Those Hands - A Naruto SI

The verbal tsunami hit Yuji with the force of a category five hurricane. One second, he was dealing with a sullen, sad little boy. The next, he was the sole audience for a fiery manifesto on Hokage ambitions and the superiority of miso char siu ramen. His David Gerald brain, accustomed to awkward pauses and stuttered conversations, short-circuited. He could only stand there, eyes slightly wide, mouth slightly agape, as Naruto's torrent of enthusiastic words washed over him.

'How... how was that transition so fast?' Yuji thought, utterly flabbergasted. 'It's like trying to follow a ping-pong ball in a hurricane. One candy. One damn lemon candy turned him from a depressing drama character into a hyperactive motivational speaker. Does sugar in this world have some kind of steroid in it?'

Naruto finally paused to take a breath, his chest heaving with excitement. He looked at Yuji with the same brilliant blue eyes, but now they shone with pure, unadulterated hope and energy, awaiting a response.

Yuji opened his mouth. Then closed it again. What was he supposed to say? "Yes, ramen is indeed delicious"? "Good luck with your Hokage dream, which I know for a de facto fact will come true after much trauma and loss"? "Could you repeat that, but slower, and maybe with some diagrams?"

"Uh..." was the only intelligent response he managed to muster. He felt like an old computer trying to run new software. The gears in his head were spinning noisily, trying to process the deluge of information and emotion he had just witnessed.

Seeing Yuji's confusion, Naruto's smile faltered slightly. "You don't like ramen?" he asked, a genuine note of disappointment creeping into his voice.

"No! It's not that! I love ramen!" Yuji said quickly, too quickly. "I... I love ramen so much that I can't talk about it. It's too emotional a topic for me. Brings back too many memories. Memories of bowls... and chopsticks."

Naruto tilted his head, looking confused but accepting the bizarre explanation. "Oh. Okay."

An awkward silence settled over them again, though this time it was less depressing. Yuji decided to take control, if only to steer the conversation onto a less winding path. He glanced around the empty park, then back at Naruto.

"So..." he began, choosing his words carefully. "Why are you here alone? Where are your friends?"

It was an innocent question, a question any six-year-old would ask. But Yuji knew the weight behind it. He knew the answer before he even asked.

Naruto's expression changed for a fleeting moment. For just a fraction of a second, the same flash of sadness Yuji had seen before crossed his eyes, so fast that if Yuji had blinked, he would have missed it. But then, it was gone, replaced by a wide, forced grin.

"Friends?" Naruto laughed, a laugh that was a little too loud, a little too shrill. "Pfft! Who needs friends? I'm on a secret training mission! Super secret! I'm training my concealment jutsu! You know, becoming one with the swing set. It's a high-level skill, dattebayo! I'm so good at it that nobody can even see me!" He puffed out his chest with pride, though his posture looked stiff.

Yuji just stared.

In his old world, on his television screen, a scene like this felt sad. It was a moment designed to make the audience sympathize with the lonely hero. And it worked. David Gerald, eating cereal straight from the box, might have muttered, "Poor kid," before moving on to the next episode.

But seeing it in person... it was something else entirely.

Watching it in 2D didn't give him this feeling. This feeling like a cold hand was squeezing his stomach. On screen, you couldn't see the tiny strain at the corners of Naruto's smile. You couldn't hear the thin note of desperation under his cheerful laugh. You couldn't feel the aura of loneliness so potent it was almost suffocating, an aura he was trying to cover with a paper-thin layer of bravado.

This kid, standing in front of him, was lying so badly to protect his broken heart. And he was doing it with a smile on his face.

For the first time since arriving in this cursed world, Yuji didn't feel fear for his own mortality or annoyance at his situation. He felt something else. Something sharp and painful. Empathy.

'Damn it,' he thought, his traitorous heart acting up again. 'This is so much worse in person.'

He felt like an intruder, as if he had peeked into the most private and vulnerable part of someone's soul. And it made him deeply uncomfortable.

"A secret training mission, huh?" Yuji said softly, deciding to play along. "Must be... very secret."

"Of course!" Naruto exclaimed. "But since you gave me a candy, I'll give you the honor of knowing my name! I'm Naruto Uzumaki! Remember it!"

"Yuji Yamashita," Yuji replied automatically. "Nice to meet you, Naruto."

"Yamashita..." Naruto repeated, testing it on his tongue. "Like 'under the mountain'? What a weird name!"

"Well, Uzumaki is like... a whirlpool, right? Who names their kid after a drain?" Yuji retorted, his tone flatter than he intended.

Naruto just burst out laughing, not offended in the slightest. "That's true! That's funny!"

Suddenly, Naruto's eyes lit up with a new idea. "Hey! Hey, Yuji! Since you now know my secret identity, you have to join my training! Let's play ninja! I'll be the brave Konoha ninja, and you can be... uh... the bad guy from another village that I'm gonna defeat!"

'Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no.' Yuji's brain screamed. 'Playing? Running around? With this solar-powered ball of energy? I'd rather try to explain the theory of relativity to a cat. I need a nap. I've already done more socializing than my quota for the week.'

"I don't know," Yuji said hesitantly. "I'm not very... athletic. I'm more of a... strategic observer. From a lying-down position."

"Come on!" Naruto urged, tugging on the sleeve of Yuji's shirt. His enthusiasm was as contagious as the plague. "It'll be fun! I'll teach you some of my super-secret moves!"

Yuji looked at Naruto's hopeful face. He saw the loneliness behind the smile, an unspoken plea not to be left alone again.

He let out a long sigh, the sigh of a defeated man. "Fine," he grumbled. "But I'm not being the bad guy. I'll be... the traveling merchant who gets caught in the middle of the battle and just wants to go home."

Naruto frowned. "That's a lame role."

"It's a realistic role," Yuji shot back. "And I'm not running fast."

And so it was that Yuji, who valued laziness above all else, ended up spending the next hour running around the park, being chased by a blond-haired boy who made "swoosh" and "bang" noises every time he jumped out from behind a bush.

It was an exhausting experience. Naruto had limitless energy. He climbed the slide, leaped from the swings, and rolled around in the grass with a vigor that made Yuji feel like a hundred-year-old man. Yuji, on the other hand, spent most of his time leaning against a tree, panting, occasionally yelling, "Oh, my back!" which Naruto, of course, ignored.

Finally, as the sun began to set, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple, Naruto declared his victory.

"I win!" he shouted, standing on top of a park bench in a heroic pose. "The evil traveling merchant has been defeated by the power of justice and ramen!"

"I wasn't even the bad guy," Yuji wheezed from where he was sprawled on the grass, staring at the clouds. "And I need water. And possibly a new lung."

When Yuji finally managed to drag himself home, it was already dark. Every muscle in his six-year-old body ached. He felt like he had just run a marathon, not played with a kid. The exhaustion was bone-deep.

He opened the front door quietly, hoping to sneak to his room undetected. His hopes were in vain.

"Yuji? Where have you been, son?" His mother's worried voice came from the dining room.

Yuji walked in, his shoulders slumped. Both his parents were sitting at the table, looking at him with concern.

"We were about to send an ANBU search party," his father said, though there was a hint of an amused smile on his lips. "You look like you've been wrestling a bear."

Yuji slumped into a chair. "Worse," he mumbled. "I was... socializing."

Kaori and Kenji exchanged a confused look.

"You were socializing?" Kaori asked. "With whom?"

Yuji thought about the best way to answer. He could just tell the truth: "I was just hanging out with the living vessel of the nine-tailed fox monster that nearly destroyed this village six years ago." But that would probably raise more questions.

So, he went with his standard, Yuji-esque answer.

"I was caught in a delicate negotiation," he said with a straight face. "There was a territorial dispute between the red ant colony and the black ant colony near the river. I was acting as a mediator. It was very tense. A lot of red tape. Their queens are tough negotiators."

His parents just stared at him for a moment, then his mother sighed and shook her head, a small smile playing on her lips. "You and your stories, Yuji. Wash your hands, dinner is ready."

They were used to it. His strangeness and absurd answers had become a normal part of their lives. Somehow, that made Yuji feel a little better.

After forcing himself to eat, Yuji went straight to his room. He didn't even bother to change his clothes. He just buried his face in his wonderfully cool and comfortable pillow. The exhaustion finally won.

As he drifted between consciousness and sleep, a nagging thought slipped into his tired mind.

He had done something today. Something that wasn't in the original story. He had talked to Naruto. He had given him a candy. He had played with him. A small, insignificant act in the grand scheme of things.

But in a world of stories and narratives, no act was truly insignificant.

'The butterfly effect,' he thought sluggishly. 'A butterfly flaps its wings in Konoha, and a hurricane happens in Suna.'

He had flapped his wings today. He had changed the smallest variable in the equation. What would be the impact? Had he just made his life infinitely more complicated? Had he just painted a target on his own back?

"Please," he whispered into his pillow, a prayer directed at the universe or whoever was in charge of this mess. "Let this not come back to bite me. Please don't give me a stupid butterfly effect."

With that comforting thought, Yamashita Yuji finally fell asleep, unaware that the butterfly had already taken flight long ago.