"Make a Wish Toru-Kun!" I looked at the cake in front of me, decorated with a bright blue ten.

Ten years.

I’ve been dead ten years.

I’ve been here for ten years.

Sometimes my memories seem like a dream, a long forgotten delusion.

But then I’d catch myself muttering the tune to a song in English, or writing with letters instead of kanji. I’ve managed to suppress that, to keep my… memories, under control.

It’s easy to separate myself from my old past. After all, now I’m in a far different place than my first life.

My name is Toru Shusho.

Now, as I look around at my family, as I celebrate my tenth birthday, I'm reminded just how different my life is now. I’m not a writer, an artist, or even a gamer
now. I’m a shinobi in training. Not just that, I’m a shinobi in training in Konoha.

God, it's been so long since I first woke up and understood the world around me. I had to be…. What, four? That’s when my memories started coming back. I don't know if I’ve been reincarnated or not, but god, I thought I was going crazy. It wasn’t till I started knowing things that I shouldn’t, that I realized my memories were real.

That's also when I decided that if I want to have any chance at all of surviving the coming clusterfuck that would be the shinobi world, I needed to get as smart and strong as possible.

That meant going to the academy, Learning about chakra and learning to fight and… god.

Kill.

I was willingly learning to Kill.

But that was the thing. I couldn't focus on butterflies, I had to ignore the details and focus on the broad strokes of the story. And fully be prepared to drop any plan I made at the drop of the hat.

Anyway, back to the fact I was ten years old, again.

I was, in particular, a very… forgettable kid. Dark brown hair, slightly tanned skin, skinny but too thin to be called lean. I had picked up some muscle, two years of daily exercise and taijutsu practices helped with that. The only real feature that made me stand out from most civilians was my eyes, a dark blue, that depending on the lighting shifted to lighter sea green/blue, or to dark gray/blue. No scars or birthmarks, my hair was cut short and loose, a mess of slightly wavy locks. Beyond that, the transfer to new youth hadn’t really changed my personality much. I was still reclusive, still quiet and a book worm. My new family wasn’t shinobi, no, my family was merchants. Upper middle class.

I was the odd one in my family. I wanted to ‘be like my grandpa!’ as I often exclaimed,

The proof was my birthday party, I suppose, and the gifts I got. My cousins always wanted toys or games, or something pretty. I got a bunch of books and scrolls, a few odd trinkets such as packs of artistic playing cards and senbon. A new jacket, and so on. Ten years here, like I said, and my family knew me well. They gave me things I wanted, and things I could use. I had a few classmates, and my family, but not much else present. The games were tag, or hide and seek, the food sweet and flavorful, but also nutritious. I was helping groom myself to be a survivor.

My family was, surprise surprise, civilian. No bloodline, no history of chakra use beyond a grandfather who never made chunin, and no archive of skills and techniques. We were a family of craftsmen, a jewelry maker for a mother, a merchant for a father, leatherworking, and smithing scattered through cousins and uncles. Oh, as for training as a ninja I had dozens of half-remembered tips and skills from stories in my past life, but in practice, I didn't remember half of anything useful. Oh, I knew some things, I had been slowly working bit by bit on chakra control, slowly grinding any piece of control methods or expanding my reserves whenever I could. I had tried the infamous tree walking, and though I didn't have the control or reserves to actually stay on for more than a second, I did learn to slow falls using walls and climb easier by giving a second of grip to kick off of.

As for the family side of the skill equation, I had some experience when it came to metalcraft, but compared to my mom’s apprentice, I was more likely to work the stalls then the bench. Just didn't have the eye for design like she did, my stuff was always more practical than artistic. One benefit of my family was that I had plenty of time to tinker when my mother wasn't working in the shop. I was free to use any bits of scrap as long as it wasn’t a chunk of gold or silver. I didn’t have the artistic flair for delicate and ornate designs or my father's tendency for polite and kind barter, but I had a good eye for sturdy designs and things that were robust and practical.

I drew my attention back to the party. It wasn’t very lively, partly due to the small size, partly to the bad news from earlier the month.

The Uchiha Massacre had happened.

God. it wasn't really noted, but the Uchiha’s were a large clan. I had three members in my class alone. Sachi, Tori, and Tora, a girl and two twin guys. But god, hearing about the massacre, and then walking into class the next week and seeing the three empty seats… it had hit a lot of us hard.

I had done some mental math and asked around to confirm. I was, compared to the rookie nine, ten, right now they were all 7-8. I was almost three years ahead.

That was both good, and bad. Good in that I had closer to five years before the sand invasion or the start of the Canon Story, bad because I would have to survive for three years as a genin and/or chunin before they graduated.

I wish to survive what comes.

I blew out the candles, smiling as my family cheered.

I smiled at my family as we started opening and playing with my new gifts, my cousins crowding around to hep inspect.

I had five years to survive till canon started. Seven until the next war if I didn't throw things off.

I could only hope it was enough time.