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The Shingan opened.
Not physically, of course. There was no ocular glow or bleeding iris. Just sight beyond sight. Like slipping into lucid dreaming. But I wasn't dreaming. I was there.
Naruto was a baby again. A pink-cheeked bundle of raw life, returned to Konoha after the tragedy. Minato and Kushina were gone, sealed in death and chakra and myth. Hiruzen, ancient and worn, held Naruto as if he were both burden and treasure.
The child was placed in one of many cradles—nameless, faceless, one of dozens in the orphanage nursery.
Naruto cried.
And cried.
And kept crying.
It grated on me. A high-pitched siren of vulnerability. I winced. My Shingan wavered.
I didn't feel for him. He was annoying, loud, helpless. He wasn't the shinobi of legend. He was a noise in my mind. A disruption to my curiosity. My sleep.
And yet—when he cried, the tether pulled tighter. When he wailed, my mind surged with clarity. My fingers twitched to write. I opened the book again.
The page glowed faintly.
The rules were true.
Naruto's extreme emotions opened the channel.
I dipped a pen into ink, my hand shaking slightly. Not from nerves, but anticipation. The divine kind.
I wrote slowly:
Let the orphanage matron turn her head. Let her see Naruto, not as a burden, but as a silent challenge. Let her set him apart, not out of cruelty, but fear.
The ink sank in. The page did not tear. The words felt final.
I closed my eyes again.
The Shingan showed me the matron. Her head turned. Her eyes narrowed. Naruto's wailing subsided into whimpers, exhausted. Her gaze lingered longer on his cradle than the others. Not warmth. Not affection. Distance.
I smiled.
It worked.
I had nudged the world. Not reshaped it, not rewritten it. But touched it.
The tether was real.
And now I knew: the world wasn't a sandbox. It was a chessboard. Naruto was my rook, my bishop, my king-to-be. And I—I was the hand behind the veil.
For now.
But frustration returned quickly. I could only act when he cried, raged, felt deeply. I could not converse. Could not impose logic or strategy. I could only respond.
That was intolerable.
I wanted godhood, not commentary.
But I had thirty pages.
Thirty cracks in the dam.
Thirty windows to force open fate.
I would bide my time. I would learn the rhythms of Naruto's heart. I would provoke emotion if I had to. If pain opened the door, then let him hurt. If loss gave me leverage, then let him be alone.
This was no longer a fanfic.
This was authorship over reality.
And I had a book to fill.
That was weeks ago. Since then, I've watched. From this pathetic shell of a reality, I've looked through the eyes of Shingan. That accursed gift, a curse in gold.
A crimson cradle. Straw mat floors. The smell of antiseptic and neglect.
That was Naruto's world now.
After the sealing, after the blood and fury, after the fang of the demon beast plunged through both Minato and Kushina, the child was alone. The last thing Kushina did was whisper sweetness into his ear: brush your teeth, be kind, make friends, live strong. Nonsense. Mortals cling to sentiments in the face of entropy.
I watched him placed into the orphanage. The Hokage had done what he could: anonymity, a sealed record, a whisper to the caretakers to "be kind." But kindness is currency in scarce supply.
He cried. Day and night.
Not for food. Not for sleep. But for the warmth he remembered instinctively. The heartbeat of the woman who bore him. The voice of the man who died to protect him.
I listened to that cry echo in my mind through the Shingan. Piercing, shrill, maddening. At first, I was curious. Then, I was bored. Then I was angry.
"Shut up," I whispered, though he could not hear me. Not yet.
I opened the book. Page one, started to write in small letters.
"Dim the candlelight above Naruto's cradle by half. Let the shadows comfort him or scare him. I wish to see."
The candle flickered. A soft breath of wind, as if unseen fingers pinched its light. Shadows gathered. Naruto flinched.
It worked.
Not perfectly. Not instantly. But subtly. A nudge.
Like a god with a trembling hand reaching into the tides of another world. A ripple.
And so I experimented.
"Remove one toy from the cradle.""Cause a mouse to scurry across the room.""Make the blanket warmer."
Small things. I didn't care about Naruto. Not as a person. He was an avatar. A focus. A conduit. The louder he cried, the more intense his emotions, the clearer the Shingan's window became.
Sometimes I whispered observations aloud, imagining myself as a scientist in a great glass dome.
"Subject shows resilience despite abandonment. Subject responds to cold by curling into fetal position. Primitive defense. Instinctual."
The orphanage caretakers, pitiful beings, often ignored him. Once, I wrote:
"Have the caretaker forget Naruto's feeding for one hour."
He cried again. Loud. Anguished. The Shingan's vision surged in clarity. I saw the world through him—his blurred baby vision—light and shape, no form. I heard the rustle of robes. The distant bell from the village square. The low murmur of another baby being rocked, not him.
That night, I slept uneasily. Not from guilt. Guilt is for people who care. It was anticipation. Excitement.
What else could I do?
What else would he endure?
Month Two.
He had stopped crying for long intervals. The human body cannot cry forever. Exhaustion claims all.
He stared at the ceiling sometimes. Wide-eyed. Unblinking. I wondered if he saw the remnants of Kushina's chakra, sealed into him. Or if the beast within whispered dreams.
I wrote again:
"Cause the shadow of the fox to appear on the wall, for one heartbeat."
He blinked. Flinched. Began to wail. The vision through Shingan surged like a wave crashing onto shore.
Emotion. Pure and undiluted.
I tried to speak again.
"Naruto," I whispered.
But no reaction. Just a child's sobs. Words meant nothing yet.
The book glowed faintly. A lock symbol appeared near the bottom of the page. A warning:
Conversation unavailable: Emotional threshold not met.
How cruel. I would need him to break more, that is how Protagonists get stronger not by babysitting.
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