Ramen Lovers (Naruto Uzumaki)

Chapter 1- The Creation of the Stars

Air. Fresh air. The first time I'd felt it in years. I wanted to stop and enjoy it. I wanted to breathe it in and look around, enjoying the sight of trees and grass and dirt after the years of nothing but cold and damp darkness, but I couldn't. Not now.

I was running. It was hard, but I was. The nip of the chilly night air burned my cheeks and the very tip of my nose. I hadn't run in years. There's no need for running when you've been tied up in a basement for years. This basic human function that most all can do was one of the hardest things I had ever done. My wobbly legs had barely any muscle on them due to years of very little activity. They had hardly anything on them at all. My sickly body could barely hold itself up. It was weak because it was eating itself up, slowly but surely, from the inside out. That's what happens when you starve to death. Your body begins to tear itself apart.

The wound from my stomach caused my vision to fade in and out due to blood loss. The wound was deep and fresh, so it bled heavily, but I couldn't stop running. I couldn't stop to bandage it, and even if I did, it wouldn't do any good. I needed immediate medical attention to live, and it didn't help that I was running, which only put strain on the injury.

Practically starved to death, muscle atrophy due to confinement, blood loss due to a stomach wound, and on top of all of that, I had to run. I had to run because I was being chased.

I whipped around to look behind me, but I didn't see them. My head spun into darkness at the quick movement before gradually bringing itself back. My feet began to slow significantly as the blood loss reached a dangerous state. It felt as though there was more blood outside of my body than in it. My eyes could barely hold themselves open. Feet stumbling across the dirt road, I pushed on. I knew I didn't have long.

Should I just give up? What's the point in trying to escape? He'll never stop looking for me, I'm far too "valuable." I probably don't even have ten minutes to live, so why not lay here for those last few moments? I wouldn't have anywhere to go even if I miraculously survived. No one left alive to go on for. Now that I'm free of him, I could finally give in. I could finally stop holding on. I got my taste of freedom, my breath of fresh air.

Deciding to die on my own terms, out in the open, I stumbled not ten more paces before laying down on the cool dirt road. As I lay there on my back, looking up at the sky, I was able to feel at peace for the first time in years. The stars winked from their vast cold blanket of night, and I was overcome with a memory of before. Before I was subject to the abject horrors of being confined and experimented on. Before I was so wrongly torn from freedom's grasp.

Around this time of night, several years ago, I laid looking up at the very same stars. I sat in the lap of my father as he placed his chin on top of my head gently. I smiled brightly, wanting to know more about these twinkling lights in the sky. "Hey, Daddy?" My tiny voice broke through the serene sounds of the night.

"Hmm? What is it, darling?" My father mumbled, looking up at the stars with me.

"Where do stars come from?" My questioning eyes bore into my father's face. His warm and gentle eyes looked down to meet my questioning stare.

"Well-" He began before a tranquil voice sounded behind him, interrupting his explanation with their own.

"Well," began my mother as she sat next to me and father. She reached for the hand that my father didn't have wrapped around my waist, tangling them together gently. "A long time ago, there was a woman who wished to change the way the people of her time were living. There was constant chaos and disorganization among her village because no one knew what the laws were. Deciding to find a way to make it so that all the people of her village could read the laws and follow them diligently, she decided to write the laws in the sky with her jewels. She gathered them all on a blanket and went outside to write the laws on the blank night sky. As she wrote, a coyote came up to her and asked why she was tacking up the sky with her jewels. She told him her plan and he asked to help her. The process of writing all of the laws was slow and tedious, and the coyote quickly grew restless at how long it took. 'What is the point of writing all of these laws anyway?' The coyote asked. 'It will bring order to my village.' Replied the woman. The coyote grew tired of this task and tossed her blanket up into the air. 'What have you done?' The woman gasped looking at the jewels now strewn across the sky with no clear pattern whatsoever. She knew the damage done was unfixable and that she must find another way to write the laws." My mother completed her story smiling at me gently. My five year old mind accepted all that my mother said as truth, and my eyes sparkled with the excitement of finally knowing the origin story of the stars.