Game of Shadows by Adrian King1

Chapter 16

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto nor The Gamer. I own nothing, really.

Chapter 16

"Why did I expect the first day to be anything but boring?" Naruto whined in between ramen bowls as we all sat at Ichiraku's, the whole group almost occupying all the seats at the restaurant.

"School is always such a drag," Shika nodded, although it could have been either due to being sleepy as much as it could have been agreement.

"It was rather dull for a first day," When Shino said something was boring, you knew something was boring.

"I'm just happy we didn't do anything physical today," Ino admitted while picking at her bowl, clearly still not as much of a fan of ramen as the other blond in our group.

"But that's the problem!" Whined Naruto this time, flailing his arms up in the air exaggeratedly.

"Do you think we'll have to go through the obstacle course straight away?" Chouji asked worriedly, eating even faster than normal due to stress.

"Iruka-sensei did say that we would start this year... so ... it's possible?" Hinata answered uncertain and in a low voice, but at least there was no stutter anymore.

"Oh man," The Akimichi slumped in his seat.

"Everything ok, Eiji?" Shikamaru asked, glancing at me from the corner of his eye and everything turned towards me.

"Yeah, why?" I gave him a half-smile as I pushed my empty bowl away from me.

"You are a bit quiet today," He pointed out.

"There are a lot of people talking, we aren't a small group anymore," I reassured easily as I waved signaling our group. The Nara hummed while turning again to speak with Chouji and everything returned to normal.

'That was close,' I thought to myself as I looked down, not noticing that everyone was looking discreetly at me.

[}-o-{]

That night, I sat at our garden looking up at the night sky. Sometimes I wondered if it was the same as back in my world. I had never known much about constellations and all that.

'A year... Today is exactly a year,' I thought to myself, a neutral expression on my face. 'I wonder if you all are still alive... how everything went after my death,' In my mind, the faces of my old family appeared up in the air in front of me.

Many of them were blurred, unrecognizable or almost so. My relatives were barely shapes with color at this point, either due to my passing through the Void or due to how long it had been, maybe both. Even my parents' memories weren't as clear as I would have hoped either.

'I'm already forgetting...' I thought with a grimace, apologizing to them without speaking.

Then I looked down at the notebook that sat innocently on my lap. I had several of them now. All resting inside my Inventory most of the time. Notebooks with information from my past life. Everything I could remember of my family and friends. Everything I could remember from the media. Everything I could remember from anything at all, even the most mundane of things.

I had all that written in these books. Even if my mind would slowly forget, I would have something to remind me that all that had happened. I had made my peace with it, actually. I had accepted the fact that the memories would disappear eventually.

It didn't mean that I liked it though.

But much like my own death, I had had to deal with it.

'I miss you,' I thought out loud, a single tear falling down my cheek as my brain conjured once more the blurry pictures of everyone I used to know.