"No way, no way, no way?"
Lin Yuan shook his head frantically in his mind. Plenty of people share names. There's more than one Japanese person with the surname Uchiha, and women named Mikoto are everywhere. Maybe she's just an ordinary pregnant woman whose husband happens to be named Uchiha?
Right, that has to be it. I'm just scaring myself here.
He desperately tried to reassure himself, but his ears involuntarily pricked up even higher, carefully catching the sounds from outside.
Then those words came crashing down on him, one after another.
"Konoha."
"Hokage."
Lin Yuan froze completely.
He knew those two words far too well. So well that he needed neither translation nor thought before images automatically sprang into his head-the towering Konoha Gate, those enormous faces on Hokage Rock, the streets crisscrossing the village...
Konoha... Hokage...
Th-this... this is way too much of a coincidence, isn't it?
Curled up in that warm cocoon, he suddenly felt like an outsider who had been secretly stuffed into an old anime. Every scene was familiar, every name rang a bell, yet he simply couldn't believe he had actually entered it.
God... you're kidding me, right?
Just because I like the Naruto anime doesn't mean I want to live here!
He howled inwardly, so pent up that he felt ready to erupt from the top of his head.
Besides, fine, you brought me here, but couldn't you at least have picked a decent family?
What was wrong with the Senju? Or the Uzumaki? Even the Hyuga would've done! But you just had to stick me with the Uchiha-who doesn't know this whole family is going to get wiped out before long?!
The more he ranted, the more agitated he became, and those images involuntarily came spilling through his mind-
Night, flashing blades, people lying in pools of blood, the look in Sasuke's eyes as he lay on the ground staring at his parents' bodies...
The massacre...
His heart suddenly clenched. Those images stabbed into him like needles, chilling him all over. Right... the massacre! Who knows what year it is right now?!
The thought struck like a bucket of ice water poured over his head, washing away all his complaints.
He had absolutely no idea where he was on the timeline.
Was it the year Uchiha Itachi had just been born? Had Sasuke only just been conceived? Or... was that night already almost here?
What if the massacre is just around the corner? Wouldn't that mean I'll be done for along with everyone else not long after I'm born?!
The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became, his entire "body" curling tighter. No, no, no... I have to figure out what year it is... but how am I supposed to do that?!
Huddled in the darkness, he kept straining his ears toward the outside, trying to squeeze more information out of those exchanges mentioning Konoha and the Hokage.
But the voices outside seemed to have moved on to another topic. Their tones grew relaxed and languid, like a married couple chatting about everyday odds and ends, with no key dates he could pick out.
...Calm down, calm down, calm down. I only just became conscious. Birth is still a long way off.
No, no, no! A long way off, my ass!
Wait a second. My dad is Fugaku?
Lin Yuan was suddenly caught by that thought. If my dad is Fugaku, then... doesn't that make me his son?
He paused, turning that sentence over in his mind several times. The more he did, the more a sense of absurdity shot straight to the top of his head.
Then who am I? I can't be anyone else-I'm Uchiha Fugaku's son, so I'm...
Uchiha Itachi?
He shuddered himself as he said the name.
No, no, no. That shouldn't be possible, right? Keep listening. Maybe I got something wrong.
Lin Yuan hurriedly pushed the thought down and pressed his ears back against that "wall."
The conversation outside continued. They seemed to have finished discussing those trivial matters, and the male voice suddenly said something else, his tone carrying a hint of earnest inquiry.
The female voice paused, then answered softly.
Then-a complete sentence drifted in with perfect clarity.
It was spoken neither quickly nor slowly, as though deliberately discussing something important.
Lin Yuan couldn't understand all of it, but he still caught a few terms:
"Ue no ko," "onii-chan," "kono ko."
The older child, big brother, this child.
The thought Lin Yuan had just suppressed rose up again.
...The older child? Big brother? Then this "child" they're talking about...
Before he could think any further, the female voice followed with a few more sentences, her tone as gentle as water.
One term kept recurring in her words: "futarime."
The second time. The second one.
The second one... does that mean this child is the second?
In a daze, Lin Yuan pieced together all the fragments he had heard:
There was already an older child, a big brother, and the one in her belly now was the second.
And she kept mentioning the second one. The natural affection in her tone clearly meant that the child she was carrying was their family's second child.
...Then I'm the second child.
He silently repeated it in his mind, and his thoughts took flight again.
The older one is a boy... so my big brother is Uchiha Itachi. I'm the second one, still in her belly... which makes me...
Lin Yuan fell quiet for a long while.
...Sasuke Uchiha.
Lin Yuan couldn't help crying out inwardly, I'm... Uchiha Sasuke?
I'm Sasuke now. I have an older brother named Uchiha Itachi, my dad is Fugaku, and my mom is Mikoto. The whole family lives in the Uchiha Clan Compound in Konoha, waiting to be slaughtered by one of our own some night a few years from now...
He ran that summary through his mind and felt as though he were reading out a sentence of judgment.
...Who wrote this script? Can I cancel my subscription?
He silently curled up a little tighter in the darkness. Unbidden, the face Sasuke had worn in the original story, cold from childhood onward, rose in his mind, along with those eyes that had never truly smiled again after the night of the massacre.
Now... I'm that kid?
Suddenly, even the warmth surrounding him no longer felt quite so comfortable.
But whatever happened, there was ultimately nothing he could do-a fetus who couldn't even lift a finger couldn't change anything, no matter how overwhelmed his mind became.
A heavy drowsiness that knew neither day nor night soon welled up, drowning his consciousness little by little until not a single thought remained.
For the stretch that followed, if it could still be called days, he drifted back and forth between wakefulness and sleep.
Sounds from outside reached him in fits and starts. Sometimes Mikoto was humming a tune;
sometimes Fugaku was speaking in his low voice, and occasionally he could hear another, more delicate voice-
That was probably Uchiha Itachi. His voice was small, his speech still babyish as he leaned close to Mikoto's belly and babbled, calling him "little brother."
Every time Lin Yuan heard that voice, his feelings became unbearably complicated.
The man who would one day slaughter his entire family in a single night was still just a little kid, lying against his mother's belly and calling him little brother in a childish voice.
This world really was absurd.
The days slipped by like that, one after another, and he gradually grew accustomed to that state in the womb, warm all over, with no need to breathe or exert himself.
The sounds outside became his only "entertainment."
At first, he still couldn't understand anything.
But people were strange, especially when immersed in a language environment with nothing to do all day but listen.
Slowly, he began to understand individual words, simple ones like "water," "food," and "sleep."
Later, he could even make out most of the short sentences strung together.
So this is fucking prenatal education, huh?
After clearly understanding his mother say, "The weather is lovely today," on one occasion, Lin Yuan couldn't help remarking inwardly:
Other people get Mozart for prenatal education. I get live broadcasts of everyday Uchiha conversations in Naruto. These educational resources count as top-tier too, right?
He hadn't deliberately tried to learn. He had absolutely no means to do so-he didn't even have a book to flip through, much less a kana chart.
But those sounds poured in day and night, like water seeping into a sponge, unknowingly soaking through that brain of his, which had been "cultivated" by more than a decade of anime.
The scattered bits of grammar and vocabulary he had memorized while watching anime in his previous life were like dormant seeds meeting water, awakening one by one in response to the real-life context outside.
Gradually, he could understand Mikoto and Fugaku discussing clan affairs, understand Mikoto coaxing Uchiha Itachi to eat, and understand that complex, restrained quality in Fugaku's tone whenever he occasionally mentioned "Lord Hokage."
With every additional sentence he understood, his understanding of this world grew a little clearer.
...All right, all right. I've graduated in Japanese.
One evening, if a fetus could even have a concept of evening.
Only after understanding an entire conversation between Fugaku and Mikoto and confirming that he could basically follow everyday exchanges did he silently award himself a certificate in his mind:
This certifies that I am an outstanding graduate of the Uchiha prenatal education class.
Then something else occurred to him. Wait... now that I can understand them, shouldn't the next step be learning to speak?
He tried moving his lips. That bit of soft, not-yet-fully-formed flesh merely quivered in the amniotic fluid, without producing so much as a bubble.
...Forget it. It's still too early.
Before you continue