Once upon a time, there was a child named Uzumaki Naruto, and he was a child that no one loved.
He remembered the days of sitting alone on the old, rusting swing set, his gaze wistfully fixed on the glowing smiles of the other children. Every day, the single swing in the academy yard was a hotly contested prize. Yet, on this day, with all the other children preoccupied with some lively school event, young Naruto had rushed over and claimed the empty seat—a seat no one else seemed to want when their parents were around.
Growing up, this had become his only consolation prize. It was how he dealt with the persistent, hollow ache in his heart, a void that gnawed at him most fiercely on Parent-Teacher Day. In fact, any day that invited parents to the academy was a refined form of torture. It reached a point where even the children who weren't smiling became objects of his burning envy.
Maybe they were crying. Maybe they were frowning. But those children, even in their sadness, were experiencing powerful, real emotions while surrounded by people who loved them. They had someone to lean on.
They were *relevant*.
And there he was, on the one swing, all alone. Every parent shepherded their child away from him as if he were carrying a contagious disease. Every child whispered with their friends, their small hands covering their mouths as they pointed and giggled in his direction. There he sat on the swing he could only use when no one else wanted it, a stark reminder that he was only ever allowed the scraps and leftovers of society.
The hole in his heart grew a little bigger every day. He wasn't sure what it would take to finally fill it up, to sew it closed, or to tear it out completely.
But he knew one thing: everyone loved and respected the Hokage. Everyone surrounded the Hokage with appreciation and admiration. The Hokage was the most relevant person in the village.
So that day, sitting alone on that swing, tears held back by sheer willpower, he made two very important decisions. One, he swore an unbreakable vow to himself that he would become the Hokage. And second, in his darkest hour of desperation, he made a deal with a voice that was only in his head, a voice that tempted him with the promise of guaranteed success.
The deal was simple: after becoming Hokage and finally being acknowledged by everyone, Naruto would give his everything to that voice—his body, his soul, and everything that belonged to him. Naruto was so desperate, bullied, and profoundly depressed at that time that he ACCEPTED this deal, a Faustian pact, and blindly followed the advice of that hidden, spectral entity.
Looking back, it seemed impossible for him to believe that someone like him could even become Hokage, and he accepted the voice's deal because only it seemed to be on his side when the entire world was against him.
That voice made him train even when he didn't want to, pestering him relentlessly with sharp, cutting words that fueled his shame and determination. Naruto couldn't even complain to anyone about the voice. The pact contained a chilling clause that he could not share the existence of the voice with anyone. He tried to tell the Third Hokage, Jiji, about it, but his mouth would clamp shut, his throat constricted by an invisible force whenever the words reached his tongue. He was utterly alone in his struggle. Eventually, Naruto started seeing the difference the voice made. He became stronger, smarter, and things started going his way, confirming the dark entity's claim to power.
-----
Years later, Naruto did accomplish his lifelong dream and he became the Hokage following the Fourth Great Ninja War. He was, by many accounts, the strongest Hokage the village had ever known.
"It is time, Naruto."
Suddenly, the cold, emotionless voice—his silent partner for years—echoed in his mind again after a year of relative silence in the Hokage's office.
"Yes, it seems to be," Naruto whispered, a flicker of a smile touching his lips. "Thank you for everything."
Naruto knew this was the moment the debt was being called in, his time to leave this world and surrender his shell, yet he felt a profound sense of peace. He had achieved his dream of becoming the Hokage; he had gained the love and acknowledgement he craved his entire life. The additional year he'd been granted after taking the hat—a year of basking in the hard-won respect of his village—was, he assumed, a final, unexpected benevolence from 'the voice.' It could have called in the deal the moment his dream was realized, but it had waited, allowing him this last, contented gasp of a life well-lived.
Naruto was sitting quietly at his desk when he suddenly collapsed, his head hitting the smooth mahogany surface. For a few terrifying seconds, the world faded to nothing, a curtain drawn on his consciousness. When his vision snapped back, something fundamental about him had changed. Looking at his eyes, one could see a new, calculating consciousness had settled into his body, because it *had*.
"Hahahaha. Finally. I am back to the world of the living."
Naruto—no, *it*—started laughing loudly, a sound of triumphant, unrestrained euphoria, as if having found the most complex and funny joke that only this new entity understood. It was no longer Uzumaki Naruto. It was the Transmigrator, the Voice itself. He had been a disembodied soul, transmigrated into the body of the newborn Naruto the moment his parents died during the Kyuubi attack.
He didn't really remember the name of his previous self, but he knew he had been a single, 21-year-old software engineer who was doing reasonably well for himself. He noticed, as soon as he transmigrated, that he couldn't remember the names of anyone from that life, not even his own. Yet, the experiences, the core memories, remained. He remembered graduating from college early through sheer, exhausting hard work and the blinding look of pride on his father's face that day. He remembered crying at that same father's funeral. He had no one else; his mother had run away with some worthless guy when he was young, an act that bred a resentment that perhaps planted the seeds of misogyny deep within him. The thought of moving on from that life, leaving it all behind, brought a surprising sense of relief at the time. He had always fantasized about the Isekai genre, consuming every piece of media about it before he died.
Maybe he died from sheer exhaustion after binge-watching a show for two days straight, fueled by twenty cans of Red Bull and nothing else. Maybe some Random Omnipotent Being decided he deserved another chance at life in a world of his fantasies. Or maybe he was overthinking it, and this was all just one big, cosmic coincidence. He decided to leave that problem for the future 'him' to worry about—the one who was no longer just a voice.
He also possessed an ability called "The Contract."
This ability let him forge a pact, a binding, spiritual contract where he had to give *something* to the other party and, in return, he could receive anything that the other party considered of *equal value* in that specific moment. The power was utterly overpowered in its execution. For example, he could ask a man for 100 kilos of gold or abstract things like 10 years of his life in exchange for a single cup of water, if that man was dying of thirst in a desert with no hope for survival. At that moment of absolute despair, that man would take the deal because a cup of water would be more precious to him than anything else in the universe. The value was subjective and immediate.
The very moment he figured out he could fully leave the mind-space of Naruto if he made a deal with the boy, he seized the opportunity. He had made a straightforward pact: he helps Naruto succeed in exchange for full and permanent use of his body. At that time, consumed by the simple elegance of his victory, he felt immensely proud of his wit. However, the crushing reality of his mistake eventually dawned on him. His ability only let him sustain *one* active contract at a time, and while it was going on, he could not make another. The terms of the deal—Naruto becoming Hokage—made the boy's mind his prison for well over two decades. He was forced to wait for so long, a silent, omniscient prisoner in a child's head, but atlast.
"I am here"