A sharp pain jolted through Hinata Haruki's body.
His eyes snapped open.
What greeted him was a thick, suffocating darkness—almost as if he had fallen into a deep, murky sea. His entire body felt heavy, sluggish, and unresponsive. He couldn't lift a finger, couldn't feel his limbs. Panic threatened to rise in his chest.
Am I… dead?
That was his first thought. His mind felt like it was floating, drifting weightlessly in this endless abyss.
Then, a memory surfaced—abrupt and vivid.
He remembered the moment his scalpel slipped.
He had been in surgery. Cardiac surgery. He had been operating for over fourteen hours straight. No breaks, no food, not even a drink of water. The entire surgical team was on edge, and the patient's condition had deteriorated rapidly.
One wrong incision.
A moment of hesitation.
Then chaos.
So… I died on the operating table?
As the realization hit, Haruki felt a deep sense of sorrow—not for himself, but for the patient, for the failure, for the lives affected by that moment of human error.
But before the weight of guilt could fully settle in, his thoughts were cut off by an unfamiliar sensation.
It was… light.
A warm, golden light—soft yet powerful—pierced through the darkness around him. It wasn't blinding. In fact, it felt oddly comforting, like the first rays of sunlight after a storm.
What… is this?
Then came the voices.
Unfamiliar yet somehow familiar. Male and female. Their tones were gentle but laced with anxiety. Muffled sobs. Pleas. Laughter. Celebration. Mourning. It was all a blur, a swirl of emotions and sounds.
He tried to move, to see, to understand.
And then—it hit him.
Pain. So sharp and sudden that he thought his body might split apart.
A blinding white flash filled his vision as he screamed—a sound that came out not as a man's cry, but as the helpless wail of a newborn.
Hinata Haruki was reborn.
And not just anywhere.
As his vision adjusted, he caught glimpses of the room. Lantern-lit walls. Worn wooden beams. The distinctive garb of a shinobi midwife. The Hyuga crest stitched into fabric.
No. No way. This can't be...
He had seen this world before.
Not in real life—but in pages, on screens, in animation.
He had stepped into the world of Naruto.
More than that, he had been born into the Hyuga clan.
And the name they whispered as they gently rocked his tiny body confirmed it:
"Haruki… Hinata Haruki."