Chapter 1: Transmigration
On the street, Orion ambled along without a destination, unsure of where the road ahead led or what he was supposed to be doing. His impassive eyes, coupled with a face that bore the marks of his experiences over the years, gave him a cold and distant feel.
For as long as he could remember, Orion had no parents. He was an orphan, raised in an orphanage. His memory was excellent; he could generally recall anything he saw. While not quite a photographic memory, it wasn't far off. You could say he was a genius.
In elementary school, Orion's grades were outstanding, and he was admitted to the city's top junior high school. It was then that he left the orphanage. With no one to properly guide him, he gradually found studying to be more and more meaningless and began to despise it. Not long into his first year of junior high, he started to navigate the harsh realities of society, becoming a small-time hoodlum.
After a while of being a hoodlum, life's pressures forced his hand. Without enough money to support himself, he had to find work. He had been a waiter, a dishwasher, and a car washer. His experience with the world slowly grew, giving him a different outlook on life than others his age—he was more mature.
During his time working, Orion became obsessed with watching anime, and Naruto was his absolute favorite. His days consisted of secretly watching anime at school in the morning and going to work at night, with little else happening. The result was that he dropped out of school; by his second year of junior high, Orion had no intention of studying any longer.
Walking down the street, Orion suddenly remembered something. Today was the day a new episode of the Naruto anime was supposed to be released!
A flicker of life returned to Orion's eyes. The bonds of family, the friendship he had never experienced, and a hint of passion—these were the elements in Naruto that had made him fall in love with the anime from the very first episode.
In the Naruto anime, his favorite character was Naruto Uzumaki. This was because Naruto and Orion were very similar in one respect: they were both without parents from a young age, deprived of parental love. Moreover, when Naruto was just born, his parents sealed the Nine-Tails inside his body. Many ninjas sacrificed their lives during the great battle with the Nine-Tails, and the ultimate consequence was that the entire village of Konoha came to hate him, all because he was the jinchuriki of the Nine-Tails.
But Naruto Uzumaki deeply loved his village. When no one acknowledged him and everyone hated him, he didn't become increasingly crazed. Instead, he simply wanted to gain everyone's approval, wanted the entire village to recognize his existence, and wanted to become Hokage, finally earning the villagers' acknowledgment.
Naruto had a kind heart. Although he was a bit foolish, this sincerity earned him the first person to acknowledge him at the Ninja Academy: his teacher, Iruka.
Orion had always sympathized with Naruto, perhaps because of their similar childhoods or for other reasons.
Whatever, I'll stop thinking about it. I should hurry home and watch Naruto!
Back home, Orion hastily took the key from his pocket, aimed for the keyhole, and opened the locked door. Orion's home was small, only a few dozen square meters, and located far from the city. But the rent was only three hundred a month. He lived here for no other reason than it was cheap.
In truth, there was nothing of value in the house: a simple wooden bed, a chair, a table, a few bowls, and a battered, old, second-hand laptop he had bought from a flea market. There was nothing else.
Orion knew that even a thief wouldn't bother with such a dilapidated little house. Even if they turned the place upside down, they wouldn't find anything valuable. But locking the door was for his own peace of mind; it was a habit he had slowly developed over the years.
He returned home to a somewhat dim room with air that wasn't particularly fresh, but Orion was content. Having a place to live was enough. There were many packs of instant noodles in the house. They were cheap, and to eat them, all you had to do was boil some water and put the noodles in.
It was around noon, and he was getting a little hungry. Orion simply boiled some water, put in three packs of instant noodles, and carried the bowl to his laptop. He turned on the computer, clicked on Naruto, and prepared to eat while watching.
As Orion shoveled noodles into his mouth, watching the anime, his hand suddenly slipped. The instant noodles and the scalding hot broth in the bowl spilled onto the laptop's keyboard. Orion's heart sank. It's over, he thought silently.
Although the laptop was second-hand, it was the first one Orion had ever owned. He had worked for a whole month and spent three thousand yuan to buy it from a second-hand shop. It wasn't exactly cheap. But now, with the soup and noodles all over it, wasn't it completely ruined?
A month's salary, just like that. A whole month of my blood and sweat, gone just like that. How can I be so unlucky! Just as Orion was lost in his endless internal despair, the laptop screen began to flash. Thin tendrils of blue electricity started to seep out from the computer. After a moment, more and more lightning emerged from the soaked laptop.
"Bzzzt."
Countless tiny electrical currents began to merge, forming a larger bolt of lightning. But Orion saw none of this. In an instant, the lightning bolt, which had absorbed all the other currents, shot towards Orion at an incredible speed.
In the end, Orion collapsed, completely unaware of what had happened.
He was in a daze. When he woke up again, it felt as though a long time had passed, and yet, also like it had only been a moment. Orion forced his eyes open.
What appeared before him was no longer his simple, shabby little room. In front of him was no longer his familiar second-hand laptop. He seemed to be lying down, his line of sight slanted. The surface beneath him was soft and quite warm. Turning his head, he saw what looked like a Japanese-style tatami mat. The room's decor was no longer Chinese but resembled a Japanese style.
Orion's eyes darted around, and he inadvertently saw an extremely thin arm. This arm is so thin, so small, so short!
Eh, wait a minute. This can't be my arm, can it? Orion was shocked. He laboriously tried to lift the arm, and the arm in his vision moved as well.
Holy crap, it really is my hand! How is this possible? I just fainted, how could I wake up as a child? Did I… transmigrate? No way, for something like this to actually happen to me… Wait, this might not be so bad. I was getting bored to death in my original world anyway, living the same life every single day. Thinking about it this way, it doesn't seem like such a terrible thing.
And if things develop according to this situation, does that mean I'm about to awaken some kind of system that comes from who-knows-where?
Hehe! If that's really the case, won't that be awesome? From now on, I can just go around showing off, putting people in their place, and living the life I want to live. As Orion thought about these things, he slowly began to accept the fact that he had transmigrated.
(End of this chapter)