Reborn in the Womb, and My Dad Is Fugaku!

#Dear readers, this book will start off at a fairly slow pace, so if it isn't to your liking, please go easy on me!#

#Doge face for protection#

#Doge face, please spare me!#

Who am I? Where am I? What am I supposed to do?

His consciousness had only just stirred when those three deadly philosophical questions lined up and exploded in his head.

His eyes felt glued shut. The temperature around him was just right, though, and something soft enveloped his whole body, as if he had been stuffed inside a giant, temperature-controlled marshmallow.

He tried to raise a hand to rub his eyelids, but his arms felt heavy as lead. After all that effort, his fingers barely gave a halfhearted twitch.

He tried to recall as much as possible of what had happened before he had "blacked out," but the memories were a little hazy.

Wasn't I holed up in my rented room, watching Naruto all night? How did I end up here in the blink of an eye?

Lin Yuan desperately tried to drag his earlier memories back.

The battered sofa in his little room, the mountain of takeout containers, and then the crucial scene playing on the screen during his second watch of Naruto.

Oh, right. I was rewatching it last night.

The more he thought, the clearer it became, the images flipping back one by one. I'd just reached the Uchiha Clan Massacre. I was so pissed I kept slapping the table and cursing Konoha...

Then what? Then I think my finger accidentally touched something... it felt a little tingly?

The images cut off after that.

He couldn't remember anything. It was as though someone had hit pause on his brain, leaving a whole stretch in the middle completely blank.

As he muttered inwardly, a thought suddenly flashed through his mind. Holy shit, did I get electrocuted?

The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. That dump he rented barely had any outlets. To use everything comfortably, he had to daisy-chain power strips himself.

Seriously? I managed to electrocute myself to death watching anime? That's way too embarrassing!

The more he thought about it, the more unfair it felt. The voice in his head had already given up and started scripting the scene:

The judge of the underworld would bang his gavel and ask me, "Your allotted lifespan isn't over. How did you get down here?"

I'd stand below him, rubbing my hands and hemming and hawing forever, before finally squeezing out, "Your Honor, I stayed up all night watching Naruto, got too worked up slapping the table, and stuck my finger in a power strip."

Just imagining it makes me cringe. What a disgrace to humanity-no, to ghosts.

The scene in his head left him so exasperated he almost laughed. His death just felt pathetic.

At least real heroes get hit by a truck. Me? I died at the hands of the power strip in my own rented room.

With a death like mine, probably only Kazuma from KonoSuba had it a little worse.

But then he reconsidered, and his expression slowly sobered.

Wait... isn't electrocution supposed to make your whole body jerk and stiffen, and then you smell something barbecuing?

He tried to recall the electrocutions he had seen on TV. Didn't they all scream, collapse, and twitch on the ground?

But the last thing he had felt before blacking out was a tingle in his finger, and then... there was no "then."

No twitching, no pain, no smoke. The screen had simply gone black without a sound.

If I'm dead, how can I still feel my body?

As he said that, he instinctively gave his fingers another almost mocking wiggle.

Then...

Could I have passed out from an electric shock and then been tied up by someone?

The thought startled even him.

Kidnapped?

He was a broke programmer who survived on instant noodles at the end of the month. The most valuable thing he owned was a secondhand laptop he had used for four years, with two keys missing. Who would bother kidnapping him?

No... that doesn't make sense either. Even if I were tied up, I should at least feel ropes digging into me, a rag stuffed in my mouth, or a black blindfold over my eyes, right? All I feel is softness and warmth. It's as comfortable as taking a bath. What kidnapper is thoughtful enough to provide bedding?

The more he thought, the more contradictory it became, and the more ridiculous it sounded.

He tried one explanation after another. None held up, and he shot every last one down himself.

Just then-

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

A series of muffled, rhythmic sounds came from "above."

Lin Yuan instinctively stopped every chaotic thought in his head and focused all his attention on listening.

Thump... thump... thump...

The sound had nothing to do with any movement he made.

He held his "breath" and listened for a while. The longer he listened, the stranger it seemed.

That sound... why does it sound more and more like a heartbeat?

The thought stunned him for a moment, but his ears kept picking up that rhythm beyond his control.

That sound and rhythm are just like what I heard when I rested my head on my girlfriend's boobs!

Only after saying it did he remember-

Oh! Wait, I've been single all twenty-six years of my life. What girlfriend?

The only time he had listened to someone's heartbeat against their chest was during a college medical checkup, when an elderly doctor had pressed him against her chest for a few seconds.

Ostensibly, it was to let him experience the difference between an elderly person's heart rate and a young person's.

In reality, Lin Yuan had always felt that the doctor was trying to cop a feel. He was a young man in his prime, after all.

But that wasn't important.

What mattered was that this was definitely a heartbeat, and it belonged to someone else.

That thumping sounded as though someone was pressed right up against the side above his head, their heart beating steadily.

Wait... my heart isn't on top of my head.

He instinctively tried to raise a hand to touch his chest, but his arm lay there uselessly as usual, too lazy to move at all.

...Hold on.

His mind buzzed, and a possibility instinctively occurred to him-

...Am I inside someone's belly right now?

He swallowed a nonexistent mouthful of saliva. His heart hung suspended, unable to rise or fall, and panic truly gripped him.

Oh my god-I've been reborn inside someone's belly?! What the hell!!

He howled inside his head, his emotions pouring out like water through an opened floodgate.

Absurdity, terror, and a trace of something he couldn't quite describe-what even was all this?!

As his mind dissolved into chaos, his body went out of control too.

Whether his excitement had triggered his nerves or it was simply an instinctive reaction like a knee jerk, his little leg suddenly kicked outward.

"Ow!"

A clear female voice came through from outside, carrying a startled little cry.

Lin Yuan froze instantly.

His little leg remained extended from the kick. Every chaotic thought in his head hit pause, leaving only one sentence looping over and over:

...Did I just... did I just kick my mom?

What kind of situation is this... His head rang.

But immediately afterward, another voice reached him.

It was a deep male voice. His tone suddenly tightened and his words came faster, carrying unmistakable nervousness. "What's wrong?"

Lin Yuan instinctively pricked up his ears-and froze.

...Huh? Wait.

He had been too busy panicking to listen closely.

Only now did he realize that the string of syllables from the man's voice sounded somewhat familiar.

What did he just say? Why does that sound like Japanese?

Was I reborn in Japan?

Lin Yuan couldn't help thinking it over.

There still aren't enough clues. I'll listen some more.

With that thought, he strained his ears, fixing all his attention on that thin layer of "wall."

The conversation outside continued.

The woman seemed to have recovered from that "ow." There was a smile in her voice as she said a few things in fits and starts.

The man responded, his tone considerably more relaxed than before.

Lin Yuan desperately tried to cram those unfamiliar syllables into his ears.

He still couldn't understand whole strings of sentences, but his ears had long since grown familiar with the little words that kept appearing in them from all the anime and shows he had watched in his previous life.

Ask him to translate a complete Japanese sentence and he couldn't do it, but he could still understand scattered keywords when they hit his ears.

"Mikoto."

Mikoto.

Mikoto... he called her Mikoto.

So my mother in this life is named Mikoto!

That thought had only just surfaced in Lin Yuan's mind, and before he could listen further, the next phrase drifted in from outside.

"Uchiha."

Lin Yuan's mind buzzed.

...Uchiha?

Those three syllables were all too familiar.

Across the thousand-plus episodes of Naruto he had watched in his previous life, that surname had appeared more often than his own name.

Openings, endings, dialogue, on-screen comments, fan works, forums... those three syllables, "Uchiha," were branded into his brain. He could trace their shape with his eyes closed.

Did she just say... Uchiha?

Lin Yuan felt as though a hand had clenched around his heart. That name sprang uncontrollably into his mind, carrying every image from his previous life, every on-screen comment, every late night he had spent cursing over this clan-

Mikoto... Uchiha Mikoto?

His breathing, if he still had any, had become completely erratic.

No way. That Uchiha Mikoto? Uchiha Mikoto from Naruto?

He desperately tried to tell himself that it was just a coincidence. So what if a pregnant woman was named Mikoto?

So what if her husband called her by name? So what if they mentioned "Uchiha"?

But when those three fragments came together, the alarms in his head were already deafening.

If she really is Uchiha Mikoto... then her husband...

Lin Yuan silently dredged that name from the depths of his memory, as though hauling a heavy stone from a deep pool:

...Uchiha Fugaku.

He suddenly went quiet. Every absurd, bizarre conjecture that even he could hardly believe now seemed hammered solid, fitting together without a gap.

...Did I really transmigrate into Naruto? And my dad is Fugaku?