I was supposed to be gone ten minutes. Fifteen, max. Long enough to grab rice and miso from the shop down the street. It was supposed to be a dumb errand. Simple. Mindless.
But when I came back…
The door was open.
And the floor was red.
I didn't move at first. Just stood there. Frozen. My heart was hammering in my chest.
Blood. I saw it first. I didn't want to look further, but I had to.
And then I saw them.
Mom and Dad. Lifeless. They looked like they were just sleeping—if it weren't for the bloodstains and the unnatural angle of their bodies.
Their throats. Slit. Deep, clean cuts, the blood still fresh, staining their clothes, dripping slowly in a sickening rhythm. I didn't want to get closer, but I had to.
It didn't make sense. Why them? Why this? We were just… ordinary people. We weren't ninja. No clans. No special bloodlines. Just civilians, trying to live quietly in this damned world.
The Second Shinobi World War. I'd pieced it together. The names, the faces. I knew the timeline. Hanzo was still in power.
I'd thought they'd be safe. My parents. They were just civilians, no clans, no magic bloodlines. No reason for anyone to target them. And yet, here they were. Gone.
And just like that, my illusion shattered. The "isekai protagonist" fantasy I'd clung to? Gone, ripped out of my chest like a poorly written plot twist.
No gods. No cheats. Just blood and rain and the echoing silence of a house that stopped being a home.
When I first woke up in this world, I was confused—but also kind of thrilled? Like, yeah, getting hit by a truck wasn't ideal, but waking up in a ninja world? That was peak genre content. I expected a clan. Maybe a mentor. Hell, I'd have settled for being a Nara or even a cursed seal.
Instead, I got poverty, hand-me-downs, and a pair of sweet, regular-ass parents who made dumplings and sewed buttons back onto my shirt, and I was born on the land of rain, one of the most depressing countries in the world.
They were good people.
Better than I deserved.
And they didn't deserve to die like that. Throats slit. House looted. Left like trash on the floor while the rice they saved up for got stolen by some war-starved shinobi who probably didn't even look them in the eye.
And me? I wasn't even there.
They sent me out to get groceries.
I bitched about it. I actually whined about it. Said I wanted to stay home and draw in my notebook—was halfway through designing a water-powered knife launcher, which in hindsight was... kinda dumb.
They laughed. Ruffled my hair. Said fresh air would do me good.
And now they were dead.
And me?
I didn't cry right away.
Not because I was brave. Because I was numb.
And the rain kept falling.
—
I didn't know what to do next. My brain was running on autopilot, trying to process what had just happened, but nothing made sense. Not a damn thing.
Twelve years old. Yeah, technically, that's how old I was. But mentally? I was somewhere in my twenties. At least, that's what it felt like. I had the mind of an adult, full of confusing, contradictory thoughts.
The kind of thoughts that made me look at my dead parents and feel absolutely nothing at first. It wasn't because I didn't love them. I did. But there was a distance. A barrier. Like the whole situation was happening to someone else, not me.
I hadn't realized I was holding my breath until it started to burn. I took a shaky step forward. One step, then another. Each one harder than the last.
I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to feel.
I didn't know how to be.
This wasn't supposed to be my life. I had no jutsu. No ninja bloodline. Just a regular kid, thrown into the middle of a war I couldn't control.
I couldn't just leave them there. I couldn't let them rot like that, not after everything they'd done for me. No matter how much my chest tightened and my hands shook, I had to bury them.
The rain didn't let up. It kept coming, cold and steady, soaking through my clothes, my hair, until my bones felt frozen. But I didn't care.
I grabbed the rusty shovel from the corner of the yard, my small hands gripping it tight, and I dragged it to the tree out back—the one my parents had always said they wanted to be buried under, quiet and peaceful.
My arms burned, my body felt like it was made of lead, but I kept going. I had to.
Once the hole was ready, I dragged their bodies one by one, carefully placing them in the grave. I didn't want to look at them too long. I didn't want to remember how they'd been, how they'd smiled at me just a few hours ago. But I couldn't look away.
When the hole was filled, I stood there for a moment, staring at the mound of earth. It didn't feel like enough. It never would. But it was done.
It wasn't perfect. The grave was messy, uneven. But it was all I had. All I could give them.
I wiped the rain from my face, trying to push the tears back. The last thing I wanted was to break down. I had to keep moving. This was just the beginning.
The Land of Rain wasn't kind. It didn't care about the weak. It was a place where survival was the only rule, and I wasn't about to let it swallow me whole. I wasn't going to let my parents' death be in vain.
With one last glance at the grave, I turned and walked away, the rain still falling. The war hadn't stopped. It had just begun. And I would survive it, one way or another.