School was, by far, the worst thing to happen in Akai's life. Or at least, that's what anyone who knew him in his previous life would've told you.
Not because he failed at it. Quite the opposite, actually.
He was too serious about it. Deadly serious. Curiosity was a double-edged trait he'd carried over from his previous life — the same relentless pursuit of knowledge, the same stubborn insistence on getting every answer, every detail right. That attitude didn't win him many friends. People avoided him, the elite kids looked down at him like a disease, and the others thought he was too cold to approach.
Honestly? He didn't mind.
High expectations were something he was used to. Not because he came from some wealthy clan — no, his parents were ordinary. It was just how they were. The kind of people who never told fairy tales to their kid, never planted dreams of adventure or magic or friendship.
Just expectations.
And like clockwork, the classic parental demand landed squarely on him: become a doctor.
Or, more accurately, "Doctor — and only doctor." The lawyer option was erased from existence the day his father, an ex-lawyer himself, dragged his sleep-deprived face home, looked Akai in the eye, and said in a half-joking, half-defeated tone,
"Forget law. Just be a doctor. Less...bullsh*t."
Akai, twelve at the time, just nodded. No dreams of his own, so why argue? He followed the path. Made the grades. Got into undergrad pre-med by nineteen, lived alone, survived the grind, passed clinical rotations. Then, halfway through his second year of rotations... he died.
Simple as that.
No cold sweats when he woke up in this new world. No desperate gulps of air. The old heart defect that had plagued him was gone. But the memories were there. Heavy as bricks.
He winced as one surfaced.
"A dream about school... on my first day of school," he muttered to himself.
Dragging his half-asleep body out of bed, Akai shuffled toward the bath.
Today was that day. His first day at the Ninja Academy.
Just like back then, he decided he'd treat this with the same seriousness. The past life habits were hard to kill. He double-checked everything — multiple binders stacked neatly, a favorite pen tucked inside (even though kids here were supposed to use pencils and chalk), packed spare supplies, a pencil case, and a couple of sealing scrolls for good measure.
After washing up, he tugged on his casual clothes and his haori. The thing was too big for him — it was meant for an adult — but Akai liked it. The weight of it over his shoulders made him feel like himself again. That itch for traditional clothes hadn't gone away, no matter how many times Shion teased him about it.
Finally, as the apartment door clicked shut behind him, the early morning view of Konoha stretched out beneath the high-rise.
He paused.
Brought his fingers up in a familiar two-finger pose, tapping several points across his face in quick, practiced movements. It was something Takahiro had drilled into him through half teaching, half beatings: pressing specific chakra points to relax the facial muscles, nullify stress responses, and suppress tics like wincing, eye twitching, or nose-pinching.
Cursed nullification techniques, adapted for the most mundane thing — anxiety control.
It was an odd little habit born from mixing his previous life's medical knowledge with Hyūga chakra theory. Akai smirked faintly at the thought.
So this is what those old Chinese acupuncture masters must've felt like, huh? Though theirs was mostly placebo and superstition, lacking peer-reviewed evidence. Back then, he'd tried learning about everything. But once they found out he was a med student, most traditional practitioners back home had shut him out, eyes wary, assuming he'd just come to mock them.
Whatever. Their loss.
And why go to such lengths to keep his expression blank now?
Because the place he was headed was a hotspot.
The Ninja Academy — one of the two biggest cursed spirit breeding grounds in any society, alongside hospitals. It didn't take a genius to figure out why. Places where fears, frustrations, stress, and trauma brewed constantly. Places where bad emotions festered in children too young to manage them and adults too tired to deal with them.
He didn't want a repeat of that incident a few months back. The one where a humanoid cursed spirit stalked him in an alley and he had to pretend not to see it — all while feeling its eyeless face inches from his own.
At least now, he didn't have to worry about his eyeballs twitching anymore.
He took a deep breath.
"Alright... let's get this over with."
And so, Akai set off to the Academy.
He had braced himself. For what? The usual. The typical hotspots of gloom. The residual malevolence that clung to schools like a fog: fly-headed cursed spirits hovering by bathroom stalls, tsukumogami born from forgotten erasers and pencils sharpening themselves in dark corners. Places like this were breeding grounds. He'd seen it in his past life, in hospitals, abandoned classrooms, anywhere stress and despair piled up like filth.
But when he stepped inside — nothing.
It was clean. Not in the sense of hygiene or order, but spiritually clean. Not a cursed fragment, not a twitch of malice. He scanned the air with a cautious Byakugan flare as he sat at his tiny, absurdly short table. The teachers carried some negativity — stressed, irritable, naturally — but the space itself was... peaceful.
Akai frowned.
This wasn't right. And for him, curiosity wasn't just a passing thought — it was poison. The kind of nagging infection you couldn't ignore. And answers were his antidote.
He stewed in that curiosity, jotting mental notes between lessons about basic counting, the Hokage faces, and ninja rules for beginners. Then...
He remembered.
Wait a second.
What the hell kind of class is this?
Because right now, the lights were dimmed, and half the class was already flopped onto futon blankets. The desks and chairs pushed aside. Akai blinked. Nap time?
He glanced at Shion, snoozing peacefully beside him, one hand under her cheek.
Is this one of those productivity-obsessed Chinese schools that make kids nap so they can work sixteen hours later in life?
But no — it hit him then.
Oh.
Right.
He was in kindergarten.
"...Fuck."
The curse word slipped out in a breathless murmur.
From the blanket beside him, Shion stirred. Without even opening her eyes, she muttered, half in a dream, "Akai-san, please don't use bad words... you can blame Taruho if someone asks who taught you though."
Akai sweatdropped.
Was she sleep-talking? Or consciously scolding him from the depths of sleep? Honestly, knowing Shion, it could be either.
He sighed and let himself flop back on his futon, staring up at the plain white ceiling.
The absurdity struck him.
Back in his old world — a world of strict curriculums, bone-dry medical textbooks, and 28-hour hospital shifts — this was the sort of scene he could only see in anime and memes. Nap time in the middle of school hours.
But now that he thought about it...
Naruto had never really known how to write properly at the start of the manga.
And then it clicked.
Wait... the average child development milestone for fine motor skills — holding a pencil, writing, reading sentences — was around six years old. Give or take. So how the hell had he been journaling, writing neatly, taking clinical notes on chakra theory for months now without issue?
He slowly lifted his hand. Byakugan activated with a light, quiet hum behind his eyes.
Not enough power to see chakra coils, but enough for skeletal imaging — a natural X-ray, though filtered through the unique glow of his dojutsu.
What he saw made his brow furrow.
His bones were fully developed. Not soft cartilaginous frames that should exist in a child this small. No — the bones of his hand, wrist, and forearm were solid, mature, with fully formed joint structures and ossification where there should have been none.
It was like someone had taken a full-grown skeleton and shrunk it down.
Like a PNG file scaled down in Photoshop. Not resized proportionally — compressed.
An unease curled at his stomach.
He glanced to the side.
Focusing his Byakugan on Shion's sleeping form.
Same result. Fully developed bones. Perfectly formed skeleton inside that tiny frame.
This wasn't normal.
At all.
Curiosity fully unlatched, Akai stood up — quietly, without waking anyone — and swept the room. A soft pulse of chakra, Byakugan flaring.
He checked each kid.
And there it was.
Normal.
Soft bones. Open growth plates. Child anatomy, textbook standard.
Only he and Shion were... different.
Akai exhaled through his nose.
A smile ghosted across his face.
"...I knew it."
He returned to his futon, fished a notebook from under the blanket, and flipped it open to a fresh page.
In quick, practiced strokes, he scribbled the title at the top:
『Reincarnator's and Transmigrator's Anatomy: Musculoskeletal System』
He tapped the end of his pen against his chin.
"This... changes a lot."
If his body wasn't a natural child's body — if it was, structurally, an adult's skeleton compressed down — it would explain his advanced fine motor skills, control over Byakugan, and why he could manage cursed technique applications that should be impossible for his physical age.
It meant whoever or whatever placed him here didn't just shove his soul into a baby.
They made a body tailored to him.
Or... repurposed an existing one.
Akai scribbled down hypotheses.
Possibilities:
• Custom reincarnation vessel.
• Body swap.
• Multiversal transmigrator trait.
He underlined that last one twice.
Another pulse of Byakugan. Confirmed. Same with Shion.
He glanced at her sleeping form.
Guess it wasn't just him.
"Alright, you mystery of a gremlin," he muttered quietly to her, "You better have some answers too."
And for the rest of nap time, while the other kids snored away, Akai wrote.
And wrote.
And wrote.
Just a usual Akai by standard.
After an hour...
Most of the kids were stirred awake when one of the teachers gently clapped her hands, announcing nap time was over. Small bodies rustled beneath futon blankets, sleepy voices murmuring complaints, and half-lidded eyes blinked at the afternoon sun filtering through the windows.
Akai, naturally, had never been asleep.
The moment his Byakugan picked up the teacher's footsteps approaching his futon, he calmly shut his eyes halfway, loosened his expression to a perfectly neutral state, and slowed his breathing to a measured, steady rhythm. A poker face wasn't something he wore — it was default. The teacher passed by without a word.
As expected.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and before long the students were being dismissed. Most children eagerly rushed to the gates, where their guardians waited with warm smiles and open arms. Some were picked up by clan retainers, others by tired-looking parents. And of course — there was Akai.
No one ever came for him.
He adjusted the loose collar of his shirt and made his way toward the exit alone... only to find Shion seated primly on the bench by the gate, hands folded on her lap like a tiny, dignified noble lady. Her eyes glanced sideways at him as he passed.
He considered walking straight past.
But he didn't.
"Shion-san," Akai greeted, pausing by the bench.
Shion returned the nod, expression calm. "Akai-san. Heading home?"
"I am. No one's coming for me, as usual."
"I see. I am... awaiting Taruho-san," she replied, tone polite but soft.
They fell into a quiet pause.
Akai internally sighed. He told himself over and over again not to offend her. Their little psychological standoffs since meeting had been cautious — not hostile, just... careful. Like two cold war diplomats pretending not to have knives under the table.
But a few days ago, she'd quietly told him, "Actually... if Akai-san ever needed anything from me, I'd give it."
And it wasn't affection that made his chest loosen. It was sheer tactical relief. Because if Shion was playing for her own survival too, it meant they weren't enemies. Not yet. Not unless one of them slipped.
So he knew what he had to do.
"Shion-san," Akai began again, smoothing his expression, "if you have no pressing matters, would you... care for a meal? My treat. Whatever you prefer."
Shion's eyes widened a fraction. Then — her face brightened, genuine delight sneaking past her usual composed mask.
"Eh? Truly, Akai-san? You would treat me?"
He coughed into his hand, face impassive. "Yes. It would be my honor."
"In that case... I would very much enjoy some dango."
"Dango it is."
Meanwhile, just as this heartwarming exchange was unfolding, a certain Taruho came barrelling through the crowd at the gate, eyes wide and mouth open for a dramatic—
"SHION-SA—!"
A hand yanked him back into the shadows behind a tree with a sharp burst of shunshin.
"Oi," Shisui hissed, releasing his grip on Taruho's collar. "Don't ruin it."
Taruho staggered, catching his breath. "Wha— you can't just—! That's kidnapping—!"
Shisui squinted around the tree trunk, spying on the two kids. A small, satisfied grin tugged at his lips the moment Akai offered to buy dango. Taruho huffed beside him.
"I told you they'd get along eventually," Shisui whispered smugly. "Let 'em have their tiny, overly formal bonding time."
And as if the universe wanted to complete the image, somewhere above them, an imaginary sunbeam broke through the clouds. Petals drifted in the air. An actual metaphysical flower floated lazily and landed against Akai's shoulder.
Akai's polite, faint smile didn't waver. His Byakugan didn't need visible veins to activate, and he saw them both perfectly. He felt the warmth of their ridiculous gazes, the metaphorical flower blooming at his back.
Inside, he cursed.
I can see you bastards.
He exhaled through his nose. Poker face unbroken.
"Shion-san," he said evenly, "shall we?"
Shion stood gracefully, smoothing down her skirt. "Yes. Let us depart, Akai-san."
And so the two tiny transmigrators walked off toward the dango shop, an invisible audience of idiot protectors in tow.
Akai's internal monologue was a steady string of sailor-tier profanity the entire way.
.
.
.
To be continued.