Takeda Shuichi

As winter began in Year 40 of Konoha, Takeda Shuichi stood inside his home, watching fine snowflakes drift slowly past the window. He had already come to calmly accept the fact that he had transmigrated into Konoha Village in the Naruto World.

In the pane of glass, barely the size of two heads, Shuichi could make out a faint reflection of his young face.

Lustrous purple-black hair fell along either side of his forehead, and his bright, lively eyes reflected his delicate, childish features.

In his previous life, Shuichi had been a young man who had grown up without a care, spending his childhood in Peng City, in China's southern Linhai Province.

His parents had originally come from rural villages in inland Linhai Province. They were warmhearted and driven. Thanks to Peng City's opening up and their ability to speak Cantonese with businessmen from Hong Kong across the border, they had accumulated a modest fortune there before the millennium.

Because some villages in Linhai Province still held strongly to certain Chinese traditions, Shuichi had two older sisters, an older brother, and a younger brother in his previous life.

His parents taught him how to conduct himself mostly through their words and actions. They rarely concerned themselves with his studies, asking only that he not cause any serious trouble at school.

At home, Shuichi had been a quiet child, but one who always thought things through.

His two sisters had married early, while his older brother had begun traveling around with their father after earning his bachelor's degree, preparing to take over the family business.

Shuichi alone had consistently ranked near the top of his class from childhood. With money to spare in the family, he had gone abroad after high school and spent years studying overseas.

A few days earlier, having just finished the final exams of his last semester of graduate school, Shuichi had felt a little uncertain about the road ahead.

But he was cheerful and optimistic by nature. He soon put those worries and frustrations out of his mind and launched into some intense League of Legends matches with his classmates.

"Ultra Rapid Fire is back. Wanna play?"

"No shit. I just bought the new skin today. Nobody's taking Ezreal from me!"

"Xiuer, Brother Xiu, I sent the invite. Hurry up and join the lobby! I went out of my way to invite those two hotties from our group project today. If you get thirty-plus kills and carry them, heh heh heh..."

Studying abroad had left Shuichi with plenty of lonely hours. He had gone from a diligent, well-behaved student to something of a homebody with a secretly cheeky streak.

As a child, he had only followed anime like Naruto on and off. By now, he had gone through it more than five times, including the manga.

Shuichi had watched plenty of anime, but Naruto alone was his true love.

Outside of class, Shuichi had few hobbies. Unlike those excessively wild students from wealthy families, he never called escorts over to party in his rented place.

Usually, he just exercised occasionally, played games, and watched anime. When he had spare cash, though, he bought quite a few Naruto figures.

"What's the damn rush? It's not like carrying them will lead anywhere. In two months, we'll all be going our separate ways anyway... I'm in." Shuichi remained quite calm.

"Damn, you're really that chill? Well, fair enough. With what you've got going for you, you won't be short of girls back home. Starting it up!"

Of course, despite what he said, Shuichi had a few things weighing on him that day, so he decided to play seriously.

Lately, Shuichi had occasionally watched some Naruto side stories, but he scoffed at Boruto.

He thought it was Masashi Kishimoto cashing in on nostalgia after Naruto ended, commercializing it to make money. As someone who had grown up watching Naruto, he found it rather insulting to his intelligence.

Thinking of Naruto suddenly made his fingers itch, and his urge to play one of the Ninja Heroes grew stronger and stronger.

He glanced at the champion list and instantly locked in Akali right at the top.

The game soon began. Perhaps it was the excitement of hearing the girls' voices, or perhaps it was the melancholy of graduation season, but Shuichi was unusually aggressive that day.

He bought Mejai's Soulstealer four minutes in and racked up thirty kills before twenty minutes had even passed. He did not so much as auto-attack a tower; he was practically pinning all five opponents inside their fountain.

The longer Shuichi played, the more ridiculous his posture became. He half-reclined in his chair and stretched his legs forward, failing to notice that his big feet were almost wedged into the power strip.

Perhaps even the heavens could not bear to watch anymore. Shuichi suddenly pressed Flash a little too late, and the opposing team finally put him in his place.

Just as he was about to slam his keyboard and unleash a string of curses, electricity suddenly arced from the socket. Shuichi felt all the strength drain from his body. His vision went black, and he knew nothing more.

When he woke, parts of his body felt beyond his control, as though he were paralyzed. It took him a long time to barely manage to sit up.

He discovered that he had become a child and was inside an old-looking wooden house.

The room had a distinctly Japanese layout, extremely similar to what he had seen on the Douyin app in his previous life.

At first, Shuichi thought he had been taken to a hospital and was dreaming.

But over the next few days, memories kept surfacing in his mind like first-person film footage. Only then did he realize that he had transmigrated into Konoha in Naruto, becoming a four-year-old orphan named Takeda Shuichi.

The original Takeda Shuichi had been born into a family where both parents were ninja.

His father, Takeda Kenta, had been a Special Jonin of Konoha. Supposedly, there had been a renowned samurai among his ancestors long ago.

But in the present era of the Five Great Nations, he was merely a descendant of villagers who had come to settle in Konoha at its founding, drawn by its reputation. Reaching the level of Special Jonin in less than thirty years had already been no small feat.

Shuichi's mother had also been a Chunin from a similar family background, but she had possessed some talent for Medical Ninjutsu.

She could be considered one of the veteran ninja who had helped Princess Tsunade establish Konoha's medical system.

It was thanks to these circumstances that Shuichi had not been sent to the Konoha Orphanage after both his parents died.

The village had reclaimed his parents' original house and assigned him one much like Naruto's home, which he had seen in his previous life. It was a little farther from central Konoha, beside the village's reservoir.

The original Takeda Shuichi had been a lively child. But half a month earlier, he had learned that both his parents were dead. Overwhelmed by grief, he had still been in a daze when he moved into his current home.

When Shuichi's soul arrived a few days earlier, he had taken over the body completely without much resistance. After all, a four-year-old child's memories were fairly limited.

The Shinobi World was far from peaceful at the time. It was still in the final stages of the Second Great Ninja War.

But Shuichi knew the Second Shinobi War would end before long. For the original child's parents to have died at this point was incredibly unlucky.

During his first few days here, Shuichi had also missed the parents he had left behind. After all, many things seemed unremarkable while one was used to them; only after losing them did one realize how precious they were.

At least my brothers and sisters are still there. I can only hope Mom and Dad won't be too devastated when they hear what happened to me, and that they can keep living happily, Shuichi thought silently.

In the days since his transmigration, Shuichi could only console himself by resolving to live this life well.

Although the manga and anime portrayed Naruto as a world of fiery passion, even a rough understanding of certain plot details made it clear that this was a brutal world filled with killing, intrigue, and betrayal.

And for the reborn Takeda Shuichi, the first question he had to face was what path he would take in the future.