Writing on the Wall

Perfectly Planned

Let me get something straight with you:

I wasn't a normal person in this world. I was different.

I was special.

Why, you ask?

I guess I'll tell you my secret;

I had a past life in another dimension, but that's not all of it. The world I was in, well, I knew the future, because once-upon-a-time this world was an anime. An anime that I loved and adored, but a simple anime none-the-less. And now, I was living it.

Although I soon found out it wasn't quite as exciting as it sounded.

It turned out I must have been a pretty bad person in my old life. How could I not have been considering I was born into the red-light district? In a prostitute house at that. An abandoned mistake.

Honestly, the gods must have hated me.

But on a positive note;

at least it was Konoha.

Let me tell you, being pushed out of a ladies, ahem, down south was not something I wanted to consciously experience again. Not that I really remembered it, all I remembered was some vague painful sensations.

But I really shouldn't have been thinking about that considering I was preoccupied with my hand down a man's pants pocket.

He didn't even notice as I breezed past him, his attention focussed on the blue-haired boy that tripped in front of him.

Nimble fingers slipped the coin pouch from its not-so-subtle location as the man roared with laughter at the spectacle of the fallen boy, the man beside him sneering disdainfully.

I had vanished into the throngs of people milling about long before he realised his coin pouch was missing. The wide street was busy with people of all varieties, out for their nightly activities. Ninja, drunk men and giggling women, curious teenagers, skinny children who eyed the masses hungrily.

The moon shone bright, illuminating the vague outline of the Hokage Mountain and the many sinful shops and clubs, bars and brothels lining the very street I navigated across.

It took me only moments to dart down a small alley that led to the back of a particular brothel. There, a hazel-eyed boy with matted brown hair awaited me.

"Sasayaki, you got somethin' ta show?" the six-year-old (or was he five?) asked enthusiastically, grinning. His voice was high pitched from youth, and he stumbled over his words for the same reason.

"Yea, but what 'bout you Yūrei? Your eye..." I trailed off. My voice imitated his lisp, for although my grasp on Japanese was mostly fluent from having learnt it to an extent in my past life (though my vocabulary was still very limited), it wouldn't do to garner attention. Therefore, I had to adopt the speech patterns of six-year-olds.

Ouch, that's one black eye he has...

He frowned and raised a hand to his swollen eye, grimacing.

"S'nothing. Just got clipped, s'all. I didn' get da necklace neither, but I got this."

He raised his arm to show me the three chicken skewers in his hand, still warm. Street food, straight from the stall I remembered to be a couple of streets away. It was owned by an old lady with fading eyesight, and made for an easy target if needed. Though I preferred not to steal from her; that woman was one of those stereotypical kind old women. The kind of one you'd expect to present you with a batch of steaming hot, fresh cookies.