They came the following morning.
Not an ordinary visit. I could feel the difference even before the front door was knocked — there had been a faint tension in the air of this house since morning, in the way Sarada brewed two extra cups of tea, in the way Boruto sat in the living room chair with his back perfectly straight, as though waiting for a mission briefing.
The knock came at exactly nine o'clock.
I sat in the corner of the living room with a sketchbook in my lap, pretending to be absorbed in scribbling something with a blue crayon. A strategic position — I could see the entire room without looking like I was watching.
Boruto opened the door.
And in walked two people who, even on the most ordinary days of my life as Kenji Matsuda, I had never imagined I would see with my own eyes from less than three meters away.
Naruto Uzumaki.
Sasuke Uchiha.
Naruto entered first with his signature smile — warm, open, the kind of smile that made everyone around him automatically feel a little lighter. His hair was still blond though a few white strands had appeared at his temples, and the Hokage robe he wore was slightly creased at the left sleeve, a sign he had put it on in a hurry.
Sasuke entered behind him with a completely different kind of movement. Slow, measured, spending not a single calorie of energy beyond what was necessary. His eyes — the same sharp black eyes as Sarada's — swept the entire room in one motion, cataloguing every detail before he chose his position near the wall.
The Kenji Matsuda inside me screamed silently in absolute hysteria.
I kept scribbling my blue crayon across the sketchbook.
"Now then, where's my grandson?" Naruto had already stepped fully inside, his eyes searching. When his gaze landed on me in the corner of the room, his smile widened. "Oh, there! Hey, Saruto!"
He walked over with the same energy he had always carried in the anime — nothing had changed about it, not after everything he had been through. Naruto Uzumaki was still, undeniably, Naruto Uzumaki.
He knelt in front of me until he was level with my eyes.
"Still remember Grandpa Naruto?"
I looked at him. That face up close — the whisker marks on his cheeks, the blue eyes that matched mine and Boruto's, the fine lines at the corners from decades of too much laughing and too much worrying.
"I remember," I said.
"Great!" He rubbed my head in exactly the same way as Boruto, apparently a deeply embedded family tradition. "You're growing fast. Last time Grandpa saw you, you were about this big—" he held up a small gap between his fingers, "—and now look at you."
Behind Naruto, I saw Sasuke finally move.
He didn't approach the way Naruto had. No kneeling, no immediate words. He stood at roughly two meters away and observed me in a way that was entirely unlike anyone else who had ever looked at me.
Not with ordinary eyes.
His Rinnegan and Sharingan were active simultaneously — purple with ring patterns on one side, red with tomoe on the other. A combination that had felt intimidating even in illustrations and animation. In person, from two meters away, it was something else entirely.
I looked back at him.
And for the first time since I had been born into this world, something inside me felt as though it was reacting to that observation. Not the Spirit Roh — not fire or ice stirring. Something deeper, more fundamental, as though my soul itself understood it was being examined and instinctively stood a little straighter.
Sasuke's brow furrowed, almost imperceptibly.
The adults spoke in the living room while I was moved to the backyard under the guise of "go play outside for a bit, Saruto."
A very transparent excuse. But I didn't argue.
I sat on the large stone beneath the tree and waited. From this position, the living room window was open and the wind carried fragments of the conversation toward me if I stayed still enough.
"...chakra is normal in quantity." Naruto's voice, more serious than the tone he had used with me. "But the quality is different. I could feel it even from a moment ago."
"Not any kekkei genkai I recognize." Sarada. "And I've gone through every reference I could reach last night."
"This doesn't come from the Uzumaki or Uchiha lines." Sasuke's voice, cold and direct. "This is something from outside both."
A brief silence.
"What do you mean, Dad?" Sarada asked carefully.
"The energy I read from Saruto—" Sasuke paused, and when he continued his voice carried the careful weight of someone choosing every word precisely, "—has layers that are inconsistent with the age of his body. There is something inside that child's soul that feels far older than five years."
A long silence.
"How much older?" Boruto asked, his voice very quiet.
"I can't measure it precisely. But the pattern of soul energy I read from Saruto—" another pause, "—reminds me of a pattern I once studied in ancient records. About souls that have traveled across boundaries."
"Reincarnation." Naruto's voice. Not a question.
"That possibility exists."
I let out a quiet breath on my stone.
Sasuke Uchiha. A man who, even within the world of fiction, was known as one of the sharpest observers who had ever existed. It made sense that he was the first to approach the truth.
Footsteps behind me.
I didn't turn, but I knew who it was before the long shadow fell beside me. Sasuke sat on the same stone — not at the edge, but in the middle, right beside me, close enough for conversation but far enough not to feel confining.
He didn't speak immediately.
Neither did I.
We sat like that in silence for what must have been a full two minutes — two souls who both had no need to fill quiet with unnecessary words.
"You heard the conversation just now," he said at last. Not a question.
"A little," I answered honestly.
"Hmm." Not a surprised reaction. Not an angry one. Simply confirmation received and filed away. "Do you understand what I meant by souls that travel across boundaries?"
I thought for a moment about how honest my answer should be.
"Saruto had a dream," I said at last, choosing the middle ground between lying and saying too much. "A dream about a different place. Different people. A different sky."
Sasuke looked at me from the side.
"Did the dream feel like a memory?"
The chest of this five-year-old suddenly felt heavy in a way I couldn't entirely attribute to this body.
"Yes," I said quietly.
Sasuke said nothing for a few seconds. His eyes returned to the yard, watching the tree sway gently in the wind.
"In this world," he said at last, his voice flat but not cold, "there are things that go beyond the understanding of ordinary ninjutsu. I've seen enough of them to not dismiss any possibility outright." A brief pause. "Including the possibility that the soul living in my grandchild's body is not the soul that was born with it."
I didn't answer.
"I won't force you to confirm or deny anything today." Sasuke stood, his black coat shifting in the afternoon wind. He looked down at me, and in those sharp black eyes was something that rarely appeared on his face — something that felt like acceptance. "But know one thing, Saruto."
I looked up.
"Whoever the soul inside that body is—" his eyes didn't waver, "—the blood that flows through it is still Uzumaki and Uchiha blood. And that is not something that can be overlooked, from any direction you choose to look at it."
He turned and walked back toward the house with the same measured steps he had walked out with.
I watched his back until the door closed.
Then I looked down at my right hand — a small five-year-old hand that had burned yesterday with a fire that should not have existed.
Deep inside, very far within, Crimson Fang pulsed once with warmth — as if in answer.
And for the first time since I had been reborn into this world, the old and weary soul of Kenji Matsuda felt one thing he had never expected to feel again.
Ready.
Lanjut Bab 5?