from the park's entrance and sat down. He watched children play in the sandbox, on the swings, playing chase with each other, carefree from the realities of life. As the sun pulled further down, some children left the park on their own while others were picked up by their parents. Takuma waited and waited, and soon, the red in the sky was replaced with blue until the moon climbed up high, and as he saw the stars glittered against the black backdrop, Takuma knew no one was coming to pick him up. It was a half-deduction, half-gut feeling. He stared at the sky and gazed at the stars; he hadn't seen stars so clearly in a very long time. The cities he lived in always had pollution obstructing the star's light. It seemed he would need to find his own way back home... or he would've to spend the night on the bench. 'I can find another bench somewhere; why not give it a shot.' As he stepped outside of the park, Takuma frowned at the street. He looked left, and a street light illuminated the path; he looked to the right, there was no light on that side, but he felt a strong feeling from the direction. Like something was calling him. He looked between the two paths, light and dark, before pursing his lips and walking right into the darkness. He kept to the side of the road and walked like a jumpy rabbit, ready to jump on any indication of any nearby presence. Soon, he arrived at a fork in the road, and once again, he felt a sensation towards one side. He took it. And after following the path indicated by the gut feeling for fifteen minutes, he arrived at an old apartment building standing five stories tall with watermarks dripping down the sides from exposed pipes that had algae growing on the walls. Ignoring the logical part of his brain, Takuma entered the property and found himself standing in front of a door on the third floor. This was his house; he could feel it. The boy had left something behind, not exact memories, but there was clearly something that had guided him here. It wasn't him, so it could only be the boy. 'I don't have a key,' Takuma squatted and pulled up the floor mat to check underneath but got dirt instead. There was a bulb with a cover atop near the door. Takuma jumped up and tried to reach around to find a key, but again he came down empty-handed. He sighed n-th time in the day and closed his eyes, trying to keep the frustration down and away from showing. He was exhausted, and his stomach had started protesting from the lack of food. Takuma leaned against the door with his forehead, feeling the cracks in the paint due to the shoddy paint job. He grabbed the doorknob and was about to turn it violently to release his frustration when the first turn made the door open up. Takuma watched with a dropped jaw as the door swung open slowly with the loudest creak he had heard from the door. The stupid kid hadn't locked his door. Takuma entered the door and entered the dark apartment, only to be hit by a wave of a heavy and hot smell that bogged down the entire apartment. Takuma groaned. He knew the smell; it was the same as a boy's dorm room when they kept the room closed with no ventilation. After spending minutes fumbling around for a light switch, Takuma turned on the lights to find himself horrified at the state of the apartment. It was a small studio apartment that opened up to the lounge-slash-dining room. Upon entering, he saw an old dirty two-seater couch with laundry piled upon it. On the side was a round dining table with two chairs that had eaten ramen cups and packaged lunch boxes lying on the tabletop as if the concept of a trash bin didn't exist in the house. Even though he was wearing shoes, Takuma could tell by eye how dirty the floor was and didn't want to think when was the last time it was cleaned. Behind the dining table was the kitchen, and he was expecting a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, but all he found were some dirty glasses and mugs, and then it dawned on him— the kid didn't cook. The mess on the table was how he ate. Takuma sighed. Beyond the living-slash-dining space was the bedroom. It only had two things— a closet and a single bed. The closet was open and half empty, not surprising seeing that half of the clothes were on the couch outside. The bed was worse; there was no sheet on it, and half of the space was covered with miscellaneous junk that Takuma couldn't be bothered with. He pushed the mess aside as much as he could and fitted himself into the narrow space. He was worn and weary and was in no mood to clean the house. Future-Takuma could handle that punishment. Right now, all he wanted to do was sleep, and hopefully, when he woke up, he would be back in his home world... and not here. Alas, fate was a cruel mistress. Takuma looked at himself in the bathroom mirror that one week ago used to be so dirty that it took a complete hour just to get it cleaned enough to see a decent reflection; getting it spotless was a mess of another magnitude. He lightly touched the small bruise on his shoulder from the taijutsu spar in the academy earlier in the day. Just like shurikenjutsu, Takuma was abysmal at best in hand-to-hand combat and kissed the floor in every sparring match he had been a part of. Takuma now knew he was ten years old from his date of birth on his academy id-card that he found in the corner of the closet and the date of the latest newspaper he saw on a newsstand. Even though he was sparring against similar ten years old— they were ten years old who had been learning how to combat since they were six years old, some even before and he was a bum who had never picked up a fight in his life and only knew to haphazardly throw out punches. He was terribly outclassed by literally everyone among his peers. It didn't help that the majority of the people had a weight advantage over him. Takuma was above average in height for his age, but the boy must not have liked eating, for he was so skinny that even a shirt on a hanger would feel good about itself. Takuma had ribs showing, slightly sunken cheeks, and limbs with no meat on them. Takuma narrowed his eyes on himself in the mirror. His hand moved up the new bruise, tracing the almost invisible scarring on his clavicle. The cut that caused the scar was either not deep, or the wound had been healed exceptionally well and had only left behind a white line on his medium fair skin. A scar wouldn't have been out of place, given that he was enrolled in a shinobi academy, but when a ten-year-old's body was riddled with faint scars that could've been made through cuts, Takuma couldn't help but wonder where they came from. As he was tracing his fingers on the scars, a horrid pain erupted in the back of Takuma's head as if someone was slicing his brain with a hot knife. He choked on the air in his windpipe as an image flashed through his mind of a blinding light with shadows looming over him. The pain eventually left, leaving behind a throbbing sensation in his head, and Takuma was left in a coughing and wheezing fit as he used his hand on the mirror to prevent himself from ending up on the floor. It took a minute for Takuma to come to his senses, and the first thing he saw was his reflection in the mirror— for some reason, the scars seemed deeper and more visible. 'What the hell was that?!' Takuma wondered with his hand over his chest, feeling his racing heart. He had no idea and could only associate it with the boy's poor health. In the past week, Takuma learned a lot about his situation. Firstly, he was now a ten years old orphan living alone in a state-allotted home on an allowance also provided by the state. It seemed in the Leaf village, orphans who enrolled in the shinobi academy left the shelter of orphanages at the age of ten and were made to live on their own. They were still available for adoption, but when the children were not living in an orphanage, the chances of getting adopted were close to zero. From the documents he had found lying about the apartment, the boy had been living alone for about four months. 'And that's all it took for him to trash the place.' Takuma was still resentful because it took him five days to clean the place from top to bottom. But Takuma couldn't blame the boy— it was tough to muster enough energy and will to clean up after being beaten up and humiliated in the academy. Takuma had visited the orphanage once to see if he could find more about the boy. It was interesting since he didn't know the way to the orphanage, what it was called, or what it looked like. But somehow, he was able to get it anyway, and that without asking for directions. Takuma had realized in the last week that even though he hadn't inherited the boy's memories, he had inherited something to a gut feeling, a special sense that communicated the boy's experience to him. Directions to frequently visited locations? His body would tell him where to turn. Names of people the boy knew? A whisper-like thought would inform him of their names. He didn't know when the special sense would come to him or how to invoke it, but he was grateful for it because he would've been dead without it. At the orphanage, the matron was surprised to see him. It seemed the boy hadn't visited since he had been made to leave. Takuma had spent some time talking to the matron before leaving. He wasn't able to find much about the boy. He couldn't broach the topic of the boy's parentage. But he did come to know that the orphanage was relatively new and was made after Kyuubi's attack on the village, which had left many children without families, and thus the majority of children in the orphanage were victims of the aforementioned attack. Takuma assumed the boy was just another one of those unfortunate children. Kyuubi's attack... A piece of information that had cleared a lot of questions for Takuma. He knew exactly what time he was in... or he knew exactly how far he was from the main story. 'Seven years,' Takuma thought bitterly. Seven years from now, the main cast would turn twelve and graduate from the academy, and that would mark the start of a particularly dangerous time in an already dangerous world. Currently, he was ten years old, and the main cast was five years old— a five-year difference, not that it meant anything. 'They must've entered the academy this year.' There wasn't much interaction between different years, so he hadn't seen the main cast. Takuma was tempted to go have a look, but he couldn't find the time and energy. Takuma groaned as he made his way out of the bathroom to his bedroom. He pulled a tracksuit out of his closet and pulled it on. It was time to go running. He had seven years left, and only two more years in the academy, and he was already running late. If he wanted to increase his chances of living, he had to make use of every second of his time. Because when he turned twelve, he was going to be put on active duty, and it was only time before he would be in situations where his life was in danger.

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