Like most people, I never really thought about how I would die. I knew it would happen eventually, sure—but I never imagined it'd be truck-kun that ended my life at twenty.
Just before that fateful impact, I had wrapped up college with a degree in electrical engineering. My life was just getting started. I was lining up job interviews, planning to earn some cash, maybe find someone special and settle down.
But before my life could truly begin, it ended. Tragic, or at least I'd like to think so.
As I lay in the street, consciousness fading, I realized no one was coming to help. Truck-kun, that merciless bastard, just kept driving off—mockingly slow. My world began to darken.
I was upset, of course. But I accepted it. There would be no tomorrow. No more seeing my brothers. No more playing with my dog. No more hugs from my mother.
Everything I loved—gone. Out of reach.
"I haven't seen my father in a month... I wish I'd spent more time with him," was the last thought that crossed my mind before everything went black.
But then... I was reborn.My world didn't end as I expected. One moment, I took my last breath—and the next, my first.
Everything was a blur. Cold air filled my lungs, and distant sounds—footsteps, chatter—filtered through to my ears.
I drifted in and out of consciousness. No idea where I was. I'd been an above-average student, nothing special. Just another city kid with divorced parents, taking the bus to college. It was 2020. I wasn't some chosen one.
So why was I reincarnated?
I didn't wish for this. I didn't deserve this. But here I was.
As my senses sharpened, I began to learn where I had ended up.I caught sight of a woman—my mother—with pale, blank eyes. People murmured "Hyuga-sama" as she passed. Hyuga? I was most likely one of them.
'Hopefully not a branch member,' I thought, before sleep took me again.
My first birthday brought some much-needed clarity.First: I wasn't part of the branch family. I was the grandson of a recently deceased elder, and my mother—his only daughter—had never been sealed. Hopefully, I'd escape that fate too.
Second: I probably wasn't a full-blooded Hyuga. I'd overheard gossip among the branch members: my mother had been captured by Hidden Mist shinobi during a mission, the only survivor to return after two weeks of "torture and interrogation."
Apparently, my stark white hair was a hot topic among the clan. Plenty speculated that something... else happened during her captivity. She, however, claimed my father had been a Konoha-nin, and kept the truth to herself.
Third: I learned my name—Shiro Hyuga. Fitting, in a bleak kind of way.
My relationship with my mother was minimal. She rarely visited. And when she did, she just stared—never picking me up, never changing my diapers. Those duties fell to silent, dutiful branch members who offered no conversation, leaving me starved for attention and vocabulary.
My birthday was a quiet affair. Typical for a Hyuga child. My mother held me for the first time in months, parading me around to meet the elders and clan head. I didn't recognize any of them—no Hiashi, no Hizashi. Probably somewhere between the First and Third Shinobi Wars.
As I was carried around, I let my thoughts wander. What did the future hold for me? What could I accomplish in this new life?