[You have been chosen]
I would have jumped in surprise as that message appeared in front of me, but… well, you know the drill. I stared at the square that contained the words for a minute or two, although, for all I know it could have been hours or days. It looked just like an open scroll would and had the words written in black.
After that analysis was done the darkness that had surrounded me for who knows how long started to change. Little by little it changed to a blinding white that ate everything else. Soon, there was only white.
And when the white disappeared, I woke up.
[Welcome]
"Wake up, Eiji!" I felt something hit my head and I instantly sat straight on reflex. What greeted me was the sight of a classroom with the teacher looking thoroughly pissed at me and the rest of the class snickering and giggling.
"Eh? Huh?" I said intelligently and everyone started laughing as the teacher's eye twitched. What on earth? I blinked.
"I'll let it slide because it's your first time. Just don't turn into a Naruto." I heard a shout of protest at that but the teacher turned around to continue the class. I didn't hear a word of what he said. I was still sitting there, stunned.
What the hell was happening? My hands balled into fists. I felt my fingers, all of them. My palms. I felt myself resting against the wood of the chair. My arms on the desk. I was seeing things. All this was a bit too much for my stimuli deprived person. How long had it been since I had merely breathed? My eyes widened.
I was breathing. And it wasn't any type of breathing. I was breathing well. It had been so, so long since I had been able to breath without difficulties. It was like the cancer… was gone. My thoughts seemed to freeze at that thought and it held the full focus of my mind for what seemed like hours, though, it couldn't be.
Still relishing in the fact that I could feel, see, smell, I thought about the situation. I was in a class. A class that I had never attended. I had never been to a classroom like this. And I was pretty sure I had never had a classmate named… Naruto…
'Oh, no. Oh, HELL NO!' And surely enough, as I turned to the side, I saw a short scrawny boy with tanned skin and spiky yellow-blond hair. I gulped. 'Oh… come the fuck on, couldn't it be something fun like Pokemon instead of freaking Naruto where everybody and their mother can kill people with three hand signs at the very least?' That's what a part of my mind complained about.
The rest of it was just trying to wrap itself around the situation. Of course, I had read reincarnation stories and the like. A quarter of the fanfictions were like that for crying out loud. It didn't make it any easier to process though. I mean, who in their right mind truly believed they would get reincarnated and in a… 'fictional'… story at that. What the actual fuck?
As my mind felt like shutting down it drifted off back to the class. It was being given by none other than Iruka, I realized. He seemed to be introducing subjects that would be seeing at a later date. It seemed like the kind of thing to do in the first day. At that my eyes darted around the class searching for the 'main cast'. Everyone was there. From I-totally-don't-brood-to-look-cool Sasuke to I'm-not-creepy-at-all Shino. They all seemed a bit different than canon. Was I in an earlier year than canon? Or was it just the start of canon's last year of the Academy? I distractedly wondered.
"Now class," Iruka started after finishing what felt like a first class of introductions. "We'll go outside for the physical training."
"Hell yeah!" Shouted the excited pair of Naruto and Kiba. I numbly walked with everyone else. Fortunately for me, nobody seemed to take notice that I didn't seem to know how to walk for a couple of seconds. It felt really strange to do so after so long. It was like that moment in which you take a pen after not writing all summer and suddenly you feel like you don't even know how to use it. I was disturbing to realize that I had forgotten how to walk. How long had it truly been…?
Soon enough we were standing in a large open area. It seemed to have a path that we would probably use to run, an open space that probably was used for spars or normal physical conditioning, a little further away, outside the running course, was what seemed like a place for target practice and then there was the monstrosity that was the obstacle course in the middle. It looked like something that would get people killed. Knowing the shinobi world. It was a possibility.
"We'll start with some laps around the training area." Iruka said and I took solace in the fact that I wasn't the only one to sigh in relief. Most of the civilian (or at least not main cast people) had done so. "Don't worry, you won't be doing the obstacle course until next year." There were more sighs at that and even some complains from Kiba. Meanwhile, I was just frowning in thought. So, it seemed that I was at least a year early, maybe more. I had never been good at reading people's ages. "What are you waiting for? Start running!"
And start we did. After a few awkward seconds, I had to do conscious effort to not laugh like a madman. It was exhilarating, the feeling of rush that came from running. After so long barely able to move and then the void… it felt so freeing. So, I ran. And then I continued running. Even when my legs felt like they were going to die I continued running. My lungs weren't stopping me. They were working to their full capacity, but they weren't stopping me, and that was even more sweet.
The moment I came back to my senses I noticed that the only ones that were running close to me were Naruto, Kiba and Sasuke, all of them ahead of me. I didn't have any delusions about being at their level though. The only way I could keep up with them was because I had been ignoring my body. Soon enough I fell behind and all the clan heirs and Sakura passed me by. I didn't mind. I was still better than the rest.
"Good job everyone. Especially you, Eiji." Iruka said looking at me. I looked at him strangely, that wasn't my name. Then I remembered that he had called me that before too. "I know you fell behind in the later part but you did pretty well at the start." He commented, probably misunderstanding my expression. I didn't reply.
"Maybe we can still make a shinobi out of you, loser." Kiba said mockingly. I continued my silence as Iruka chided Kiba. There was a simple reason for my silence.