Chapter Text
The darkness was absolute.
It was an ancient darkness, thick as oil. One that almost seemed to breathe.
Naruto had been dreaming of this place for as long as he could remember.
Cold water lapped at his ankles. It was always there—that endless pool of black water that reflected nothing, not even his own face when he tried to look down at it. The boy walked barefoot, feeling the liquid slip between his small toes, the sound of his footsteps the only thing breaking the silence.
Splish. Splish. Splish.
He knew where he was going even before he consciously decided to. It was always the same. He would walk and walk until the ground beneath him changed. The cold water gave way to a mosaic of broken tiles, then to a damp, matted carpet, and finally to a corridor that opened before him like a gargantuan mouth.
The bars were the first thing he always saw.
They were massive. So tall that his neck ached whenever he tried to trace them upward, where they vanished into an even deeper darkness. The bars were caked in a rust that resembled dried blood, each as thick as the trunk of an ancient tree. Between them, there was more than enough space for Naruto to walk right through without even brushing against them.
But he never did.
He never dared to.
Because behind those bars, a pair of eyes was watching him.
Slitted, vertical pupils that glowed in the gloom like twin crimson moons trapped at the bottom of a well. They didn't blink. They didn't move. They were simply there, fixed on him, waiting for something the six-year-old boy couldn't possibly understand.
“Hello?” Naruto whispered, his young voice echoing off the unseen walls of the place. “Is anyone there?”
The eyes didn't answer. They never did. But this time, Naruto felt something different. The air grew heavier, as though the corridor itself were drawing in a deep breath after a long time without breathing.
“I know you’re there,” the boy insisted, clenching his fists at the sides of his frog pajamas. “I hear you. Sometimes, when I fall asleep, I hear something. Like a... like a heartbeat. Or a growl. I don't know. But I know you’re real.”
Nothing.
Only the silence and those eyes that refused to pull away from him.
Naruto took a step forward. The water beneath his feet rippled for no apparent reason, sending waves expanding outward toward the bars. It was the first time he had ever dared to get this close. His heart, small and brave, hammered against his ribs like a caged bird.
“I’m not scared,” he lied, his voice trembling and betraying him. “My dad says monsters aren't real. And my mom says if they are real, they’re probably more scared than I am. So... so I’m not gonna be scared.”
He reached his hand out toward the bars.
In that instant, something shifted in the dark. It wasn't the eyes—those remained motionless—but something far larger, far further back. A presence so immense that Naruto felt the air ripped right out of his lungs. A suffocating heat engulfed him, an oppressive heat that smelled of forest fires, scorched earth, and rage contained for centuries.
The voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere at once.
It was a sound so deep it set the water at his feet vibrating.
One word. A single, unintelligible word, dragged like a boulder across gravel, fading away before the boy’s ears could catch it.
Naruto woke up screaming.
***
“And then what happened?”
Hanako Uzumaki set the plate of rice down in front of her son as she asked the question. She was a woman with a round face and an easy smile, her brown hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, with hands that were always busy doing something: cooking, caressing, mending, comforting. Her eyes, a warm chocolate brown, watched Naruto with that mixture of rapt attention and tenderness that only mothers know how to conjure.
“Nothing!” Naruto replied, stuffing a mouthful of rice into his cheeks before even finishing the sentence. “I woke up and that was it. But it was super weird, Mom. The water was cold, but not that cold, you know? Like when you let the tap run and at first it comes out warm, but then it gets cold. Like that.”
“My, what a precise description,” his mother laughed, pouring him a glass of milk. “You ought to write your dreams down. You could be a writer.”
“No way!” Naruto shook his head, scattering grains of rice across the table. “I’m gonna be a firefighter. Or an astronaut. Or both. A space firefighter!”
Akio Uzumaki lowered the newspaper he was reading and looked over the top of a pair of glasses that were perpetually crooked. He was a slender man with narrow shoulders and the beginnings of a stubble that never quite seemed to grow into a full beard. He worked at an accounting firm downtown, and his greatest source of pride was being able to come home every day at six o'clock sharp to have dinner with his family.
“Space firefighter,” he repeated, testing the words on his tongue. “Sounds dangerous. Putting out fires in zero gravity? How would that even work?”
“With space hoses, obviously!” Naruto exclaimed as if it were the most logical conclusion in the world. “Dad, do you believe in monsters?”
Akio and Hanako exchanged a quick, fleeting glance. The boy had been asking strange questions for weeks now. Nothing alarming—kids were always asking odd things—but parents had a way of spotting patterns where others only saw coincidences.
“Depends on what you call a monster,” Akio answered after taking a moment to think. “If you mean the creatures from movies, no. Those are just special effects. But if you mean... I don't know, people who do bad things, then yeah. Those kinds of monsters exist.”
“No, no. Real monsters. With big teeth and lots of eyes. The kind that hide in the dark.”
Hanako set the skillet in the sink and wiped her hands on her apron before walking over to her son. She ruffled his blonde hair—that bright hair that didn't resemble either of theirs, a genetic mystery their doctors chalked up to some distant ancestor—and planted a kiss on his forehead.
“Sweetheart, if monsters like that existed, someone would have seen them by now. And if someone had seen them, they’d be on the news. And if they were on the news, your father wouldn't stop talking about it for weeks.”
“Hey,” Akio protested with no real heat. “I only talked about the UFO thing in Osaka for two weeks.”
“Three, dear. It was three weeks.”
Naruto burst into that contagious laugh of his—the kind that made the neighbors smile without even knowing why whenever they heard it from the street. He finished his milk in one gulp, set the glass back on the table with a satisfied clatter, and leapt out of his chair.
“I’m going to the park!”
“Put a jacket on,” Hanako said automatically.
“It’s not even cold!”
“Put it on anyway.”
“But Mom...!”
“Put it on, or no park.”
Naruto grabbed his orange jacket—his favorite color, the color of the sun, the color of happiness—and bolted for the door. Right before leaving, he paused for a second and ran back to throw his arms around his mother’s waist, then gave his father an embrace that the man received with a grunted laugh of surprise.
“Love you guys!” the boy called out, darting out the door before waiting for an answer.
Akio and Hanako stood there, gazing at the closed door.
“He’s a good kid,” Akio said, turning his attention back to his paper.
“He’s the best kid in the world,” Hanako corrected, clearing the plates.
***
The street was alive.
Naruto walked with his hands in his pockets and his head in the clouds, whistling a tune he had made up that very morning. The town of Yamagiri was small—three thousand residents on a good census year—nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains that turned snow-capped in winter and exploded into a million shades of green come spring. It wasn't an important place. It didn't feature in travel guidebooks. It had no famous temples or centuries-old festivals. But it had something Naruto valued far more than all of that: perfect corners for playing hide-and-seek, trees practically begging to be climbed, and a river where you could catch tadpoles in the summer.
“Good morning, Mrs. Tanaka!” he called out as he passed an elderly woman watering the flowers in her garden.
“Good morning, Naruto,” the woman replied with a smile. “Up early today, aren't you?”
“That’s ’cause there’s a beetle on the sidewalk and somebody might step on him!”
Sure enough, right in the middle of the pavement, a rhinoceros beetle was crawling along slowly, its shiny shell catching the morning light. Naruto knelt down gently, scooped it up between his hands to form a soft cup, and set it down on a leaf in a nearby bush.
“There you go. All safe.”
The beetle twitched its antennae, likely confused by the sudden change in location, and went on its way, entirely unaware that a six-year-old boy had just saved its life.
“You’re a saint, child,” Mrs. Tanaka said, crossing herself.
“I’m a space firefighter!” Naruto corrected, skipping on his way.
Five minutes later, he helped a delivery driver pick up some boxes that had dropped. Three minutes after that, he gave directions to a lost tourist trying to find the train station. Two minutes later, he shared his half-eaten breakfast with a stray dog looking up at him with hungry eyes.
He didn't do it so people would notice. He didn't do it to be thanked. He did it because every time he helped someone, he felt a pleasant warmth bloom in his chest. A subtle warmth that—without him knowing it—had very little to do with the simple joy of doing good, and everything to do with something far more ancient pulsing in the deepest depths of his being.
***
Yamagiri Park was the pride of the town. It wasn't huge, nor did it boast any sophisticated attractions, but the cherry blossom trees lining its perimeter had been there for over a hundred years, forming a tunnel of pink petals in spring that could make amateur photographers weep. In the center stood a wooden play castle equipped with slides, swings, and a climbing wall, bearing the marks of generations of children who had left behind their laughter and scraped knees.
Naruto was alone.
Not because he lacked friends. In his old neighborhood back in the city, he had at least four playmates he met up with every afternoon. But the Uzumaki family had moved to Yamagiri barely two weeks ago—Akio’s job, an unexpected promotion, a transfer they couldn't afford to turn down—and Naruto was still in that awkward stage where all the kids at the park were strangers and every routine had yet to be built.
Not that he cared.
Because Naruto possessed an imagination vast enough to populate an entire park with invisible friends, imaginary foes, and epic adventures that existed solely inside his head.
“Take that, evil ninja!” he shouted, hurling a pinecone at a tree. “Your wicked plot has been foiled by the great Naruto Uzumaki, the most powerful ninja in all of history!”
The pinecone bounced harmlessly off the trunk and tumbled to the ground. Naruto scowled.
“You dodged my attack, but you won't dodge... this!”
He scooped up a handful of dried leaves and threw them into the air. Then he sprinted through the falling shower, executing flips he’d practiced for weeks, before landing on his feet atop the wooden play castle with his arms outstretched.
“Victory,” he announced to the world, his voice echoing across the empty park.
At that exact moment, something shifted among the branches of the largest cherry blossom tree.
Naruto didn't see it.
But it was there.
It was a creature the size of a large dog, with grayish skin that seemed far too loose for its body, and limbs that ended in excessively long claws. Its head was a shapeless mass from which multiple eyes protruded—six, eight, maybe more—and a mouth that opened vertically, displaying rows of teeth that defied all anatomical logic.
A curse.
A being born from negative human emotions, invisible to most people, and dangerous to everyone. This one in particular was a low-grade curse, barely a fly-head with a bit more accumulated energy, and it had been lurking around Yamagiri for weeks, feeding on the minor frustrations and fears of the townsfolk.
It had sensed the child from afar.
Its first instinct was simple and primitive: easy prey.
The creature slithered through the branches, its multiple eyes locking onto the small figure in the orange jacket playing by himself. A child. Unsupervised by adults. Possessing no perceptible cursed energy. The curse didn't think—not in the human sense of the word—but it felt. And what it felt was a simple, uncomplicated hunger, the kind of hunger that anticipates no resistance.
It descended from the tree with awkward movements, its claws scratching against the bark without making a sound. It crawled across the grass, closing the distance with a patience low-grade curses rarely displayed.
One meter.
Two meters.
Three meters.
Naruto was currently in the middle of negotiating a peace treaty with an imaginary enemy general. He was working out the terms of surrender with absolute diplomatic gravity, entirely oblivious to the presence looming over him.
The curse took another step.
And then it felt it.
It was as if a door had opened in the center of the world. As if something vast and ancient had turned its attention toward it from an immeasurable distance. It wasn't cursed energy—that much it knew in the deepest core of its being—but something else. Something older. Something curses were not designed to perceive, yet which vibrated through its every fiber like a scream inside an empty cathedral.
Something furious.
Something unimaginably immense.
Something that was not awake, but which even in sleep made the curse's very existence feel like a mistake.
The creature froze. Every muscle strained like ropes about to snap. A tremor began in its limbs and spread to its torso, its head, and into those eyes that suddenly reflected something low-grade curses almost never experienced.
Fear.
Pure, primitive, absolute terror.
It scrambled backward. One step. Two steps. Ten steps. Then it turned its deformed body around and fled toward the shadows of the mountains, vanishing into the trees with the frantic speed born only of true horror.
Meanwhile, Naruto had successfully signed the peace treaty with his imaginary enemy and was currently teaching him how to do flips.
He hadn't noticed a single thing.
***
Three hundred kilometers away, in a location that appeared on no map, the Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School breathed with the measured cadence of institutions that had endured for centuries. Its gardens were meticulously kept. Its buildings blended traditional Japanese architecture with modern reinforcement. Its barriers were so ancient and potent that not even the most seasoned sorcerers knew precisely how many layers of protection cloaked the campus.
In one of the meeting rooms, a middle-aged man with a face crossed by scars studied a map of Japan spread across a polished hardwood table. Red marks speckled the surface like drops of blood.
“Seventeen,” the man said, pointing to a spot in the center of the country. “Seventeen disappearances of low-grade curses in the past three weeks. All within the exact same fifty-kilometer radius.”
Across the table, a woman with dark hair swept up in a severe bun took notes on an electronic tablet.
“Disappearances, or unreported exorcisms?” she asked without looking up.
“Disappearances. The monitoring barriers show the curses simply... ceased to exist. There is no trace of residual energy from jujutsu techniques. No witnesses. No temporal patterns. One night they are there, feeding as usual, and by the next morning, nothing remains.”
The woman stopped typing.
“That’s impossible.”
“I know,” the man replied, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Which is why I called this meeting.”
The door to the room slid open with the smooth sigh of well-oiled wood, and the person who stepped inside instantly altered the atmosphere of the space.
Satoru Gojo strolled in as if the world belonged to him—which, in a way, it did. Tall, lean, clad in a dark uniform that contrasted starkly with his snow-white hair, the strongest sorcerer of the modern era slouched into a chair with the casual grace of a lazy cat. His eyes, hidden behind a black blindfold, scanned the room without truly needing to look.
“Seventeen missing curses,” Gojo said, his voice bright, almost playful. “And not a single one was exorcised? Now that’s new.”
“Did you read the report?” the woman asked, caught off guard.
“Nope. But I read lips. You move your mouth when you take notes. It’s adorable, by the way.”
The woman pressed her lips into a thin line. The scarred man—a veteran sorcerer known as Masamichi Yaga—sighing with the practiced patience of someone who had dealt with Gojo for far too many years.
“I need you to investigate. The epicenter seems to be a small mountain town. Yamagiri. Population three thousand. No prior history of significant cursed activity.”
“Yamagiri?” Gojo leaned up slightly. “Isn’t that the town famous for its peaches?”
“There are no peaches in Yamagiri,” Yaga said deadpan.
“Ah. Well then, I have zero reason to go.”
“Gojo.”
“Kidding, kidding!” The sorcerer pushed himself up, stretching as if he had just woken from a nap. “I’ll go. But not because you asked—mostly because I’m bored. Lately I only get the boring curses. Remember last week? A curse hiding inside a vending machine. What kind of villain is that? It didn’t even try to fight. It just offered me a canned coffee.”
“Curses don’t offer coffee,” the woman said, genuinely confused.
“This one did. It was terrible, by the way. Way too much sugar.”
Yaga rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Can you just leave now?”
“Kicking me out? How rude.” Gojo headed for the door, but paused with his hand resting on the frame. “One last thing. Are you sure it wasn’t a sorcerer? Someone operating without authorization, maybe?”
“No sorcerer makes curses vanish without leaving a trace. Not even you.”
“True,” Gojo admitted, and for a fleeting second, all frivolity drained from his voice. “Not even me.”
The door slid shut behind him.
***
That night, Naruto fell asleep hugging a frog plushie his mother had given him when he was three years old.
Sleep came fast, as it always did, pulling him into an unconsciousness that wasn't quite what it seemed—into a place that existed somewhere between his mind and something far deeper.
Cold water kissed his ankles.
The corridor stretched out before him.
The bars—massive, caked in rust—waited for him.
But this time, something was different. Naruto picked up on it immediately, with that childlike intuition that sometimes succeeds where adult logic fails. The air wasn't merely heavy. The air was charged. Like the moment right before a storm. Like the quiet that precedes a scream.
The eyes were still there. Crimson. Slitted. Ancient.
But this time, the eyes blinked.
It was a slow, almost lazy movement, but Naruto saw it with absolute clarity. In all the years he had been dreaming of this place, he had never seen those eyes blink. The fact that they did now made his blood run cold.
“You’re there,” the boy said, his voice barely a whisper. “You can see me. You can hear me. Can’t you?”
Silence.
And then, the voice.
It was as if the earth itself were speaking. As if mountains were learning to pronounce human words after centuries of silence. The sound didn't originate from behind the bars—it came from everywhere at once, from inside Naruto’s head, from beneath his feet, from the very air he breathed.
“...ru...”
It wasn't a full word. It was the beginning of something, a drawn-out syllable, a sound so distorted by time and distance that it was impossible to make out.
But it was real.
It was the first time the voice had managed to articulate anything at all.
“What are you saying?” Naruto took a step closer to the bars, his heart hammering against his ribs. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“...to...”
The second sound arrived fainter than the first, as though the sheer effort of producing it had drained the creature. The crimson eyes slowly shut, and Naruto felt a wave of something he couldn't name wash over him. It wasn't fear, though it felt similar. It was the sensation of standing at the edge of a cliff, staring down into an abyss that was staring right back.
“Wait,” the boy pleaded, reaching a hand out toward the bars. “Please, wait...”
The darkness swallowed him whole.
He woke up in his bed, drenched in a cold sweat, his frog plushie clutched tight against his chest and a scream trapped in his throat. Outside, the moon shone brightly over the mountains of Yamagiri. Inside his bedroom, the silence was absolute.
But Naruto could feel something he had never felt before.
A heartbeat.
Not his own. Not the pulse in his chest.
Another heartbeat. Deeper. Slower. Far more ancient.
As if something immense were sleeping just beneath his skin.
***
The following morning dawned with a cloudless sky and a sun promising heat for later in the day. Naruto, who had chosen to ignore the previous night's terror with the stubbornness typical of six-year-olds, headed to the park with renewed energy.
This time, however, he didn't even make it past the gate.
Because right at the entrance, perched in one of the largest cherry blossom trees, was a cat.
It was a plump, fluffy orange cat, meowing piteously from a branch roughly three meters off the ground. Its yellow eyes looked down with the expression of a creature that had made a grave mistake and had no idea how to undo it.
“Oh no!” Naruto gasped, clapping his hands to his head. “A trapped cat! This is a job for a space firefighter!”
He marched up to the trunk and inspected it with a critical eye. He had climbed trees before, of course. He was an expert. Well, he had climbed a tree. Once. And he had fallen out of it. But this time would be different.
“Don’t worry, kitty! The great Naruto Uzumaki is coming to rescue you!”
The first attempt was a complete disaster. Naruto managed to scramble up about half a meter before his sneakers slipped against the bark, sending him tumbling backward onto the grass. The cat meowed, possibly with sarcasm.
“I was just warming up,” the boy justified, scrambling to his feet and dusting the dirt off his orange jacket. “Now I’m taking it seriously.”
The second attempt went a bit better. He made it almost a meter and a half before a branch he grabbed turned out to be rotten, snapping under his weight. Down he went again, landing on his side this time, a sharp grunt knocked out of him.
“Doesn’t hurt!” he lied, rubbing his shoulder. “Space firefighters don’t feel pain!”
The third attempt was the charm. With scraped knees, hands full of splinters, and a level of grit that would have brought a tear of pride to an Olympic coach's eye, Naruto reached the branch where the cat watched him with a mix of hope and skepticism.
“Gotcha,” he said, extending his arms. “Don’t be scared. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
The cat, perhaps sensing something reassuring in the boy’s voice, allowed itself to be picked up. It was heavier than it looked, its fur smelling of dust and sunshine, but Naruto held it against his chest with the delicate care reserved for a treasure.
“See? Nothin’ to it.”
Getting down proved much harder than climbing up. Naruto had to navigate the descent using only one arm while clutching the cat, which had decided to sink its claws into the boy's jacket as an extra safety measure. Branches creaked beneath his feet. Leaves brushed against his face. The ground seemed infinitely farther away than it had on the way up.
“Easy does it,” Naruto muttered, though it wasn't clear if he was talking to the cat or to himself. “Easy, easy, ea—”
His foot slipped.
For a split second, the world tilted sideways. The branches blurred into a streak of green. Sky and ground swapped places. Naruto felt his stomach leap into his throat and squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for impact.
The fall stopped.
His body hung suspended in the air for a brief, unnatural heartbeat. It wasn't flying—there was no thrust or direction—just a strange, solid stillness, as if the air itself had densified around him to hold him up. He opened his eyes to find himself hovering a couple of feet off the ground, the cat still clutched tight against his chest, a soft breeze cradling him like an invisible hand.
“What the...?”
And just as quickly, the sensation vanished. He dropped the last few inches, landing on his feet with an awkward stumble that nearly sent him sprawling, but unharmed. The cat scrambled out of his arms, let out a single meow—perhaps a thank-you, perhaps a complaint—and darted off into some nearby bushes.
Naruto stood there in the quiet park, staring down at his hands as though he didn't recognize them.
“How did I just do that?” he asked out loud.
He had no answer. And before he could ponder it any further, a voice behind him made him jump out of his skin.
“Well, well. Was that a crash landing or a magic trick?”
***
Satoru Gojo had been in Yamagiri for exactly seventeen minutes.
He had arrived on a train that smelled of countryside and elderly folks, politely declined a tourist brochure offered by an old woman at the station, and set off strolling down the town streets with his hands in his pockets and a grin that boded well for no one.
His Six Eyes, concealed beneath his black blindfold, scanned every corner for residual cursed energy. He had picked up traces—faint, like the tracks of small animals in the mud—but nothing that explained the vanishing of seventeen curses in three weeks.
Until he reached the park.
The first thing he saw was the kid. Blonde, tiny, wearing a jacket of an orange so loud it almost hurt to look at directly. He was dangling from a cherry blossom branch, trying to reach a cat that stared back at him as if assessing all the poor life choices that had brought it to this moment.
Gojo paused to watch.
“Is that the source of all this trouble?” he murmured to himself, tilting his head. “A kid rescuing cats?”
The boy slipped. Gojo took a step forward, ready to intervene. But then something happened that froze him dead in his tracks.
The child didn't fall. He hung suspended in midair. Just for a heartbeat, barely half a second, but Gojo caught it with the crystalline sharpness granted by his Six Eyes. An energy enveloped the boy—an energy that was not cursed energy, that resembled nothing he had ever encountered in his twenty-eight years as a sorcerer.
And then he felt something else.
Something was moving among the shadows of the park. A low-grade curse—a fly-head, utterly insignificant—slithering toward the child with blatantly hostile intent. Gojo readied himself to exorcise it with a casual flick of his fingers.
There was no need.
The curse halted three meters away from the boy.
It trembled.
It recoiled.
And then, in a gesture Gojo had never once witnessed in a curse of any grade, it dropped to its knees.
Even Sukuna would have found the sight absurd.
It wasn't an offensive move, nor a defensive posture. It was a genuflection—an act of submission so primitive and instinctual that it transcended all logic. The creature bowed before the child like a subject before a king, then spun around and fled toward the mountains, vanishing into the trees.
Gojo stood completely still.
His Six Eyes were revealing something his mind struggled to process. The boy possessed no cursed energy. He had no innate technique. He was no sorcerer, no curse user, nor anything that fit the categories the jujutsu world had spent centuries establishing.
Yet curses feared him.
Worse still: curses reverenced him.
“Are you here to help too?”
The boy's voice snapped him out of his daze. He was standing right in front of him now, the orange cat cradled in his arms, bearing a smile that lit up the entire park. He had scraped knees, a jacket dusted with leaves, and a splinter stuck in his right cheek, but his eyes—a blue so vibrant it seemed impossible—shone with unshadowed curiosity.
Gojo looked at him. Looked at the cat. Looked toward the mountains where the curse had vanished. And for the first time in a very long while, Satoru Gojo didn't know what to say.
The boy tilted his head.
“Mister? Are you okay? Do you need help crossing the street? My mom says we gotta help old folks.”
“I’m not an old folk,” Gojo said automatically.
“Ah.” The boy looked genuinely disappointed. “Then why’s your hair white?”
Gojo clutched a hand to his chest, feigning a mortal wound.
“You’ve slain me. A six-year-old kid just killed me.”
“I’m six and a half!” Naruto protested, indignant. “And I didn't kill you! You’re alive! See?” He tapped Gojo's leg with his free hand. “Solid. Totally solid.”
“What a relief. For a second there, I thought I was a ghost.”
“Ghosts aren't real,” Naruto declared with the absolute certainty of someone who had received that intel from trustworthy sources. “My dad told me. And my dad knows a lot about that stuff. He saw a UFO in Osaka once.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Well, actually it was a weather balloon. But it could have been a UFO. My dad says science can’t explain everything.”
Gojo crouched down until he was at eye level with the child. The blindfold covered his eyes, but Naruto didn't seem to find it odd. Perhaps he figured he was a pirate. Or a ninja. Six-year-olds had remarkably flexible categories for classifying adults.
“Hey, kid,” Gojo said, his tone light, though something sharp as a cotton-wrapped blade lingered beneath it. “Has anything weird happened to you lately?”
“Weird how?”
“I don't know. Things you can't explain. Strange dreams. Odd feelings. Have you ever seen stuff other people can't see?”
Naruto blinked.
And for a fraction of a second—just a single moment—the boy's smile faltered.
“Sometimes,” he said, his voice dropping lower than before, “I dream about a really big cage. And red eyes looking at me.”
Gojo stopped breathing.
He went completely rigid. The wind ceased blowing. The entire world seemed to hold its breath around that bench, around that child, around a confession spoken with the sheer innocence of someone who couldn't comprehend the weight of his own words.
The Six Eyes locked onto Naruto.
Searching. Looking for anything. A trace of cursed energy, a dormant innate technique, a curse bound to his soul. Searching with the exacting precision that made Satoru Gojo the strongest sorcerer of the modern era—with the perception that allowed him to see what no one else could.
They found nothing.
Nothing that could be explained. Nothing that fit any known category. Just a hazy, diffuse presence deep within the boy's soul—something so ancient and profound that even the Six Eyes could barely perceive it, like a shadow at the bottom of an ocean.
That was the most terrifying part.
Gojo was the man who saw everything. And now, for the first time in his adult life, he was looking at something he couldn't comprehend.
He smiled.
It was a different smile from the ones before. Not the playful smirk he used with his colleagues, nor the arrogant grin reserved for his enemies. It was a new smile, one he hadn't worn in years. The smile of someone who had just stumbled upon something fascinating in a world he thought he knew inside out.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Naruto Uzumaki! Future space firefighter! What’s yours?”
“Satoru Gojo.” The sorcerer stood up, smoothing the wrinkles from his uniform. “Let’s just say I’m... a teacher.”
“Teacher of what?”
“Things science can’t explain.”
Naruto narrowed his eyes, weighing the answer. The cat in his arms purred softly, blissfully ignorant of the invisible tension saturating the air.
“Sounds like magic,” the boy said finally.
“Maybe it is.”
“My dad says magic isn't real.”
“Your dad also said ghosts aren't real.” Gojo leaned forward slightly. “What if I told you he’s wrong?”
Naruto opened his mouth to reply. Closed it. Opened it again.
And in that exact instant, far, far away—in the place where cold water laps at ankles and massive bars entomb something the world forgot—a pair of crimson eyes snapped open.
This time, the voice rang out clear as thunder in a cloudless night.
“Naruto.”
The boy shuddered without knowing why.
Gojo caught it.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Naruto said, his bright grin lighting up like a bulb once more. “I think I’m just hungry. Do you wanna have breakfast? My mom makes super good pancakes. With honey. And sometimes smiley faces!”
Gojo laughed. It was a genuine, surprised laugh—the laugh of someone who hadn't expected to find pure warmth in the middle of a profound mystery.
“Maybe another time,” he said, ruffling the boy's hair. “I’ve got a few things to look into. But I’ll be back, Naruto Uzumaki. You can count on that.”
“Okay,” Naruto replied with a shrug. “But if you come back, bring me a present! Teachers always bring presents.”
“Oh, do they? Since when?”
“Since right now! I just made it up.”
Gojo walked away toward the park exit, hands in his pockets and a tune whistled between his teeth. But before vanishing behind the cherry blossoms, he paused and glanced back.
The boy was still standing there, cat in his arms, his orange jacket gleaming under the morning sun. A completely normal kid. A kid who ate pancakes with honey for breakfast. A kid who picked beetles off the sidewalk so no one would step on them.
A kid who made curses drop to their knees.
“Naruto Uzumaki,” Gojo whispered to himself. “What are you...?”
There was no answer. Only the wind rustling through the cherry blossoms, the faint meow of a cat, and the lingering echo of something ancient that had just awakened in the depths of a soul far too small to contain it.