Published: 6/3/2016

Edited: 8/13/2018


Dear Jiraiya-sama,

Here it is, as polished as I can make it. I looked at all of your editorial comments and I've fixed the most egregious errors. It's not perfect, but I doubt it ever will be.

Tell me when you're free and we'll set up a date to go through the parts that need cuts and censoring.

Thanks for your hard work!

Suzu


HEARTS STAND STILL

by Misuzu Namikaze


to YOSHIYA MIYAZAWA


AUTHOR'S NOTE:

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.


I blinked awake into hazy, sticky summer heat. The grass in front of me was wavering, distorted by the scorching sun, and all at once I became aware of the sweat on my neck, of my skin sticking to the wood of the veranda, of the cloth on my back clinging damply to my shoulders…

There were several blond children playing in the yard in front of me, standing in a circle. They were kicking a—it was not a shuttlecock, not quite, but a feathered something that flew in long, high arcs when they hit it back and forth among themselves. Despite the punishing heat, they seemed to be enjoying themselves. I spent a few blank minutes staring at them, bewildered.

Where… was I?

Slowly, I turned my head through the hot, stagnant air and looked over my shoulder. The room behind me was utterly foreign. The furniture was small; the sitting room behind me had sitting cushions cast about a low-to-the-ground table; there was a long painted scroll on the wall. A woman was sitting on the floor there, cooing and tickling the tummies of a pair of infants, and a man was beside her, absently patting the behind of the baby on his shoulder.

I stared blankly at them, too. Like the children in the yard, they were blond, and when they turned their heads to look at me, I could see that they both had blue eyes. They murmured to each other for a moment, and though the language they spoke in seemed like gibberish, it was somehow completely comprehensible at the same time.

The man handed his baby to the woman and then got up and came over to me. "A summer fever?" he asked speculatively, kneeling down and putting a hand on my forehead. Japanese, I realized after a moment. He was speaking Japanese.

"Just overheating, maybe," the woman proposed from across the way. The man hummed and stood up again, disappearing through a through a door off to our right before returning with a glass of water and a plastic baggie full of ice. He handed me the water before crouching down next to me and pressing the ice to the back of my neck. I held in a yelp.

"You're quiet today, Suzu," he commented as he peered at me through the sides of his eyeglasses. I fidgeted silently. He was, I observed, not particularly ugly or handsome. His hair was cut short and his chin was sharp... but what stood out most about him, I soon decided, was his even-sharper gaze. I knew right away that I was looking at an extremely intelligent man.

"Sorry?" I squeaked, a little intimidated. He gave me a strange look, as if to wonder what in the world I had to fear from him.

"Did you break something?" he asked me, eyebrows rising. Quite suddenly, my moment of quiet terror was mowed over by a swell of indignation.

"I did not!" I found myself protesting hotly, feeling at once both offended and oddly petulant.

"Hm," the man said, and eyed me for a puzzled moment before shrugging. The flash of anger passed as quickly as it came, and then I was left to sit there with his hand holding ice on the back of my neck, blinking through the sudden whirlwind of emotions that had just torn through me.

It was at that point that I realized something was wrong. Something about that angry reaction was… peculiar. Something about the feel of my own skin was strange. Something about this house of full of blond-haired, blue-eyed, Japanese strangers was...

"I'm home," a voice called from the doorway.

Both the woman and the man perked up, and I turned my head just in time to catch sight of a teenager walking in. As he was shedding a green vest and dropping it over the back of a chair, my brain lit up with recognition, and then one half of me was jerking up into a standing position and making to run forward. The other half was dropping its jaw in incredulity.

Was that… Minato Namikaze?

Though it was still somewhat rounded with youth, his face was undeniably the face of Naruto's father. His hair was as spiky as it had been in the drawings, too. It would have been utterly bizarre had it not looked so unnaturally... natural. He glanced at me smiled.

The second shock of the day came then, because he came over, crouched, and hoisted me up onto his hip. "Hey, Suzu," he said fondly as he ruffled my hair with one hand. "How're you today? You look a little flushed."

"Think she's just feeling a bit hot," the man with the ice said as I hung limply in Minato Namikaze's arms, shocked. I had just been picked up. Picked up and put on a hip, like a child.

No, I realized as I looked down at my hand and saw five short, skinny digits sprouting from a tiny palm. It was not that I was like a child. I was a child.

"Suzu?" Minato asked concernedly when I found myself suddenly have to put my head down on his shoulder, feeling very dizzy and disoriented. "Suzu—ojisan? Uncle Souhei, I think there's something wrong with—"


Misuzu Namikaze was a five-year-old orphan who had been born in Konohagakure no Sato and raised by Reiko and Souhei of the Namikaze clan. Alongside about twelve other parentless children, she lived in a large but old traditional Japanese home referred to by the members of her clan as "the House." Among the orphans she lived with was also the sixteen-year-old Minato Namikaze, a newly-minted jounin and the future Yondaime Hokage.

Suzu enjoyed a fairly normal, if not somewhat riotous, home life. She had a great many playmates and she got on well with all the ones who were her age. She was also a fairly athletic child, though that seemed to be par for the course with most of the people around here. She was due to start schooling at the Ninja Academy with her three cousins Chiharu, Jinta, and Akira next year in April, and was currently receiving some basic, preliminary education from her caretakers.

I discovered all of this through context and several carefully-disguised questions after awakening upstairs in the girls' room. I had, apparently, passed out due to heat exhaustion while being carried by my Minato-niichan. As I'm sure it can be imagined, I was not terribly serene when the picture came together, but I managed to keep a lid on everything until I'd found a suitably private place to freak out.

Surreal was the only word to describe it. The plot of the popular anime Naruto was clear in my mind, and it was unmistakable that I was in Konoha right now; a trip to the front yard and a look at the mountains was enough to confirm that. But what in the world did it mean? What does one do when presented with this sort of situation? The people living here were all incredibly real. They talked, they walked, they ate, they sweated, they chuckled and snorted and argued... they were alive, like any normal people. To call them imaginary or fiction would be laughable. They were just that existent.

So was I in a story right now? Or perhaps more to the point—did it matter?

I quickly came to the conclusion that it didn't. One day among the inhabitants of the House had me realizing that I was very much in love with Suzu Namikaze's family. The reverse was true, too; she was one among many, but she was still a greatly cherished child. During her convalescence she was lavished with attention from all directions. Her cousins hung around her and played games with her and kept her company; Reiko made her favorite pork potstickers for dinner to cheer her up after her illness; she even got to share a secret popsicle with Souhei when everyone else went outside into the searing summer heat.

It wasn't long, of course, before I discovered that this kind of home environment was so rare that it might have been the one of the only ones existent within all of Konoha's ninja population. The people of the Namikaze clan's House were probably the most functional family a child without a civilian background could ever hope for. The orphans here were very well-adjusted.

In that vein, I found that life had become shockingly enjoyable. Somehow the games of hide-and-seek and tag and jump rope were even more magical than they ever had been; there were some mornings that I was so eager to start games of kebane and double Dutch that I would be tempted to throw tantrums if I was forced to brush my teeth and dress myself before I was allowed to run down to the yard with my cousins.

It was fun, I admit, but it made me confused, too. Somehow it seemed to me that I was too old for these sorts of things. Adults didn't do that sort of thing, and I was an adult, wasn't I? Even if my body didn't match up with that, I had such vivid memories of being taller and moving about life as a grown woman. I couldn't be a child.

But that vein of thought quickly fell away. The realization came on the day of my sixth birthday, when I had squealed and jumped and trembled with so much excitement that I thought my very heart would burst with anticipation. Regardless of the odd dissonance now ringing in my head, I was a child. I was Suzu Namikaze, age six. That was my name and this was my life. The games, the giggles, the excitement—that was just me being me. A kid. A little girl.

And that, I realized, was okay. The more I thought about them, the more memories of the place called Earth seemed foreign and faraway. Whatever happened in them was different from what was happening now, and the now was full of joy. The food, though plain, was good, and the games were always going. There was no shortage of friends to play with, and there was plenty of affection to go around. Poor, but happy: that was us, the people of the Namikaze clan's House.

Of course, if I had thought on those memories a little harder, I might have realized that these days would end. I would have tried a little harder to reach for a civilian life. Instead of rushing into the wondrous world of ninjas, I could have concerned myself with other things. Instead thinking about what career path I could take to become a jounin, I could have focused on what sort other jobs I might enjoy, what sort of man I'd like to marry, and what kind of family I'd like to have... Even if I did go to ninja school, it would have been easy to end my journey as a shinobi there. After all, plenty of Konoha's citizens attended the Academy, enjoyed brief stints as genin and chuunin, and then retired to live regular lives. I could have done the same, and then settled down to work down at Hisame-jii's kimono shop, where I would become a reputable seamstress, meet a nice man, get married...

Such a life would have been in my reach if I had only been of the mind to grasp for it. But I didn't.

Why? Well, if I were to name the root cause, I'd probably call it Minato Namikaze.


Concentrated hero worship: that was what Minato usually came home to. It was hardly unexpected; never minding the fact that most of the clan already considered him a star—he was, after all, the youngest jounin the Namikaze had ever produced—we idolized him enough just by his merits as an older brother. He was an excellent playmate, capable of fulfilling all roles: epic hero, evil villain, knight in shining armor, hostage, comrade… one only had to name his job and he would execute it with aplomb. He also brought us souvenirs from his missions: specialty candy from castle towns, pretty seashells from the coast, and whatever other little trinkets he picked up during his travels. He thought of us often and always had a little something for everyone.

After I grew up a bit and learned just how much work it is being a jounin, it was plain to see that Minato spent an inappropriately large amount of time with us as children. Between missions, training, fuuinjutsu studies, jutsu invention, and a serious relationship with his then-girlfriend, it was a wonder that his health had held up. When had he even had the time to sleep? But as a child, I never knew. All I knew, really, was that he was amazing and I wanted to be exactly like him: cool, smart, and a great ninja.

Oh, how foolish it was to think that I had needed to become Minato. He was just as tired and troubled as anyone; no one lived the squeaky-clean, picture-perfect life I had thought he lived. That was another lesson I could have avoided learning the hard way if only I'd stopped to consider the experiences that had been given to me. After all, it wasn't every day that a child had the autobiography of a grown woman imprinted directly into her brain. If I'd used just a little bit of that information—just thought a little bit more from that adult's perspective—things surely would have gone another way.

But perhaps it didn't matter. Being a kid here wasn't like being a kid there. There, being a kid meant being part of a special, protected class. Here, it meant nothing—not anything beyond having shorter limbs and less experience, anyway. Anyone old enough to hold a knife and point it at the enemy was old enough to be a killer, and in those days, the village wanted a lot of them. Their ninjas were expiring quicker than they were being produced, and Konoha needed replacements, fast. With no option of a draft—adult civilians just couldn't be put on par with ninjas who had been trained from childhood—we were the next best option.

Things were not as they should have been, I know. We had been at war, and it had been no petty conflict. That war had been a great war; the third installment of The Wars, as history would have it. And it had been one of unprecedented attrition, one that had plummeted Konoha's military power into an all-time low... it had had the village administration shoving children through the Academy as fast as they could go, crossing their fingers and hoping that something would stick, before throwing them out onto the battlefield with little else more than a prayer.

How much cannon fodder had been consumed in that conflict? "Too much" would probably be a good answer. The number of shinobi left in my generation is tiny. Entire family lines ended in my childhood—that is how badly we were decimated.

We were never told much of that sad reality, though. Our enemies weren't going anywhere, and neither was the war. Even if it would only add to the death tolls, there was nothing to do but prettify the carnage and slog on. What could the previous generation have done besides march on through the violence, consoling its children with heroic fantasies and dreams of glorious, honorable deaths on the battlefield? If there had been a path to peace, they'd been too blinded by the never-ending veil of bloodshed to see it. Stopping the fight only meant losing those children they were trying protect.

So they kept telling their legends, and we listened. Unlike Naruto, no one had been there to stop us from declaring that we wanted our names on the Memorial Stone. No one was there to stop our dreams from becoming reality, either.

I never dreamed that my friends or I would ever come to real harm. With Minato as an example, it was easy to believe we could breeze through our ninja careers without suffering more than a concussion or two. He never got hurt beyond a few cuts and bruises, after all; why would we believe things would go differently for us? He didn't, so we didn't. None of us stopped to think of how he suffered behind the scenes, hiding the worst of his injuries from us, or of the comrades that he silently endured losing, or of blood on his hands and the lives resting on his shoulders. No one considered the sleepless nights he spent thinking about them all.


I went into the Academy with a head full of dreams. My objective was set: Minato would be my goal. As the man himself, he encouraged us sportingly, just as an upright jounin burning with the Will of Fire should have. As expected of him, really. He was the very picture of a reliable Leaf shinobi.

Despite my idyllic imaginings, though, I hit my first snag right away: my cousins and I were sorted into different classes. This caused me considerable apprehension. While I wasn't totally socially inept, I was not a particularly gregarious person. Even the adult I could now remember being had not been terribly skilled in the art of making friends, either.

I did not quite cry—though, with goading, I do confess to a few anxious sniffles—and my cousins didn't really go out of their way to give me hugs and assure me they would find me at recesses, but that was how the chips fell. For better or for worse, though, I wasn't disillusioned with my choices right away. As it so happened, on the first day of class, I ended up being seated next to the boy who would eventually become one of the best friends of my life.

Akihiko Namikaze was his name. Because we were from the same clan, we were related, but rather distantly; we called each other cousins, but in reality we would probably have to go back several generations to find our common ancestor. Unlike me, he was gregarious. Outgoing, cheerful, friendly… for him, just being deskmates was cause enough to declare me a super best friend. And, as far as I could tell, that was a relatively high office. Endowed with such a position, there was only about one other person that could beat me out in terms of ranking.

I met that person right away, since he was sitting on Akihiko's other side. He was called Yoshiya Miyazawa; or, rather, "super most besterest friend." Because their fathers had been on a team together, he and Akihiko had known each other since infancy, and they had spent many an afternoon together as playmates. Despite their avowed most besterest friendness, though, theirs was a vitriolic friendship. In fact, if they hadn't introduced themselves as friends to me, I might've mistaken them for vicious rivals. They were constantly competing and trying to trip each other up—figuratively and literally—and they insulted each other incessantly, as though it were as necessary as breathing. It was a decidedly odd relationship.

Yoshiya was thoroughly unlike Akihiko. Never minding their wildly contrary sartorial sense—where Akihiko tended to wear blindly bright red shirts, Yoshiya often dressed in greens and browns and blacks—their personalities were utterly dissimilar. Akihiko was gregarious, but Yoshiya was taciturn and aloof. When I had introduced myself to him, he had only crossed his arms, curtly replied with his name, and ignored my attempt at a handshake. It was only a little mortifying; he had given everyone who had greeted him the same treatment. It seemed like he was just that kind of person, which made me wonder how an agreeable boy like Akihiko got on with such an unpleasant character.

Well, that was my first impression. But then Akihiko laughed and smacked him on the back—probably a lot harder than was warranted—and said, "You don't have to act tough. It's safe! She's friends with me now."

Yoshiya's cheeks tinted pink. "I'm not acting tough," he mumbled, looking away and seeming to shrink in on himself. Suddenly, he seemed a lot less like an Uchiha-tier snob and more like a timid kitten.

"You're shy," I realized, enlightened, as the pieces came together in my head. Well, that made sense. I had memories of affecting the demeanor of a frigid bitch to ward away strangers, too.

"He is!" Akihiko laughed again and jabbed his friend in the ribs. "He's been putting on this show all day! His dad told him all he had to do was pretend he wasn't nervous, but even though he practiced for a whole month, he's still trying to scare away as many people as possible. Isn't he hilarious?"

Yoshiya scowled furiously and batted his hand away. "Watch what you say to people, moron!" he hissed as he went from pink to red. "This is why you're an idiot."

"You wanna start something?" Akihiko quickly shot back and got to his feet. Yoshiya rose too, glowering with arms crossed.

I thought they might get into a fistfight—Akihiko, I soon discovered, was always ready to test his mettle in a good, old-fashioned slugfest—but Yoshiya eventually turned up his nose and hmmpthed like he was a prince.

"I won't waste my time with the likes you," he declared loftily, in the manner of someone mimicking a line from a book or a TV show.

"You're just scared that you'll lose like you always do," Akihiko smugly replied. "No matter how many clones you can make or henges you can do, after all, I can still put my fist in your face."

Yoshiya looked away and sniffed derisively in reply.


Observing my new friends at the Academy became my most fascinating pastime. Though I enjoyed the physical component of our education quite a bit—in the Earth-memories I distinctly recalled being ill in a way that prevented me from most strenuous activity, but as myself I could somehow run and stretch and jump like I never had before, and it was exhilarating—I found the rest of our work rather unstimulating. Writing and reading comprehension were interesting to me, but the math worksheets, logic puzzles, and coloring exercises became very stale very early on. Even chakra class, which should have been perhaps the most exciting part of the Academy, was horrifically boring; because we were still young, we mostly spent our time sitting around meditating.

I won't claim to be an ultra-disciplined warrior monk, and I won't say that I never fidgeted or had to deal with a lot of pent-up, childish energy, but due to the nature of my double-layered consciousnesses I was leagues ahead of my peers in matters of mental focus. That is, I was capable of sitting still and thinking for more than fifteen minutes at a stretch. When I could, I worked ahead in my Japanese book—memorizing kanji, practicing my handwriting, expanding my vocabulary—but in hindsight that was a foolish choice. I pulled so far ahead in my studies that I succeeded in making Japanese class boring, too.

Consequently, I spent a lot of time watching Akihiko and Yoshiya to fill the empty hours. Despite Yoshiya's insistence to the contrary—his choice appellations for Akihiko consisted mostly of variations on descriptors like "stupid" and "muscle-headed"—Akihiko was very intelligent. He didn't give two hoots about jutsu theory or chakra studies, but he loved dissecting historical battles and war tactics. He seemed to have a natural aptitude for strategy, and he probably would have slayed in shogi or go if he had ever bothered to learn. And as for Yoshiya, he bore no resemblance to the wimpish milksop that Akihiko proclaimed him to be. True, he was no good for winning taijutsu bouts—the instructors frequently criticized his weak strikes and sloppy form—but even if he never got the final blow, he could dance in circles around his opponents, sometimes even to point that they would defeat themselves. He was quick, clever, and skilled in misdirection; combined with an unexpectedly high amount of endurance, he often won matches through sheer attrition alone.

They built on one another, I concluded after the first couple weeks of studying their interactions. The prodded and goaded and fueled each other to try harder, to keep training, and to do better; their competition spurred their growth. They were rivals, and because they had had each other since the days of their birth, their development had had a huge jumpstart.

Had that been done intentionally? Their fathers had been been friends, so it wasn't unexpected for them to have their sons interact, but was there more to it? Their fathers were also shinobi. Had they been making a concerted effort to raise prodigy children?

I considered it. It was plausible. The culture of this place was one very much entrenched in the concept of "might makes right." Any parent would want to equip his child with shinobi prowess in a world like this one. But if that were the case… did that mean Akihiko and Yoshiya were bred to become killers from the moments they were born?

Their parents might not have even realized they were doing it. They'd probably just assumed—and rightly so—that their kids would be shinobi. It was what everyone expected, and it was why I was here too: every adult had encouraged me and my cousins to grow up and become fine ninjas. They were just trying to give their children the skills they needed to survive. Besides, who didn't want to be the parent of a genius child? Raising a fine shinobi was nearly as honorable as being a fine shinobi oneself.

I didn't follow that thread of logic to its conclusion—perhaps on a subconscious level I didn't want to—and that was maybe one of the things I regretted the most about my childhood.

It was not the last time I would let myself be taken in by the heroic fantasies.


A/N: (1) "kebane": the Japanese equivalent of the Chinese jianzi, which was historically used in military exercises. These days it's a common game played among East Asian children. It is somewhat similar to a hacky sack.

.

Welcome to the rewrite! I wonder how many of you actually knew this was happening. I announced it on my profile, but the news didn't really spread. If you follow any of my stories, you should check it out if you get curious about their statuses. I usually have something up if there's something going on.

Anyway, I'm very excited to finally have this underway. There are going to be definite, significant changes to both characters and plot, and I think it's for the better. I hope you'll all enjoy it as much as I do.

Thanks for sticking with me so far, guys! I can't wait to start hearing from you all again. It always made me so excited to see feedback from you all ;).

Cheers,

Eiruiel