The Boy In The Mirror: A Naruto FanFiction

Rescue

Hunger.

Hunger was the sole sensation the shattered boy could still feel. Everything else had slipped away into a haze of numbness. His arms, legs, torso, every inch of his body were devoid of sensation. Naruto had been in the same position for more than 48 hours, curled up on his small, long outgrown twin bed. His thoughts drifted aimlessly, each one shrouded in fog, making time feel endless and reality blurred. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore.

It had been two and a half days since he discovered Ebisu's lifeless body. The image burned itself into his mind, playing on a loop behind his eyes. Luckily, the incident had happened on a Friday, giving him the excuse of a weekend to retreat from the world, an invisible buffer to hide his absence. It felt justified at first, but now it was Monday afternoon, and the gnawing thought that he had a mission waiting hadn't even breached the surface of his consciousness. Guilt hung over him like a storm cloud, a crushing weight that made him sick. He didn't even know how to begin processing what he felt, and in some way, he didn't want to.

Throughout the weekend, the voice, the constant presence in his mind had gone unsettlingly quiet. After days of heated, one-sided arguments between him and the voice, it had abruptly fallen silent. Naruto wasn't sure if he was relieved or disturbed by the sudden stillness. He had never wanted the voice there, but without it, everything felt far too quiet, far too empty.

Each tick of the clock, every growl his stomach let out, the shallow rise and fall of his own breath—Naruto could hear it all, magnified by the silence. The sounds pressed in on him, and they made him sick. The hunger clawed at him, but even that was drowned out by the overpowering sense of void. The room was suffocating, the air too heavy, and yet he couldn't find the will to move.

Just as the weight of exhaustion began to pull him under, his mind teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, a sharp knock echoed through his bare apartment. The sound cut through the oppressive stillness like a blade, startling him from the fog that had gripped him for two days straight. His eyes snapped open, heart pounding in his chest as the trance he'd been held captive by dissolved in an instant. For a brief, disorienting moment, he wasn't sure if the knock had been real or some cruel trick of his exhausted mind.

Naruto blinked, his thoughts sluggish as they tried to catch up with reality. The knocking continued, steady and unrelenting, bouncing off the empty walls of his apartment. Each knock felt like a jarring reminder that time hadn't stopped just because his world had. He stared at the door, feeling an odd sense of detachment, as if his body no longer belonged to him, as if getting up to answer it required a strength he simply didn't possess. Yet, whoever stood on the other side wasn't going away.

For the first time in days, he was forced to acknowledge that there was still a world outside his head, a world that refused to let him disappear into himself.

"Naruto." Kakashi's voice filtered through the wooden door, calm but firm, slightly muffled by the barrier between them. "I'm just checking in on you. Can you please answer the door?"

The sound of his sensei's voice stirred something deep within Naruto, a flicker of familiarity in the fog. It wasn't just the words, but the steady, grounding tone that seemed to cut through the suffocating silence around him. Kakashi's calm, unhurried manner had always brought him a strange sense of comfort, even in the most chaotic of times. Now, it was like a lifeline—one that Naruto didn't fully realize he needed until that very moment.

He stared at the door for a long second, his mind sluggishly processing what to do next. A part of him wanted to ignore it, to retreat further into the void where no one could reach him, but the warmth in Kakashi's voice tugged at him, gently pulling him back to the surface. Slowly, almost mechanically, Naruto reached for the door handle. His fingers felt cold against the metal, trembling slightly as he curled them around the knob. It took more effort than it should have to twist it and pull the door open.