The sky above Konoha was a soft gray, stretched thin with slow-moving clouds. The rooftops wore dust like old memories, and the breeze that passed through the alleyways carried the faint scent of wood smoke and damp stone.
A small figure sat atop a rusted water tower, legs dangling, arms resting on bent knees.
Ren Uzumaki.
Five years, nine months old.
Almost six.
He stared out at the village — its busy markets, its ancient walls, its indifference — and let the silence stretch around him like a second skin.
> "Almost six years… since I was reborn into this world."
His eyes narrowed slightly, dark like midnight ink. Thoughtful. Still.
> "Into this body. Into this life. Twin brother of Naruto Uzumaki."
He exhaled slowly through his nose.
Naruto had Kurama — the Nine-Tails sealed within him, a heavy, hateful burden he didn't even understand yet.
Ren didn't.
He was just the normal version.
No fox. No curse mark. No sealed monster clawing at the edges of his soul.
Just… him.
And yet, the villagers still looked at both of them the same — like trash left in the rain.
He remembered — vividly — the times they tried to buy something from the stalls near the plaza. Bread, rice balls, old fruit. Nothing fancy.
But the moment the vendors saw their faces — the whiskers on their cheeks, the name Uzumaki — they would tighten their lips. Their hands would hover over produce, only to draw back.
> "We're closed."
"Go away."
"We don't serve your kind here."
Ren didn't forget any of it.
Naruto had cried once. Just once.
Ren didn't. He had learned early that crying didn't help — not here.
But that didn't mean it didn't hurt.
He reached up absentmindedly and brushed his fingers across his cheek.
Three faint lines. Just like Naruto.
The villagers called them fox marks — but Ren knew better.
He didn't have the Nine-Tails. He was never sealed.
And yet, somehow, he still carried the mark — maybe from being born just five seconds later, in the same flood of chakra and chaos. A twin shadow. Not cursed… just stained by proximity.
He leaned back slightly, hands gripping the metal rim behind him, and tilted his head toward the apartment window just a few buildings away — the one barely holding itself upright.
Naruto was inside.
Probably messing with that old noodle pot again. Probably burning something. Again.
Ren let the edge of a smirk touch his lips. Barely.
> "It's been awful."
He didn't need to say more than that.
But then, his gaze softened.
Because no matter how bitter the world was, how cold the mornings got, or how tightly the villagers held their hate…
He had Naruto.
And Naruto had him.
> "They mock us. They starve us. They wish we never existed."
His jaw clenched slightly, the wind teasing his bangs.
> "But fck that."*
He stood up slowly, the metal groaning beneath his bare feet.
> "I have him."
He looked once more at the window, where the yellow-haired idiot was probably wrecking their only pair of bowls.
> "And he has me."
He stepped off the edge — and landed silently in the alley below.
The sky cracked open with faint sunlight as Ren walked back home, back to the only person in this village who saw him not as a curse…
…but as a brother.
> "We'll fight through this. Together."
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