Ding—Your Card Has Dropped

Ringo woke up.

He had not been woken by noise; he woke up on his own. A strip of light leaked through a crack in the roof, landing right on his right eyelid, hot enough to sting. He rolled over, buried his face in the blanket, and lingered a while longer. The blanket was thin and let the light through.

Next door, a spatula scraped against the bottom of a pan, screeching and sizzling. Someone ran down the corridor, wooden clogs smacking against the floor, clack clack, then ran back after a few steps—forgot something.

Someone was brushing their teeth at the faucet, the back-and-forth scraping of the toothbrush squeezing in through cracks in the wall. Mornings at the orphanage were always noisy. There had not been a moment of peace since six.

He sat up. His left foot touched the ground first. He did not know when he had developed the habit—putting on his left shoe first, then pulling on the left leg of his pants. Grandma had said that stepping down with the left foot first was unlucky. He did not believe it, but his left foot always got out of bed first anyway. He could not change it.

He grabbed the gray T-shirt bunched at the foot of the bed and pulled it on. The collar had stretched out from washing, exposing his collarbones. The shorts were the pair issued last year, their knees worn pale, with a hole in the left pocket—of the three coins he had stuffed in there last time, only two remained. He had not received a forehead protector yet. They were handed out in fourth grade.

The mirror on the wall was missing a corner. The face in it had black hair and black eyes, the sort that would be impossible to pick out in a crowd. His skin was pale, and the shadows beneath his eyes had deepened a little. Nobody had hit him. The bed boards were hard. Even after sleeping on them for six years, they still dug into his bones.

Ordinary. Nine years. Those two words had followed him since he was three.

When he was three, he saw the names "Minato Namikaze" and "Nine-Tails" on the notice board at the village entrance. His legs went weak for a moment. Not from fear. He had recognized this world.

From that day on, he waited—for a system, for a golden finger, for some reason not to feel that coming here had been a waste. Six years. He had missed the Nine-Tails' attack on the village, missed the Fourth Hokage's sacrifice, and missed the Uchiha clan massacre. By the time he arrived, Konoha had already begun rebuilding.

He ran laps until he vomited, got thrown to the ground again and again in taijutsu class, and could not erase the sight of red chakra rising from Naruto from his eyes. He had been right beside Sasuke when Sasuke's Sharingan was on the verge of awakening.

Where was his stuff?

There was none. Forget it. He would not hope for it anymore.

"Ringo—are you up—if it gets cold, there won't be any left—"

Grandma's voice was like a cracked gong, loud enough to be heard through two walls. Ringo wiped his hands on his pants, grabbed half a piece of bread from the table, stuffed it into his mouth, and ran outside. At the door, he turned back, grabbed a boiled egg, and shoved it into his pocket. The egg was cold and hard as a rock in his hand. Better than going hungry.

April. The air smelled of damp earth and grass. The ginkgo trees had just sprouted tender leaves, rustling softly in the wind. Wild grass had grown to his ankles, soft and yielding beneath his feet.

People were already training at the training ground—shuriken struck wooden posts, thud, thud, one every second. Someone about his age was running laps. After the fifth lap, he collapsed at the edge and vomited, wiped his mouth, then kept running.

Ringo went around him.

A ponytailed Chunin was teaching several younger children. "Don't tense your shoulders! Use your wrist, your wrist—" As he spoke, he grabbed the smallest child's hand.

Ringo looked away without slowing down. Whenever someone corrected him hand by hand, the back of his neck would burn. Not from gratitude. It was the heat of being watched.

That child whose hand was being held did not know it himself—two years from now, he would forget this morning too. Being taught hand by hand was no big deal. But for Ringo, it was different.

The classroom buzzed with noise. More than half the students had arrived. Some passed notes in the back row, some made plans to eat ramen after school, and some bragged about the new ninjutsu they had practiced yesterday. No one looked his way. No one ever looked his way.

Second-to-last row by the window. This seat would not be called on first, and he could see the trees outside. In the first two rows, Naruto Uzumaki was sprawled over his desk asleep, drool pooling on its surface.

In the middle of the front row, Sasuke Uchiha sat straight and motionless, surrounded by three or five chattering people. Most of them were girls.

The leaves flipped back and forth in the wind. Their undersides were a shade lighter than their fronts, turning the whole canopy gray-green whenever they flipped over.

There was nothing in his head. He was spacing out. He could not even remember what he had been thinking about just now.

Iruka came in and clapped his hands. The left side of the classroom quieted first, then the right, trailing by half a second.

He wrote on the blackboard in chalk: Taijutsu Sparring. They had only practiced fundamentals before; today was their first real fight.

"Pairs, according to the list."

He heard his name. His opponent—Oyama. Half a head taller, shoulders two fingers broader. Oyama turned around and grinned at him.

Ringo recognized that kind of grin. The grin people gave when you had no cards in your hand.

A fist came smashing toward his face. Ringo tilted his head aside and avoided it, the wind from the punch grazing his ear with a hot sting. He retreated two steps, stepped on a seam in the floorboards, and stumbled. Oyama's knee followed, brushing his ribs. Even through his T-shirt, it hurt dully.

He could not avoid the third blow.

Oyama drove an elbow into his chest. Ringo staggered back three steps, tripped over his own feet, and landed on his backside. Sourness rose in his mouth when his back hit the floor. Dust flew up and caught in his throat.

"Ringo versus Oyama—Oyama wins."

Iruka wrote something on the board. He glanced at Ringo once more. Just once. Ringo could not tell whether he was recording his grade or something else.

He climbed up and dusted off his pants. His chest felt tight, and his ribs pulled painfully every time he breathed. He walked back to his seat and sat down. The sun had risen higher, and the light on the desktop was hot. He placed his hand in the patch of sunlight. It was warm. His mouth still tasted of dirt.

After class, he was the last one to leave the classroom. The corridor was empty, and his footsteps echoed, soft and weak against the floor. There was not much strength left in his legs.

He stopped at the edge of the training ground.

A Chunin was practicing shuriken. He had his hair in a bun, and from behind, his neck looked thin. Three shuriken were wedged between his fingers. With a flick of his wrist—thud thud thud—they nailed themselves into the target's center in a triangle. Then three more, exactly the same. He practiced for over ten minutes before stopping, wiping off sweat, bending down to gather the practice shuriken from the ground, stuffing them into his ninja tool pouch, and leaving.

The training ground was empty. The wind rustled through the leaves. Somewhere far away, a child was shouting, but he could not make out the words.

He was about to leave.

Something rang in his mind.

Ding.

He did not hear it with his ears. It buzzed inside his head. A muffled sound, not loud, but precise. Like someone had flicked the back of his ear.

Words appeared before his eyes. Translucent, floating in the very center of his vision.

[Detected a white card dropped within one hundred meters—pick it up?]

Ringo stopped breathing.

His lungs felt as though they had been squeezed shut, worse than when Oyama's elbow had struck him. He blinked. The words remained. He blinked again. Still there. Their glow even brightened a little. His heart began pounding. Boom boom boom, pounding so hard his eardrums hurt.

Nine years.

He had run laps until he vomited, been beaten to the floor in taijutsu class, watched Naruto and Sasuke from the sidelines—he had endured it all. He had swallowed the words "system" and "golden finger" back down more times than he could count. By the end, he barely even let himself think about them.

He could not swallow them anymore.

Two boxes appeared beneath the words. [Yes] [No].

Ringo stared at the one on the left.

His finger hovered in midair, three centimeters from the panel. It trembled. Not from fear.

The wind rustled twice behind the trees. A crow cawed once, then fell silent.

He poked it.