Death Reset |Naruto|

1.2 ― Reality

His name was Keitaro. He was a boy of seventeen. He wanted to become a mangaka, inspired by modern and classic manga, and everything in between. He was a shut-in, aside from going to school, though he was trying. He spent his days locked away in his room, drawing or gaming.

And, on Friday, a mere week before his eighteenth birthday, the boy named Keitaro died on the streets of Tokyo.

The impact was a blur to him, though he remembered lying on the pavement and feeling as though he was being crushed by something. Pain spread throughout every inch of his body, and through blurry vision he saw blood color the street below him. Then it all went dark.

When he woke up, his thoughts and memories were both fuzzy. He felt something soft underneath him, and it was only then that he realized that he could feel things. Somehow, the sensation of touch felt foreign to him. But why?

Then it all came back to him. The store, the street, everything. Then... was he in the hospital?

Keitaro opened his eyes slowly, but what he came to see wasn't a hospital room at all. He was in a bedroom, but it wasn't his. This room, though tidy, was plain and barren. He was laying in the bed, beside that was a nightstand, then there were the bare essentials. The only decoration, the only point of interest, was a poster so plain it nearly blended into the wall. It only had one thing on it: a symbol. What Keitaro was quick to recognize as the symbol of Konoha from the Naruto manga. He briefly wondered why, if someone was going to decorate their room with a Naruto poster, they would chose the most boring one they could find, but then his thoughts got back on track and returned to the more appropriate question of Where the hell am I?

That was when he noticed something even more odd. His injuries were gone. He didn't know what the extent of his injuries were before, but he knew they were bad enough that they wouldn't heal so quickly. Even if he did just end up in the world's weirdest hospital, which for some odd reason had the world's most plain Naruto poster in it, there was no way his injuries would've just gone away.

Then... was he dead?

Maybe it was a big leap, but Keitaro couldn't help but consider it. After all, his last memories were of being hit by some vehicle, laying on the road, the hurt and the blood, and then he woke up as if nothing had happened at all. But that accident, the street, the grocery store - he knew that that was reality. He remembered so vividly his feelings, his sensations, the pain as he laid still on the road. It wasn't vague or hazy or dreamlike, it was real. This new place, his new condition, that was the unreality.

His mind buzzed as he laid still in the bed he found himself in. So... what if I am dead? He breathed in a deep, slow breath, air filling his lungs and then releasing. The blankets underneath him were soft, when he turned to the window, the sunlight made him nearly wince, a slight pain in his eyes and head. No... this couldn't be death. He most certainly felt alive. No less alive, in fact, than he had before he ever left his house that day.

That day... how long ago was it?

Keitaro finally stood up, twisting around and letting his legs hang off the bed before pushing himself up. Maybe it was that this room was very much not his, or his worries were simply drowned out by confusion and questions, but leaving didn't feel so scary to him. When he stopped in front of the door, eyes wide and every muscle tense, it wasn't because of a fear of leaving. No, it was because he caught a glimpse of the mirror.

He was smaller. It wan't any kid of bend n the mirror or trick of the light, he really looked younger than he was. He had his eyes, his face, his hair, but he looked like he was barely in middle school, not a seventeen-year-old. His clothes were wrong, too. He was in what appeared to be pajamas, though he was sure he'd never seen them before.