Michael, immersed in a deep sleep, felt a throbbing pain in his abdomen, as if someone were trying to run him through with a dagger. No, it was more like hundreds of needles stabbing his liver.
Ugh… Dazed, he tried to roll over, open his eyes, and sit up; however, a terrible pain shot through his entire body.
Must have eaten something expired… I should roll over so I don't choke on vomit. Was it the fish?
It wasn't the first time he had suffered food poisoning, so he did his best to gather the strength to move. But he remained too confused; he couldn't muster even a shred of will. His thoughts were a chaos of stagnant currents.
He opened his mouth hoping to inhale some air, but felt a lump form in his throat. For the first time since waking, he managed to open his eyes.
Ripples danced across the ceiling of his room. His vision was blurry, and his eyes were watering.
The next thing he felt was bile rising in his throat. He barely managed to turn his head to avoid splashing himself with his own vomit.
The paralysis immobilizing him began to fade, little by little. The abdominal pain subsided just enough to allow him to gather some strength.
However, when he managed to stand up, the world around him started to spin. Unable to keep his balance, he collapsed back onto the bed.
Resigned to his incapacity, he sat there, waiting for his world to stabilize. The pale moonlight illuminated the room, but he felt a strange disorientation.
He looked at the old television set, so similar to his grandfather's, especially those knobs he used to play with, changing channels at random.
His gaze slid slowly to the right, where a wooden shelf held a rectangular radio with a retracted antenna.
Did I come to visit Grandpa?
Michael couldn't remember if he had traveled the day before, although that might explain the nausea and vertigo.
Next to the bed was a nightstand. Resting on it was a red clock with two bells on top. The long hand pointed to the six; the short one, somewhere between the three and the four.
He ran his finger over the surface and found it covered in dust. Strange. His grandfather lived with his aunt, and she was obsessively neat.
Why are my hands so small? Have they always been like this?
Observing them closely, he noticed they were smaller and paler than he remembered. The knuckles were swollen and reddish.
He stood up, but his legs were pure jelly; they wobbled, barely able to hold him.
He needed to hydrate. He felt dizzy, disoriented. The world was spinning, and all he wanted was to throw himself back into bed, but he forced himself to move toward the door.
He skirted around the vomit and reached the red door. Upon opening it, he found himself in a small hallway. There were two doors: the one straight ahead led to the kitchen, and the one to the right, the bathroom.
He entered the bathroom. Facing him was a window with opaque glass that blocked the view outside. To the left, a sink; on top of it, a cup holding a red toothbrush, bristled and full of dried toothpaste residue.
Before his eyes could reach the mirror, his body slumped over the sink. He turned on the tap and drank the water as if it were a divine gift.
He wiped his mouth with his arm. His world was beginning to stabilize. With palms resting on the sink, he slowly lifted his head toward the mirror.
The mirror reflected a blonde boy with blue eyes. For an instant, he felt it was his own reflection, but he knew it wasn't. What unsettled him most were the purple lips, the pale skin, and the bloodshot eyes.
"This must be a dream," he whispered. He tried to console himself, but everything was too vivid, too real.
How can a person end up like this? Did he choke in his sleep?
The boy's skin, previously so pale, began to regain color; his lips turned red again, and his eyes recovered their natural shine.
Startled by the sudden improvement, he stepped back, forgetting his legs were still weak.
He fell to the floor with a dull thud that left his butt sore. It took effort to get up again; when he finally succeeded, the reflection was still there.
Michael frowned as he inspected the foreign face. It was strangely familiar: the spiky blonde hair, blue eyes like the sea, the rounded features.
He felt like he had all the pieces of the puzzle but was unable to find the pattern connecting them.
Defeated, he decided to explore the apartment. He wanted to return to his bed and wake up in his own, but he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep.
To his misfortune, the whole place was terribly dirty. As a college student, he had seen all kinds of disasters in other people's apartments, but this one… was undoubtedly the worst.
It wasn't just the dust on the furniture or the vomit in the bedroom. The kitchen floor was sticky, a foul stench drifted from the refrigerator, there was a mountain of unwashed dishes in the sink, and the plants were dry, practically dead.
The bathroom was the only thing relatively clean, save for some soap scum stains.
But the bedroom was the worst—and not just because of the nauseating smell of vomit. The sheets were stained with sweat from repeated use, and the room was covered in piles of clothes thrown everywhere.
There was a door to the balcony, which was surprisingly clean in comparison; it only had an accumulation of dirt on the floor.
Under the bed, he found three boxes. He reached into one, but withdrew his hand instantly upon feeling a sharp object. He had a small cut on his finger, nothing serious.
With nothing to disinfect it with, he simply washed his hand and applied pressure to the wound.
He continued searching only in visible areas, learning from his mistake. Fortunately, he found a wallet. Inside was an identification card.
It was rectangular and rigid. It showed a photo of the boy, grinning from ear to ear, with bright eyes. To the right, written in what seemed to be Japanese, was personal information: numbers he assumed were an ID and a birth date.
But then, the characters ceased to be incomprehensible. They began to make sense in his mind. Fearing he might lose this unexpected gift, he read the name aloud:
"Naruto Hakaze."
The document, which he had been holding firmly a moment ago, slipped from his hands like liquid.
The face, the hair, the eyes, the apartment, and the name… everything he had seen but couldn't connect came together to form the border of a puzzle. However, he still couldn't complete it. He knew who Naruto was, but he had no idea where the surname "Hakaze" came from.
C-could I have transmigrated?
A shiver ran through his body from head to toe, followed by a string of profanities that, had any of his parents heard him, would have warranted washing his mouth out with bleach.
He was very aware of who Naruto Uzumaki was: son of the Fourth Hokage, Jinchūriki of the Kyūbi, the Child of Prophecy… but he also knew his father had made enemies in every village, that there was an organization of Kage-level ninjas hunting him, and that he didn't have the damn Talk-no-Jutsu.
But none of that mattered.
His biggest problem was something else: he was Naruto Hakaze.
He didn't know if that implied the same level of danger… or one even greater.
"There is no greater fear than the unknown," he thought, watching his hands tremble under the pale moonlight.