Morning light spilled into the small Tang household, slipping across the wooden floor and warming Tang San's cheeks. He blinked slowly, adjusting to the gentle brightness. It felt like any other morning, yet something inside him hummed with the faintest tension—like a bowstring drawn but not released.
He sat up quietly.
Across the room, Tenten was attempting to tie her sandals, tongue sticking out in fierce concentration. Her fingers twisted the straps into a knot that had no business existing, and she groaned in frustration.
"San," she said, glancing at him with narrowed eyes, "why are sandals so hard?"
He didn't know.
But he crawled over anyway.
She watched as he untangled the disastrous knot and re-wrapped the straps in careful loops. His fingers moved more precisely than he realized. He didn't think—he simply acted, following some natural sense of pattern and balance.
Tenten blinked at him.
"…How did you do that?"
A beat.
"Wait—can you do mine every morning?!"
He offered the smallest shake of his head.
She pouted dramatically, flopping backward like she'd suffered a mortal blow.
"Ughhh! You're no fun."
Despite the theatrics, she grabbed his hand as they went outside, tugging him toward the yard.
⸻
The sun was already rising fully, casting long, soft shadows across the compound. Chickens clucked lazily near the fence. The faint metallic ringing of his father's hammer echoed from the workshop. His mother swept the walkway, pausing to smile at them.
Tenten immediately found a stick and began swinging it around like a kunai, almost hitting a tree, then the ground, then herself.
"Look! I'm practicing!" she announced proudly, even as the stick whistled dangerously close to her ear.
Tang San stepped back instinctively.
"Too close," he murmured, though he wasn't sure where the warning came from.
She huffed.
"I wasn't gonna hit myself!"
A second later, she nearly did.
He caught the stick before it struck her.
Her eyes widened.
"…Okay maybe I was."
She didn't ask how he had moved so quickly. Children rarely questioned things that benefited them.
⸻
The day continued in its simple rhythm.
Breakfast.
Tenten chattering nonstop.
Their father's calm instructions from the workshop.
Their mother's warm fussing.
Everything seemed normal.
Except Tang San.
Every movement felt just slightly… sharper.
Every thought, a bit more focused.
Every sound, clearer than before.
When he held the wooden throwing star Tenten made him, a faint tremor of something passed through his fingers. It was nothing like energy—he didn't sense anything supernatural. But the shape, crude as it was, awakened a familiarity he couldn't explain.
He traced the edges with care, his mind drifting to images he didn't understand:
A weapon flying through the air.
Precise angles.
Trajectories.
Pressure points.
Memories too faint to claim, too scattered to grasp.
He pressed the thought away.
⸻
Later, while Tenten napped after exhausting herself with pretend battles, Tang San wandered toward the workshop. He stood in the doorway, not stepping inside, watching his father strike metal with steady, practiced rhythm.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
Each strike sent vibrations through the air—and through Tang San's chest. He didn't know why, but the sound felt comforting. Familiar. Like something buried deep inside him recognized the pattern.
He watched the angle of each strike, the way his father controlled his breathing, the moment metal softened under precise force.
His fingers twitched unconsciously, echoing the movement.
His father noticed and chuckled.
"You'll get your turn when you're older."
Tang San nodded, but inside something subtle shifted.
It felt right.
Like his hands already knew this.
Somewhere in the fog of his mind, beneath the quiet stillness of forgotten years, a memory tried to surface:
A rough, warm voice guiding his grip.
Large hands correcting the angle of a hammer.
The scent of smoke and molten metal.
A man's shadow, tall and unyielding, teaching him with patient strength.
He didn't know the name.
He didn't understand why the warmth in his chest tightened painfully.
The memory dissolved before he could grasp it.
But the familiarity remained.
⸻
That evening, as the family ate together, Tenten rambled about her day.
"And then I swung the stick, and I almost hit a chicken! Mother said if I scare them again we won't have eggs tomorrow, so I had to practice quietly, but I didn't scare them after that, except maybe once, and—"
Her mother placed a gentle finger on her lips.
"Tenten. Breathe."
"Oh."
She inhaled deeply, then exhaled.
"Okay! So then—"
Her father laughed softly.
"Tenten, let your brother speak sometimes."
She blinked at Tang San.
"You want to talk?"
He shook his head.
She shrugged.
"Okay!"
And off she went, filling the dinner table with brave tales and dramatic reenactments using spoon and chopsticks.
Tang San listened quietly.
His mind wandered—not out of boredom, but because something inside him kept drifting toward the strange flicker from the night before. A thread pulling at him from somewhere he couldn't name.
He wasn't frightened.
Just… curious.
⸻
When night fell and the house dimmed again, Tang San lay awake longer than usual.
The pulse he felt before didn't return—not fully.
But a faint whisper lingered, barely present, like a word spoken from behind a door he couldn't yet open.
He closed his eyes.
Images drifted through his thoughts—soft and shapeless, like fog:
A furnace glowing red.
A hammer descending.
A gentle voice calling a name he had once known by heart.
He reached for the memory.
It drifted away.
Sleep finally pulled him under.
⸻
Morning would come, ordinary and peaceful.
But with each passing day, the thread inside him grew just a little stronger—
quiet, patient, waiting.
A soul older than his body stirring gently beneath the surface.
The awakening had begun.