Nausea, sticky and relentless, rose up my throat, mixing with the ice-cold terror of understanding. I swallowed hard, pulse pounding at my temples, while my palms, small and slick with sweat, clenched into fists.
"Not my hands… a kid's fingers."
The thought stabbed through my mind like a shard of ice. This wasn't a nightmare, not a hallucination after a wild party or an all-night anime marathon. The last thing my adult, exhausted brain remembered was the soft brush of silky sheets in my own bedroom, the flickering screen as the final credits of Naruto rolled, the hard-won peace after closing the quarter. Max. Thirty-eight. Senior executive. Penthouse owner… and now this. The body of a seven- or eight-year-old child, dumped into a damp stone cell.
The air hung heavy, soaked in the stench of unwashed bodies, excrement, and damp that had seeped into the very rock. Through the bars, thick and rusted, I could just make out the other unfortunates. Not just children like the ones in my cell, huddled together like frightened chicks, quietly sniffling or staring dully at the filthy floor. In the neighbouring cages, shadows shifted: hunched old men with faces carved by despair; thin, exhausted women trying to cover themselves with rags; men with empty eyes, with nothing left in them but the animal urge to survive. Universal slavery. Universal hopelessness.
My stomach clenched into a tight, aching knot, forcing me to fold in half. Hunger. Not just wanting to eat, but an all-consuming pain that twisted my guts and reduced my mind to one primitive goal: find food.
"What the hell is going on here? Where am I?"
Panic, cold and clammy, locked around my thoughts, trying to drag me into the abyss of hysteria.
"Hold on, Max. Breathe. Analyse. You know how to analyse."
I forced myself to lift my head and peer into the half-dark. Stone walls. Low vaults. Water seeping from cracks. A prison. Not a civilised one, though, more like something out of medieval nightmares, or… or those anime where a human life is worth less than grime under a fingernail.
Then the clank of iron tore the silence apart. A door at the end of the corridor squealed on rusty hinges, and a hoarse voice, steeped in contempt, burst into the stale air.
"Feed this carrion. Don't let them croak before morning."
The words hung there, heavy and poisonous. Two men came down the corridor. One, short and vicious, carried a jug. The other… tall, grim, in a battered uniform. And on his forehead, clearly visible in the torchlight, a metal plate glinted. A symbol. Inverted, warped, but…
"Konoha?"
The thought flashed like lightning. Impossible. But the plate… and that voice, cold and emotionless, like those shinobi…
The nasty little runt started flinging glossy black balls, about the size of a hazelnut, into the cages. In my cell, a quiet war flared. Children who'd looked half-dead a moment ago lunged at the food with snarls, scratching and wrenching the balls from each other. One bounced into a corner, right by my feet. I grabbed it with trembling fingers. Cold. Smooth. Almost weightless.
"What is this?"
There was almost no smell. Hunger drowned out disgust. I shoved the ball into my mouth. Tasteless. Like rubber. But the instant I swallowed it, the burning pain in my stomach began to ease, replaced by an unnatural fullness. Too fast. Too… chemical.
I crawled into the darkest corner, pressing myself against the wet stones, trying to make myself invisible. The fullness brought no peace. If anything, it made the realisation hit harder.
Konoha's plate. Those balls. Underground. Slaves.
"This isn't an accident… this is the world of Naruto."
Not the bright world of adventures and heroic deeds from the anime, but its dark, filthy, bloody underbelly. A world where wars raged, where there were Villages Hidden in the Leaves… and places like this, where they threw the unwanted, the weak, the captured.
"I'm in it. No, I'm in it up to my ears. From a luxury bed to a slave cage, a little kid, in a world of deadly ninjas."
The irony was so bitter my eyes stung with traitorous tears. I clenched my jaw and swallowed the lump in my throat. Panic was useless. Fear would kill faster than any guard.
I had to think. Remember.
What did I know about this world? The system of ranks? The villages? The Uchiha clan? The Rinnegan? It was all jumbled up, in scraps, like frames from a vivid but very distant dream.
The main thing was that power ruled here. Absolute. Ruthless.
And me… I'd been nothing but a successful salesman. My most dangerous weapon was the ability to persuade, and my knowledge of psychology. How could I use that here?
How had I ended up here? Who was I now? This body had to have a name, a past… but in my head there were only my memories, the memories of a man from the modern world.
From the darkness of the neighbouring cage came a strangled groan, then a woman's muffled sob. Someone coughed, ragged and hoarse. In my cage the children, once they'd eaten, sank back into apathy. Some were already asleep, curled into balls on the cold stone.
Fatigue, real physical fatigue, began to wash over my new, small body in waves despite the tension in my nerves. The fullness from the ball was deceptive, more like anaesthetic. My mind was clouding.
I felt my eyelids turning to lead.
Before I fell into a heavy, restless sleep, where images of office skyscrapers mixed with shadows in cloaks and katanas in their hands, one last bitter thought flashed through my head, coloured with the sarcasm of despair.
"Well then… in the name of the power of youth, like that weirdo in the green jumpsuit used to say… looks like my 'youth' has only just begun. From the very bottom."
Darkness closed over my consciousness, dragging me into oblivion where past and present, real and anime, braided together into a bizarre, frightening pattern. The cold of the stone seeped through the thin fabric of my rags, reminding me of the tomorrow waiting in this stone grave called prison.
⁂
Sleep was bottomless, sticky as tar, pulling me down into a pit where the past, a luxurious penthouse with shimmering screens, collided with the current nightmare: rusty bars, the smell of fear, the freezing touch of stone. I clung to scraps of awareness, trying to convince myself it was all delirium, a monstrous continuation of yesterday's anime binge. But the cold floor digging into my hip, the dry lump in my throat, and the savage hunger were all too real. Every detail, every disgusting smell, hammered another nail into the lid of my hopes.
"Not a dream. Not a hallucination. Another world. A child's body. Slavery. Konoha… the world of Naruto."
The thought swept through my mind like an icy wind. I was here. Locked up. Helpless. Now I was nothing but a trembling bundle of dirt and bones in a cage with others just as doomed. Despair, sticky and familiar, rose from my stomach again, but I clamped down on it and forced it back. Panic was a luxury for the dead. And I, damn it, was still breathing.
Rough blows against the cage's rusty bars rolled through the dungeon, yanking me out of the half-doze where nightmares had already started blending with reality. The metal trembled and rang, sending dull pain through my temples. A torch's harsh light hit my eyes, making me squeeze them shut. Beyond the bars, silhouettes hovered: a grim man in a worn vest, his face twisted with malice; a hunched old man in a filthy, once-white coat smeared with dark stains; and two emotionless guards in battered uniforms, their faces hidden by the shadows of their hoods. But I already knew what was under those shadows: metal plates. Shinobi. The jailers of this hell.
"Up, carrion!" rasped the nasty one, his voice scraping my nerves like a rusty saw. "Move, or I'll finish you on the spot!"
The cage door slid open with a screech. A guard stepped in, his club snapping out like a snake to drive us. Quiet panic flared in the cage. Children who'd been curled up a second ago stirred, whined, tried to crawl deeper. Pointless. The club whistled and cracked into the nearest boy's shoulder. He cried out and thrashed.
"Out! Now!" the guard's shout merged with sobbing.
A flood of small bodies swept me up and shoved me out into a damp, reeking corridor. The air here was thick, soaked not only with the stench of unwashed bodies but with something else too: mould, the dampness of ancient stone, and… blood. Sweet, clinging, like rust on the tongue. Torches driven into the walls cast uneven shadows, turning the corridor into a series of black mouths. We were herded forward, pushed, struck with clubs. Children stumbled, fell, were hauled up with kicks. I tried to stay in the middle, to blend into the grey mass of little slaves, but every step rang in my ears. Where? Why?
My thoughts darted, trying to find logic in this madness. What I knew of the world of Naruto from the anime was vivid but chaotic. Cults? Dark techniques? Everything I remembered boiled down to one thing: life here was worth nothing. Especially ours.
The corridor widened and ran into a gigantic arched opening. We poured through it, and it felt like someone hit me in the head.
A vast cave.
Its vaults vanished into darkness, and the air was heavy with a smell, not just blood, but old blood that had sunk into the stone over years, maybe decades. That stench hung unmoving, soaking into lungs, skin, clothes. And there was fear here too. Animal, primal terror.
In the centre of the cave rose a massive stone altar, not just a slab but an entire platform crudely cut from dark rock. Its surface was speckled with dried blood that merged into sinister patterns, as if varnished with suffering.
And in front of the altar, back to us, stood a single figure in a long dark cloak. The stillness of it was terrifying, like Death itself had frozen in expectation.
One of the ninja escorting us stepped forward and bowed his head in a respectful, detached bow.
"The vessels are delivered, Hayashi-sama. All of them, as ordered."
His voice, usually hoarse with contempt, now sounded flat and emotionless, like an automaton.
Hayashi did not turn around. He only gave a slight nod. That was enough. The guards moved again, roughly driving us, children crying and clinging to each other, onto the altar's blood-smeared podium. The stones under my bare feet were sticky and cold. I felt a shiver seize my whole body, locking my muscles. This was not just fear, it was a premonition. The last rasp of a soul before the fall into the abyss.