Chapter 3

One year. Is it a lot or a little? Well, it depends on how you look at it. If old age is creeping up on you and you're living out the rest of your life, then years fly by like the wind. But if you're just a newborn baby, then a whole year stretches into eternity! You can't speak, you can't walk, you can't even feed yourself! You can't do anything on your own!!! It's fortunate that humans don't remember their lives from birth. All those swaddling clothes, onesies, and everything else that accompanies all newborn babies. Dreadful!

The only bright spot — I was breastfed, not fed some chemical mixtures that are trendy nowadays. However, my diet wasn't limited to that; various porridges also diversified my menu, which made me literally grow before everyone's eyes. By the end of the year, I was confidently crawling and starting to walk along the wall. Not meaning up to the ceiling, just holding onto something with both hands.

As a baby, I was calm, didn't cry unnecessarily just out of my infantile pride, and therefore didn't cause my parents any major problems. Of course, there were sometimes worries that someone would notice differences in the behavior of ordinary children, but after eavesdropping on Sai and Ryuta's conversations, as my father and mother were called, I discovered that I wasn't the only one — children of the Nara clan, in general, preferred to eat, sleep, and sometimes crawl without wasting energy on extra cries.

However, what surprised me wasn't that, but the fact that my cousin Shikaku, at his young age of three, not only ran without problems but also spoke quite fluently. Damn geniuses! In general, as far as I understood, thanks to the ninja parents, their children developed one and a half to two times faster than civilians, who didn't have large reserves of chakra from birth. Apparently, a greater amount of chakra at birth provided such an opportunity.

However, a similar situation was observed among the Nara, but with the Uzumaki children, they physically developed even faster and by this age began training to become ninja. These are the advantages of having a larger amount of bodily energy or, if you remember the fancy names, "yang." If memory serves me right, "yang" relates to the degree of physical development, something the inhabitants of the whirlpool village always had in abundance, while "yin" is spiritual development, training of the mind, and gaining experience, something members of the Nara clan had in plenty.

Perhaps that's why, with my rather modest knowledge of Japanese, I managed to quite decently understand spoken language within half a year. Or maybe it's because Saya really loved to chat with other moms during my walks. Whether you want it or not, you'll learn something.

I tried not to think about the reason for ending up in the world of elemental countries. Indeed, the opportunity to start life anew, crystal-clear air, clean water, natural food, and the possibility of gaining powers I hadn't even dreamt of having.

Oh, and a rough knowledge of key events that would happen in the future, as well as the ability to influence them. And most importantly, here I have parents, alive. What else do I need? In the old life, I faced an empty apartment after my wife's death, poison in literally everything consumed, and five to ten years until death. Not a very pleasant prospect. And certainly not worth much regret.

The second year. Significant events outside my limited world were still not observed. But the list of personal achievements grew to include the ability to walk (and later run), speak relatively complex words, and attempt to learn to read and write. The latter was taken on by my dad, who gladly demonstrated magical tricks with seals as a motivational method.

For someone who had never seen anything beyond the ordinary in their life, it was truly a miracle, hence the round eyes and gaping mouth didn't even need to be exaggerated. And anyway, my psyche underwent a series of changes towards simplicity of emotional expression, as is typical for children, but it didn't affect the thought process difficulty or worsen concentration. Hail the power of "yin" as a component of chakra!

But all achievements were overshadowed by the presence of my brilliant cousin brother, who by four years old effortlessly wrote characters and played shogi better than many adults not belonging to the Nara clan, much to my envy. He could have trained in chakra awakening, but laziness and the habit of sleeping a third of the day greatly interfered with that. 

The third year. Ryuta could no longer stay with us and returned to his village. As mom said, my grandfather used all his influence to keep him with us for such a long time. I wonder which of the two? Two and a half years is much more than twelve months. Despite such a sad event, I have reason to be proud — alongside a huge expansion of my vocabulary, I mastered writing at a level sufficient to engage in seal drawing.

I made my first seal under my dad's supervision just before he left. Shikaku is taking a break — I'm a genius! Although, I only awakened my chakra at the very end of the year under mom's strict supervision, so I didn't get to fill that same seal personally. And besides the training seal that emits light, I couldn't draw anything else — dad left clear instructions to start practicing fuinjutsu only at the age of four and only after achieving good chakra control.

By that time, my chakra volume should have increased to the level of an average ninja academy student. That's why I had to spend a month meditating, trying to feel the chakra inside me. As mom explained, Uzumaki are forced to start training at this age due to the significantly large chakra volumes even in childhood, and if they don't start two years earlier than everyone else, there will be big problems with control.

Moreover, if you deplete the reserve almost completely, the volume will increase much faster than naturally. Well, who would object? I'm always happy to do something just because the list of entertainments is extremely short here. For example, I like to chase our shepherd dogs, which are used to drive deer in the Nara forest. It really develops muscles and overall body speed. A kind of preparation for future training, you could say. Well, I also train in fast writing, which is also very useful for a future seal master.

I play shogi with mom. And that's it. There's nothing else to do. Except maybe sleep or stare at the clouds, like my cousin brother does. Even TVs here are not used as entertainment devices but as surveillance devices for monitoring the territory through cameras or recording important events, and they are very expensive. There's no television or radio. At all.

Communication is used exclusively for military purposes and even then, over short distances. How did I find out? I visited the clan library. I didn't find anything interesting, but I managed to borrow a couple of books. One of them turned out to be historical and described the wanderings of one of the Nara during the clan wars, before the founding of the first villages. It was very interesting, like reading an uncensored action movie.

Now I understand how ancient shinobi entertained themselves — first, a good fight, and then interrogating surviving men to extract known techniques and using enemy kunoichi for the same purposes. The latter broke faster. I quickly returned the historical book before anyone caught me — I feel like if I were caught with it, my ears would definitely be torn off. But I remembered where I put it very well. I'll have to sneak it to Shikaku in a year, maybe after reading it, he'll stop being so lazy with training.