"Snap!"
One moment, Renjiro was adrift in the deep, chakra-anchored stillness of his trance, the cold wind of the floating island a distant memory. Next, he was standing.
Solid ground pressed against the soles of his feet. Warm, still air, thick with the scent of sun-warmed wood, dried herbs, and something faintly milky, filled his lungs. Sound returned not as the roar of wind, but as a muffled, intimate tapestry.
The confusion was a physical blow. He stood in the middle of a small, sun-drenched living room in a house he had never seen. Late afternoon light streamed through paper-shōji doors, painting everything in gold and long, soft shadows.
It felt profoundly, achingly solid, yet simultaneously unreal, like a painting rendered in hyper-detail, the colors a shade too warm, the sounds slightly muffled as if heard through thick glass.
Instinct, sharper than thought, took over. He tried to ground himself, to feel the flow of chakra within him, to activate the Sharingan and dissect if this was a genjutsu. He reached inward.
'Nothing.'
A void. A chilling, absolute silence where the familiar river of his power should have roared. It wasn't blocked or suppressed; it was simply… absent. The sensation was so profoundly wrong it felt like losing a limb.
Before he could grapple with this new helplessness, a flash of movement—a streak of vibrant crimson—darted past his legs with a peal of bright, breathless laughter.
A child. A boy of maybe four or five, his hair a wild mop of brilliant red, wearing nothing but a pair of short pants. His small feet pattered on the tatami as he ran, a game of evasion in full swing.
A woman's voice followed, warm, playful, and thick with mock exasperation.
"Bath time means bath time, you little minnow! You can't swim away from this!"
Renjiro, reacting on pure reflex, tried to step aside to let the laughing child pass. The boy barreled straight toward him—and then through him.
There was no impact. No sensation of touch, no displacement of air. Just a momentary blur of red hair and joyful sound passing through the space his torso occupied, followed by a wave of impossible, psychic warmth. Renjiro stared down at his own hands, turning them over. They looked solid, detailed, but when he willed them to clench, the command felt distant. The confirmation was absolute: he had no physical presence here.
His gaze snapped back to the woman who entered the room, wiping her hands on a cloth. The sight of her hit him with a force that had nothing to do with physicality.
She was young, perhaps in her late twenties. Her hair, dark and richer than the boy's, was tied in a messy but practical braid over one shoulder. A few strands escaped, framing a face that was kind and lively, with smile lines just beginning to form at the corners of her eyes—eyes that were a warm, deep black.
The name surfaced from a place deeper than memory, an instinctual, emotional recognition that bypassed all logic: Mother.
It was Sachi Uchiha. His mother.
The emotional pull was a riptide. He knew her. Not from pictures or stories, but from a visceral, cellular memory of safety and love that long predated his conscious mind as Renjiro, back when he was still Ethan.
The disorientation that followed was dizzying. His only conscious memory of her was a fragmented, terror-stricken glimpse: her face, streaked with soot and determination, pushing him into Miwa's arms on a chaotic, burning street in Uzushiogakure.
The front door slid open with a shick of well-oiled wood. A man stood in the doorway, backlit by the setting sun, the day's weariness in his posture melting away as he took in the scene.
Takeshi Uzumaki. His father. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with the same fiery red hair cropped short, and a kind, weathered face. His eyes, a startling sea-green, crinkled with immediate affection.
The little boy squealed with renewed delight, changing course and charging toward the door. "Papa!"
Takeshi laughed, a rich, rolling sound that filled the warm room. He bent down, sweeping the child up in one effortless motion, "And what's this? A land-shark evading the water?"
"No bath," the child giggled, hiding his face in his father's neck.
"Ah, but a promise is a promise," Takeshi said, his tone gentle but firm. He looked over at Sachi, a silent, loving communication passing between them.
"And we don't run from Mama, do we?"
The little boy pulled back, his small face suddenly serious. "No, Papa. Sorry, Mama."
The scene was a bubble of perfect, mundane bliss. The warmth in the room was almost tactile. Renjiro, the spectator, felt a profound, aching sense of being an intruder, a ghost haunting a happiness that was never meant for him to witness so directly.
Then, without warning, the world stuttered.
Sound distorted, and the scene snapped back to its starting point like a rewound film. The laughter from the child, who was suddenly across the room again, reset. The patter of feet. Sachi's playful call from the hallway. The door opening, Takeshi entering.
It happened again. And again.
Renjiro stood frozen in the centre of the looping vignette. This wasn't a memory he was recalling; it was a memory he was trapped inside. A recording on a perfect, eternal loop. The first conscious thought formed, cold and clear amidst the rising panic:
'This is a memory. But whose?'
During the third reset, he focused on the child. Really looked at him. The red hair, the shape of the eyes, the stubborn set of the little jaw. The boy's name, spoken by Sachi with fond exasperation: "Renjiro, I mean it!"
The pieces locked together. This was Renjiro. The original Renjiro. The child whose body he, Ethan, had awoken in months later. This was the life that had been lived before the transgression of his arrival.
A fierce, desperate will flared in him. He couldn't just watch. He shouted, "Hey! Look at me!" His voice made no sound in the warm air.
He lunged, trying to grab Sachi's arm as she passed. His hand moved through her like smoke through glass. He tried furiously to cycle chakra, to spark any reaction, beating against the absolute internal silence. Nothing.
The helplessness was suffocating. It mirrored, with cruel precision, the powerlessness of his first life as Ethan: watching from a hospital bed, unable to interact, a consciousness trapped behind failing eyes, seeing but never touching. He was just a ghost here. The memory didn't need him. It existed, pristine and inviolate, around him.
On the fourth loop, a new desperation took hold. He couldn't affect the actors, but perhaps he could affect the stage. He began to pace, moving to the walls of the small house.
He pressed a hand against the wooden beam; it felt solid, unyielding. The shōji door wouldn't slide for him. He was trapped in this single, sun-drenched room, condemned to watch this happy fragment of a forgotten childhood for eternity. The panic was no longer about confusion, but about permanence. This could be his forever. A beautiful, torturous cage.
It was during this frantic examination, on the fifth repetition, that he saw it. An anomaly.
As the loop reset and the young Renjiro began his laughing run, Renjiro's spectral gaze was drawn to the front door. It was closed, waiting for Takeshi's entrance.
But outside, visible as a faint, dark silhouette through the frosted paper of the shōji, was a figure. Standing perfectly still. Not part of the memory's script. It hadn't been there in the previous loops.
His every sense, even numbed as they were, focused on that shadow.
When the loop reset for the sixth time, Renjiro was ready. He positioned himself directly beside the front door, his back to the wall. He counted the beats of the memory like a soldier timing an ambush. The Child's laugh. Sachi's call. The approaching patter of small feet.
The door began to slide open, Takeshi's form blocking the light. This was the moment of scripted entry. Renjiro, with all the will he could muster, didn't try to open the door himself. Instead, he moved with it, flowing alongside the opening panel like a shadow attached to the wood.
For a split second, he felt resistance, a thick, honey-like pressure pushing him back into the room, back into the loop. Then, with a silent, mental pop, it gave way.
He stumbled forward one step—and the world changed.
The enveloping, golden warmth of the house vanished, replaced by a cool, dull quiet.
The sounds of domestic life were cut off as if by a door shutting firmly behind him. He was outside, in a featureless, twilight space. The house stood there, whole and complete, but now it looked like a sealed diorama, glowing faintly from within. The looping memory continued inside, but he was no longer part of its audience.
Ahead, in the neutral gloom, stood a lone figure.
Renjiro's breath hitched. He knew that posture, the set of those shoulders, the shape of that head crowned with familiar red hair. A dread deeper than any he'd felt in battle settled over him.
Slowly, as if burdened by a great weight, the figure turned.
It was him.
Older than the child in the memory, a young man roughly his own age. The face was his own, but softer, without the hardened edges carved by war and secret burdens.
The figure—the other Renjiro, the original soul—looked at him, the interloper, the replacement. He didn't smile. He didn't frown. He simply let out a slow, quiet sigh that seemed to carry the weight of years of silent observation.
His voice, when it came, was familiar yet uniquely his own, tinged with a quiet relief that held no joy.
"You're finally here."
=====
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