Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto but my own OC.

Chapter 1

Fuyumi frowned in concentration. She is currently focused on chopping the carrots into fine pieces as instructed by the orphanage caretakers. She was currently in the kitchen with a few older girls supervising as well as helping to prepare their lunch. The harmonious sound of chopping and slicing was soothing with a few hush whispers of gossips and idle chit chats around her.

She has been here for almost four years now since she was dropped off by someone in the middle of the winter night when she was a few months old. No one noticed her until one of the older kids snuck out and found her there freezing. She heard it was a miracle that she even survived that night after they took her to the hospital, thus she was given the name Fuyumi.

Her appearances were partially another reason for her name with her pale skin, straight silky raven locks and dark blue eyes. At first the caretakers thought she might be an Uchiha with such a distinctive feature, different from the other orphans. However, with the confirmation from the tests from the hospital shows that she did not possess any similar DNA with the clan.

Fuyumi does not understand why sometimes she felt a sense of relief that she was not a part of that said clan. It was confusing since some younger caretakers said that being sorted into a clan orphanage was better as they support them better. However, before she could further question about it, Mari will always send them off to work.

Mari is a favourite caretaker as well as the person in charge of the entire house. Some may call her strict and mean, but to Fuyumi, she is the woman with the kindest and biggest heart she ever met. The head caught her once trying to make a cake for the younger children, instead of sending her away, she helped and taught her to bake.

With her being in her early thirties and wearing a stern face, she tends to be a little unpopular with the younger kids. Her hair would always be held up in a bun, not a single strand out of place with her glasses sitting properly on her small button nose. She would always be seen with a ruler everywhere, ready to discipline anyone who misbehaves.

Sometimes, she would sit with Fuyumi and help her on her reading and writings which she seldom does. It was hard, but with Mari patiently explaining everything to her, it gets easier and better. Many orphans were not interested in learning their letters or they were too young to learn them so she took advantage of it and monopolised Mari's attention.

Right now Fuyumi is sure that she is Mari's favourite in the entire orphanage. She takes in the pleasure of having extra deserts after dinner and does lesser chores, but no one needs to know. After all, jealousy is a dangerous emotion to play with and she does not need everyone hounding on her for her little new found privileges.

However, Mari is not always happy, especially during the end of spring where she would snap at anyone who irritates her a little. From what she heard from the older girls, they said she lost her son during this time and always morn for an entire week. During the night, Fuyumi hears her crying when she thought everyone was asleep in bed.

Fuyumi does not feel guilty for using Mari to make her life easier. She hates that she has to share a small room with five other girls with no privacy or whatsoever. She has to endure the constant screams of hungry babies and children as they run up and down the hallway. However, with Mari in her palms, soon she may be allowed to move into the adult sleeping area.

Since young, she remembers she once had a normal life with her own room and things she did not need to share but it was blurry and unfamiliar. Even so, currently Fuyumi was not satisfied with those and wanted more. Who cares that she left a life behind with people who missed her. After all, what will she gain from it right now even if she does find out her past?

Therefore, Fuyumi did not bother to venture into her past life and forced herself to forget as she slowly age up. She knew she was too young to leave the orphanage with no money nor knowledge about anything. Therefore her first priority right now is to get away from the madness before proceeding to any sort other objectives.

Her efforts do pay off when one day Mari decided to take her out for a shopping trip. Imagine her surprised when she saw the carved faces on the mountain and had a sense of déjà vu. A feeling of dread, despair crawled up her spine, freezing her on the spot. A small voice in her head whispers: Naruto.

Mari misinterpreted her expression and indulged in explaining to her about the faces of their hokage like she did for other kids who saw it for the first time. Slowly the small blurry snippets of memories came back to her with Mari narrating about their village and its history. Fuyumi dares not say anything and continue her shopping trip with her caretaker.

She is in a ninja village. There were all sorts of people walking in the streets, but a few stood out, especially those in the group wearing the same uniformed vest outfit. Somehow, they managed to intimidate her with their presence and she clings closer to her caretaker. Her first trip outside was not as successful and enjoyable as she wanted.

When they got home, she quickly gave an excuse of being tired from their day trip and retire into her room. Realising that she is in a ninja village changed everything. It took her a few hours to rewrite a new plan of action before discarding the first one entirely. There was no way she is going to prance herself under the spotlight when it was the fastest way to die.

This is a ninja village and said to be the safest place to live in but she is hesitant to believe that entirely. After all, if her memories were still correct, then people like Danzo and Orochimaru were still roaming around freely and doing who knows what. Their desire for prodigies and unusual kekkei genkai will no doubt take an interest in her if she shows any potential.

If anyone asked about Fuyumi, all the caretakers will tell them that she is a well behaved child, but a little shy with strangers while the kids will praise her baking skills. Her presence would be remembered but not enough to stand nor missed out from the crowds. She would just be a little girl of four, nearly five who could bake nice chocolate cakes and cookies.

Her normal daily routine was interrupted when a group of ninja decided to drop by. She was reading quietly next to the bookshelf, waiting for Mari to finish her work and join her. However, a knock on the front door disrupted her normal life. She watched as Mari invited the visitors in and ushered all the kids into the living room with the ninja guests.

She watched them animatedly talking about their adventures and heroic stories which captivated every child. Fuyumi cringed internally at their recruitment scheme, but still wore an excited smile on her face, listening to their tale about rescuing a princess and so on. The occupational hazards were quite high for someone who claims to be rescuing princesses.

There was no doubt that their stories would entice any children into joining their programme, but she was no ordinary child. That being said, she has to make sure that she was not behaving anything other than what they were expecting from orphans. After all, she knows there was an observer behind the group of children, cataloguing their every movement and reactions.

Sneaky but they were not expecting much from a bunch of orphan kids anyway with no parents nor guardians to guide them to gain the right mindset and skills. So she is considerably placed in a safe zone where they would just write her off as slightly mature compared to others. However, it was better to act childish just in case they are really weeding out the competent ones.

A ninja. She does not think she will be a great ninja from what they told her about their jobs and requirements. Fuyumi thinks that it will be a waste of her to be sacrificing herself for someone's motive. A battlefield is impossible to predict and for a person like her who likes systematic and order, it would be a terrible combination.

Furthermore, she prefers to stay on the sidelines rather than jump into the messy fray. Thinking about her dying before her thirteen birthday is unpleasant and she prefered to have already accomplished her list of having a nice apartment to comfortably live in at that age. Thus, the thought of being a ninja was entirely thrown out from her mind.

When it ended, the majority of children joined the ninjas outside to register into the academy, but some were turned down due to their young age. Fuyumi frowned before shrugging off the unpleasant feeling despite knowing most of them will die in the battlefield. It was not her business to decide when her fellow orphans should sign their death certificate.

On a lighter note, the orphanage will not be so crowded anymore with them attending the program. These days, children kept appearing on the doorstep and she heard Mari grumbling about their tight budgets and resources. She went to the officials to request for a larger funding, but it seems that they came up with a cheaper way of dealing with the problem.

If a child has graduated from the ninja academy, they would automatically be consider as an adult under the village system. Thus, they will no longer be taken care by the orphanage as they would be earning an income to support themselves. With the kids shipped off to the academy and graduate in a few years instead of leeching off the orphanage, they will be able to save cost.

A brilliant idea, but the benefits will only last for a short term effect. In the end the scheme would be useless and it would be too late to do anything as the damage has been done. The village will then suffer high unemployment rates and thus poverty will set in. She could see the butterfly effect and soon everything will be in a pile of ashes.

Young orphans will still go hunger as no one can control the numbers of orphans in the village. Food will be rationed and fought for where the older ones will have to leave most of it to the younger ones to survive. Necessities like clothes and beds will be a luxury thus leading many to be shared between the children.

Moreover, the academy will suffer too, as many civilian students will have to retake their programme. They are not as equipped as those students from the clans who already have a head start from the moment they were born. Thus, the government officials will have to either turn away the students or force to pass them.

Fuyumi chuckled lightly. Ninja are not stupid, but they always fail to see the view of civilians who works differently with their system. She will just have to make sure she leaves before the after effects starts to show. Was she going to do anything? Not really. Only the finest survives and the weakest dies. It is their fault of being too naive and gullible.

"Fuyumi-chan is not signing up?"

"No. I want to be a baker but almost everyone is signing up."

She put on a conflicted expression and played with a loose thread at the hem of her white shirt. Knowing if she played her cards well enough, she might get an excuse from Mira to help her avoid the questioning gazed of the ninjas when they count the numbers of children. She will need all sorts of excuses to cover her and it is time to cash in from all her fellow caretakers.

A gentle ruffle of her shoulder length hair before Mira told her that she would help out to reason with the ninjas if they question anything about her. Fuyumi could tell that her answer pleased the head caretaker since it was known that civilians tend to encourage children to avoid being a ninja.

From what she heard a few days ago, Saki, the oldest caretaker was complaining about ninjas needing a certain quota to fill. Apparently, war is brewing on the horizon and the village needed as much man power to boost up their military strength. Leaving the village now would be seen as suspicious and not to mention, they might have to close off their borders and restrict every passage.

Satisfied with her performance she went back to her corner to plan once again with the new obstacle in her path. She doubts that this would be their last time to manipulate orphans into their army and when the war starts, she bets that they would not even take no for an answer. This is the true horror being born into a military village with a dictator ruling over it.

From what she estimates, she would have less than three years to remain herself in this place not taking into account of war. In her current condition, no one would be willing to indulge a young girl about the brewing war and she could simply gather so much of information from the limited gossips and whispers in the orphanage.

Moreover, with her being four it is still possible to be adopted, but the chances were not high as she ages. However, there might be also a possibility that her adoptive family is abusive or have another alternative motive and she would not be entirely safe. So she needs to stay clear of future potential families when they come to visit.

There is not enough time for her with limitations of her age and current political bickering between countries. She needs to familiarised herself with the layout of the village as well as making connections with shopkeepers since they always have the best information network. However, this will take years to build up and she does not have that much luxury right now.

Income is also another factor she needs to consider too, which is practically impossible for a four year old to do so. Fuyumi needs to make sure to not attract any unwanted attention to herself, but socialising tends to make that impossible. It seems that she would have her work cut out for her these few months.

Her thoughts were cut off when she saw a ninja stepping back into the house with Mira. They were discussing about something which was too soft to hear. She might manage to squeeze out that information from Mira tomorrow. It was obvious that the head caretaker was not enjoying her nest being disturbed by pesky ninjas.

"Thank you for your time. We will be submitting your registrations to the academy. An instructor will come by few days later to go through everything with you."

The ninja bowed politely before walking out the front door and join his fellow co-workers. From the window, she could see them each carrying a small stack of papers before dispersing to different direction. Fuyumi frowned. It seems that they had already categorised everyone into different groups in such a short period of time.

Dangerous.

Moreover, they were going to send in another person to interact with them, but this time with someone more experience in analysing children's behaviour. This is bad, but she is confident that she might manage to pull another act through. But maybe she will need some volunteers this round to cement her life as an official civilian.

Well, at least her first crisis was avoided.

Hei everyone!

So the timeline now for my story is like a few years before the third war. So Fuyumi is obviously a reincarnated child, but she's not really into saving the whole world and changing the plot & etc. I have not figured out why she is apathy towards people yet, but maybe it has something to do with her past life? Meh. Who knows? What do you all think?

So I hope you enjoy this story and feel free to throw in some comments or stuff?

PS. It's not edited so sorry for the mistakes and errors! (I'm really sorry!)

**Check out my other books too while you're at it.

Thank you for reading!