The first year was a hell of helplessness.
It wasn't the damp blankets or the constant, hollow ache in his stomach that truly tormented him—it was the prison of his own mind. A lifetime of memories, thoughts, and a fully-formed consciousness were trapped inside a vessel that could do little more than eat, sleep, and soil itself. He had decided on a name for himself in the quiet of his own skull: **Kaito**. It meant "sea of possibilities," a desperate hope against the bleak shores of his reality.
His world was a small, drafty room in the Konoha orphanage, run by a woman they all called Mama Shizu. She was kind, with eyes that held a permanent sadness, and hands that were always gentle, even when they were chapped and raw from work. Kaito learned the rhythms of this place. The predawn stirrings of the other orphans, the smell of thin barley porridge, the sound of Mama Shizu's soft humming as she changed linens. It was a life of stark simplicity, a far cry from the digital noise and constant stimulation of his past life.
And it was in this silence that he first began to listen.
The knowledge of Haki was there, not as a system prompt, but as a deep, instinctual well he could barely dip a finger into. His body was too weak, too underdeveloped for the demanding physicality of Armament Haki. The few times he tried to focus on hardening his skin, he'd felt a flicker, a phantom sensation of toughness that vanished the moment he lost concentration. It was less than novice; it was a ghost of a power.
But his spirit… that was a different matter.
His mind, though housed in an infant's brain, was that of an adult, tempered by a traumatic death and rebirth. It was a fertile ground for the other two Hakis.
He started with Observation. At first, it was just paying attention. He'd lie in his cradle and focus not on seeing, but on *feeling*. He learned to distinguish the emotional "colors" of the people around him. Mama Shizu was a steady, warm amber glow of weary compassion. The other infants were chaotic bursts of red hunger, blue discomfort, or, rarely, a soft pink contentment.
Then, one day, it deepened. He was lying there, and he *felt* Mama Shizu's intention to pick him up a full second before her shadow fell over him. It wasn't a guess. It was a certainty that bloomed in his mind, a subtle shift in the pressure of the air, a pre-emptive ripple in the fabric of the world. He hadn't seen her move; he had felt her *will* to move.
That was the breakthrough.
From then on, it became his obsession. In the dead of night, when the orphanage was quiet, he would practice. He'd focus on the child in the crib next to his, trying to feel when they would stir from a dream, when they would turn over. He expanded his range slowly, painstakingly. By the time he was two, he could map the entire lower floor of the orphanage in his mind not by sight, but by the faint, sleeping presences of a dozen other children. He was a novice, yes, but a novice who was learning to read the silent music of intent that played all around him.
Conqueror's Haki was a different beast entirely. It wasn't something he could practice. It was a storm inside him that only broke loose when his own control shattered.
The first time it happened, he was a year and a half old. A new caretaker, a stern-faced man with rough hands, was trying to force-feed him a medicine that tasted foul. Kaito, frustrated and enraged by his own helplessness, had thrown a tantrum. But this was different. It wasn't just a child's rage; it was the accumulated fury of a man trapped in a cage, all bursting out at once.
He screamed, and a wave of invisible force erupted from him.
It wasn't powerful. It didn't knock anyone out. But the stern caretaker stumbled back, his eyes wide with sudden, inexplicable confusion. The birds chirping outside the window fell silent for a three-count. Mama Shizu, who had been across the room, dropped a wooden spoon, her head snapping towards him with an expression of pure, unvarnished shock. The pressure lasted only a moment, a king's fleeting, petulant command for the world to *stop*.
And then it was gone.
The room returned to normal, but the look in Mama Shizu's eyes remained. She looked at him not with fear, but with a deep, unsettling knowing. She never spoke of it, but from that day on, she was… careful. She would sometimes just watch him, her head tilted as if listening to a faint, distant song only he could produce.
Kaito learned the cost of Conqueror's Haki that day. It was a loss of control, a revelation of his otherness. He couldn't afford to be other. He was in a village of shinobi, where otherness was dissected, weaponized, or eliminated. He vowed to lock that part of himself away, to only let it out when the alternative was death itself.
The years blurred into a routine of secret growth. He learned to walk, to talk in simple sentences, all the while maintaining the facade of a quiet, slightly withdrawn child. His Observation Haki grew stronger. He could now sense not just intention, but immediate, incoming danger.
He was playing in the small, dirt-patched yard of the orphanage at age four when it saved him. An older boy, frustrated and bullying, shoved him hard towards a jagged rock lining a flowerbed. Time didn't slow down, but Kaito's perception did. He didn't *see* the rock; he *felt* the sharp, piercing threat it represented. His body, guided by this pre-cognitive instinct, twisted mid-fall. It was clumsy, a toddler's stumble, but it was enough. His shoulder took the brunt of the impact on soft earth, instead of his temple meeting stone.
He lay there for a second, heart pounding, not from the fall, but from the power of what had just happened. He had *used* it. Not just observed, but acted. It was a novice's triumph, but it felt more validating than any system notification ever could.
The bully was scolded and dragged away. Mama Shizu helped Kaito up, brushing the dirt from his worn tunic. Her eyes, those all-too-perceptive eyes, scanned his face.
"You are a very lucky boy, Kaito," she murmured, her voice low.
He just nodded, his gaze dropping to the ground. *It wasn't luck,* he thought. *It was me.*
As he approached the age of five, the world outside the orphanage's fence began to press in. He heard the older children whisper about "the war," their voices a mix of fear and excitement. He saw more shinobi moving through the streets, their faces grim, their postures tense. He felt their chakra signatures as they passed—some like sputtering candles, others like contained bonfires. One, a man with a shock of white hair and a covered eye, felt like a blade of ice—cold, sharp, and deadly. *Hatake Kakashi.*
The reality of his situation crystallized. The Academy was coming. The war was coming. He was a novice in a world of masters, a child with a king's power he dared not use.
On the eve of his fifth birthday, he stood by the small window of his shared room, looking out at the Hokage Monument. The stone faces of Hashirama, Tobirama, and Hiruzen stared back, impassive.
He had nothing. No family name, no legacy to claim, no powerful clan to teach him jutsu.
But he had a will that had survived death.
He had an eye that could see the world not as it was, but as it was about to be.
He had a spirit that could, for a fleeting moment, command the attention of the world itself.
He was Kaito. And tomorrow, the first step towards his future would begin. He was as ready as he would ever be.
__________________________________________________________________________________
AUTHOR NOTES :- for just 1 dollar SUPPORT THE CHANNEL SO THAT I CAN PROVIDE FASTER UPDATES MY PATREON CHANNEL LINK CHECK IT OUT https://patreon.com/fanficwritter?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink
__________________________________________________________________________________