Uchiha Shin

On the night of August 31, Year 25 of Konoha, in the backyard of the Uchiha Clan Head's home in Konoha Village, Land of Fire.

A five-year-old boy tilted his head up, lazily gazing at the moon radiating a gentle glow.

The boy had medium-short hair. The hair below the back of his head and the locks by his ears were tied into a short ponytail.

His bangs fell casually over his forehead. With his delicate features and gentle-looking face, dressed in a black "Uchiha trench coat," he did not possess the innocence and liveliness expected of a child his age.

"The moon is so big tonight..." Feeling that something was off, he immediately corrected himself. "No, it's so white... When will the moon turn red?"

The little boy was Uchiha Shin, the younger son of the current Uchiha Clan Head.

"Shin, how could the moon possibly turn red?" A much taller boy stood energetically behind Shin and asked in return.

The older boy had rugged features and wore an oversized Uchiha trench coat of the same style.

Yet it was difficult to associate his appearance with Shin's softer features.

"Brother Fugaku, not only will the moon turn red in the future, there are people living on it too!" Shin answered his brother's question in his childish voice.

Uchiha Fugaku had a terrible headache. Ever since childhood, he had found it hard to cope with his younger brother's various strange ideas.

What set Shin apart from ordinary children's fantasies was that most of his ideas could actually be logically explained.

Naturally, the Uchiha Clan Head's family had taken him to the Yamanaka clan to have his brain examined.

However, the conclusion was that not a single member of the clan, despite their mastery of brain-related secret techniques, could enter his mental world.

The chakra-revering ninjas were helpless when faced with such a matter.

From then on, Shin had been regarded as someone with many strange ideas, perhaps even a genius.

Following something his younger brother had once said, ten-year-old Fugaku replied, "Yes, yes, yes. His name is Armstrong..."

"Then do you know how he got to the moon? He—"

"He rode a rocket, right? I don't know what a rocket is, but I really don't understand all that stuff you said about propulsion and fuel."

With a smug expression, Shin began supplementing Fugaku's knowledge. "It's called a thruster. It uses high-performance fuel as a medium, and the thrust produced through complete combustion sends the rocket up to the moon..."

Then he narrowed his eyes. "Brother Fugaku, you only just graduated from the Ninja Academy. Is your memory already this bad?"

Even as he forcibly supplemented Fugaku's knowledge, he did not forget to show concern over whether there might be something wrong with his memory.

But Fugaku retorted impatiently, "What ninja needs to remember the Periodic Table and the laws of physics?"

He felt his blood pressure rising.

Blood pressure was that thing Shin called blood vessel pressure or something.

At the same time, he felt that ending up with such a younger brother in this life must have been because he had personally destroyed the Ninja World in his previous one.

Otherwise, why did he not possess even a shred of an older brother's dignity in front of his little brother?

"I'm worried about you, my foolish older brother. You're so young—you can't have 'senile dementia'..." Shin lectured Fugaku in an adult-like tone.

Then words such as "Nao Bai Jin" and "Six Walnuts" came out of his mouth.

Fugaku lowered his head, looking exactly like a child receiving his father's lecture.

Growing pleased with himself, Shin now adopted the tone their father used.

With a stern expression, he tirelessly taught Fugaku the techniques for memorizing the Periodic Table.

Why did I answer that question about the moon? If I had avoided that topic, would things not have turned out like this?

Fugaku looked as though he were listening, but inwardly, he was already on the verge of collapse.

Wait, doesn't the Ninja Academy start tomorrow? I should properly remind this 'adorable' little brother of mine...

He suddenly glared straight at the person still summarizing his experience.

That caught Shin completely off guard.

Seeing the other party blank out for once, Fugaku began lecturing him in return, his tone carrying three parts smugness and seven parts satisfaction.

"Shin, you're enrolling tomorrow, right? Do you know how important the Ninja Academy is to a ninja? Your health has been poor since childhood..."

Faced with this move, Shin could only ponder quietly.

On the surface, he looked meek and obedient.

This had always been his sure-win method for dealing with his father, the current Uchiha Clan Head.

From time to time, he even nodded slowly.

The sheer mastery of this technique made Fugaku's eye twitch wildly as he rambled on.

"..."

Seeing his "adorable" younger brother treat everything he had just said as though it went in one ear and out the other made Fugaku feel even heavier inside.

After telling him to get a good rest tonight, Fugaku turned and left without pausing for a moment.

"Then Brother Fugaku, make sure you rest early too..."

"This time, you'd better memorize the Periodic Table properly. I'll quiz you at random times..."

The moment Fugaku heard those parting words, he immediately sped up.

He did not want to walk a few steps too slowly and get dragged into talking all night by his headache-inducing younger brother.

If not for the fact that children in other families could split bricks with their bare hands at the age of five,

while his younger brother always looked as though a breeze could knock him over,

Fugaku would have declared on the spot that he would have strung him up and beaten him long ago.

But as an older brother, he was supposed to take good care of his younger brother.

It was just that someone had become increasingly "pushy" because of it.

Regarding someone he could neither beat nor argue with, Fugaku sincerely felt that there was no older brother in the entire Ninja World who had it harder than him.

Am I really that annoying? I still had several things left to say... Shin felt dejected, like an abandoned child.

After standing there for a while, he finally headed toward his room.

Inside Uchiha Shin's room.

Shin sat on his bed, continuing to look up at the moon radiating a soft white glow.

At the same time, he imagined what it would look like if it turned red and gained black tomoe.

"The Ninja World is dangerous, and I was even born into the Uchiha..."

He seemed lost about his future. Only after thinking alone for a long time did he turn his thoughts to the Ninja Academy.

"The Ninja Academy? After graduation, there'll definitely be an idiot who wants to become Hokage, and two teammates who always argue but acknowledge each other..."

Shin quickly came up with character settings for his two future teammates.

As for where that assumption came from, he dared to wager his youth on it.

That was right. Uchiha Shin was not from this world—at least, not in soul.

In his previous life, he had been a 996 corporate slave.

While his phone was charging, he happened to receive a call from his boss ordering him to work overtime until late at night.

Then his phone battery exploded.

And just like that, he arrived in this Ninja World.

He figured the charger had been counterfeit and summed up three lessons:

First, never use counterfeit chargers.

Second, do not use your phone while charging, especially not when answering calls.

Third, 996 was absolutely not a blessing. Even if working overtime until midnight did not get you killed by an exploding phone, it would make you drop dead from overwork.

When Shin opened his eyes, he saw his parents in this world.

And his five-year-old older brother, Uchiha Fugaku.

At the time, he felt that the name Fugaku sounded very familiar.

It was not until he learned that his father was the Uchiha Clan Head that he often came to the family backyard at night to look up at the moon.

He knew that Kaguya Otsutsuki, the great villain, was sealed inside the moon.

Did this count as looking up to observe his own ancestor?

Shin also felt that expecting five-year-old children in the Ninja World to split bricks with their bare hands was simply asking too much.

For someone who had received Chinese-style education in his previous life, it was difficult to break through the mental restraints he had regarding the human body.

So his family mistakenly believed that he had very poor physical fitness.

That was why they had always cared for him so attentively.

They even granted him some requests, as long as they were not too excessive.

This allowed him, who had grown accustomed to the cold 996 system in his previous life, to feel the warmth of family.

Shin had once told his family about some physics and chemistry knowledge from his previous life.

Over five years, he had long since come to regard those who cared for him as his true family.

And his family never asked where his strange theories came from.

They only believed that "Heaven had not given him a healthy body, but had given him extraordinary wisdom."

The maturity he displayed from a young age further proved it.

In truth, as long as Shin broke through his mental restraints, his body could exert its proper strength.

But he had always insisted that he could not do it.

Did they think every transmigrator had such a big heart? Being afraid of pain was nothing to be ashamed of!

He did not know whether it was because of the Uchiha Clan's bloodline that all his emotions seemed amplified.

Fortunately, Shin had his own golden finger after transmigrating into the Ninja World: powerful computational ability, memory, and dynamic vision.

Rather than abilities, those three were more like functions.

He believed that because he had still been on the phone when he was blown to death in his previous life,

his brain had miraculously fused with his phone during transmigration.

Shin had currently developed three abilities: computing power corresponding to the phone's processor, powerful memory corresponding to flash storage, and dynamic vision corresponding to the camera.

The reason the Yamanaka clan could not invade his mind was also because of the built-in password.

"How can the Uchiha Clan survive? How can I survive the Second Shinobi World War? How can I resist the Otsutsuki clan?"

The confusion in his heart was something he could not tell anyone.

"I should sleep. Even if the Ninja World is destroyed, I'll protect this family properly..."

Before lying down and closing his eyes, Shin looked once more at the moon in the sky.

His gaze was now noticeably a little different from before.