It was spring in the village, never really my favorite season but it felt like it was with all the excitement in my home. For my parents, the first day of the academy felt like ages ago, Inoichi was so old already, and most of my cousins were currently far older or far younger.

In fact, kids my age were in such short supply around me. I'd met a child my age maybe once in passing. There were so few, having been a war just around the time I was born and conceived. Something about the constant risk of death kept people from wanting kids I guess.

That same tension was starting to grow again. I knew that from the hushed conversations i'd heard from my room. Despite being some sort of prodigy in their eyes my parents still didn't bring it up. I expected a public announcement from the hokage would be the only way i'd find out.

Despite all the festivity there was no hiding the fact that the entire starting class that year didn't even surpass thirty kids.

It was obvious how many of them weren't serious about it, how many of them would drop out or just straight up fail. How many might graduate just to die at the hands of the enemy, whoever they might be.

There were also kids who just plain stood out. A girl with crimson eyes, the hokage's son, a boy with a strange bowl cut and a solid green jumpsuit, and a young Kakashi Hatake.

Of the few things I knew about Naruto, Kakashi was one of them. In my past life I'd joke to my friends that knowing his name was all I needed know about anime.

Not that it stopped them from showing me everything they could. So I knew the backstories of a few characters just vaguely. Kakashi Hatake, I remembered, was an orphan and a prodigy. And in dire need of grief counseling.

That first day I kept to myself in the back of the classroom, toying with shadows and watching dynamics form between the most promising characters.

I knew I shouldn't think of them as characters when they were as real as I currently was, but there was still a degree of separation between this world and myself. Not to mention that I was mentally about twenty years old in a room full of five and six year olds. In that aspect Kakashi was a life saver, as probably the second most mature person in the room, after me and including our buffoon of a teacher.

Even then it was near torture having to interact socially with them. I didn't care much for the social hierarchy of what was essentially a kindergarten class with knives.

Days and then months passed by quickly until suddenly we were halfway through our first year of the academy. It was then that Kakashi became really quiet.

He'd been quiet before of course, but just a few weeks after the war restarted in earnest he became a ghost on the outskirts of the class, more so even than me. Rumors told me he was now an orphan. His countenance told me he had lost a lot more than a parent

A few months later, the two of us were moved into advanced classes. And in just a few more months the two of us graduated four years ahead of the rest of our class.

I was just barely six years old, him just over five and a half, and we were shinobi.