By the age of four, I learned three important truths about Konoha.
One: children were everywhere. Two: graves were everywhere. Three: nobody thought this was weird.
---
I lived in a narrow apartment that smelled like old wood and boiled rice. The rent was cheap because the building leaned slightly to the left and occasionally shook when someone important decided to train nearby.
Explosions were background noise.
So were screams.
You learned to tell the difference early.
Happy screams were short. Angry screams were loud. Dying screams were… embarrassing. They trailed off, like the person didn't want to inconvenience anyone.
The adults ignored them all equally.
---
The orphan stipend came monthly.
It was enough to not starve and not enough to thrive. Which, I realized, was kind of the village's whole philosophy.
I spent most days watching other kids.
Some practiced throwing rocks at trees, pretending they were kunai. Some played ninja, shouting jutsu names that did absolutely nothing. A few—the quiet, intense ones—already moved differently. Too balanced. Too focused.
Those kids didn't laugh much.
They also didn't live near me.
---
I learned quickly to be forgettable.
Not weak—forgettable.
Weakness attracted bullies. Talent attracted instructors. Forgettable attracted nothing.
I tripped sometimes, but not too often. I answered questions wrong, but not stupidly. I cried once when scraped, then never again.
Adults looked through me.
Perfect.
---
At six, they tested us.
Not officially.
Just… quietly.
A man in a flak jacket showed up at the playground one afternoon. He smiled too much. Asked us to run. To jump. To hold heavy things for longer than was comfortable.
Some kids glowed with excitement.
I pretended to be tired.
When he asked me to concentrate—really concentrate—I did exactly enough chakra control to make my fingers tingle and no more.
He frowned.
Then he lost interest.
I went home and threw up from the stress.
Worth it.
---
I made friends.
That was a mistake.
Her name was Mika. Civilian-born. Loud laugh. Always dirty knees. She wanted to be a medic-nin because she thought healing people was "less gross than stabbing them."
She practiced chakra control by balancing leaves.
I practiced by watching her fail.
We ate together sometimes. Talked about nothing important. She believed, genuinely, that the village protected its people.
I believed, genuinely, that she wouldn't survive.
We were both right.
---
The Ninja Academy loomed like a threat.
Everyone talked about it like a privilege.
Free education. Guaranteed job. Honor.
No one mentioned the casualty rate.
I did the math myself, using rumors and gaps and the way adults went quiet when certain names came up.
I didn't like the numbers.
---
On the day of enrollment, parents cried.
That should have been my second warning.
Kids ran through the Academy gates laughing. Instructors watched with the same expression farmers used when inspecting livestock.
I stood in line.
Small. Average. Anonymous.
Iruka-sensei smiled at us.
I hated him immediately.
Not because he was cruel.
Because he was kind.
---
The first lesson was history.
They told us about wars.
Not the screaming, bleeding kind.
The necessary kind.
They talked about sacrifice like it was a budgeting issue. About fallen shinobi like they were resources well-spent.
I wrote everything down.
Knowledge was armor.
---
Training began in earnest.
Taijutsu bruised my ribs. Shuriken practice shredded my confidence. Chakra exercises gave me migraines.
I learned something important, though.
Pain here was normalized.
If you didn't complain, it didn't exist.
So I stopped complaining.
---
The first time someone died, it wasn't dramatic.
A boy tripped during a climbing exercise.
He fell wrong.
There was a sound like wet bamboo snapping.
The instructor checked his pulse, closed his eyes, and told us to keep training.
We did.
That night, I couldn't sleep.
Not because of guilt.
Because I'd noticed how easy it had been.
---
Mika cried for a week.
Then she stopped.
She got better after that.
So did everyone else.
---
By the end of the first year, I had a reputation.
"Reliable."
Not talented. Not promising.
Reliable.
I followed orders. I didn't panic. I didn't excel.
In this place, that made me dangerous in a very quiet way.
---
One afternoon, Iruka-sensei stopped me after class.
"You're holding back," he said gently.
I looked him in the eye and lied.
"I'm trying my best."
He smiled.
I went home shaking.
---
That night, I wrote a rule in the back of my notebook.
Rule One: Never be noticed by someone who cares.
Caring led to expectations.
Expectations led to missions.
Missions led to graves.
---
Mika talked about graduation.
About teams.
About becoming useful.
I nodded and smiled and planned my survival around the assumption that she wouldn't be there.
I hated myself for that.
But I slept better.
---
By age nine, I understood the Academy's real purpose.
It didn't make warriors.
It sorted them.
And I was doing everything in my power to land in the smallest, quietest pile possible.
Because in Konoha, greatness burned bright.
And then it burned out.
I intended to be smoke.