Another Life

Naruto sucked his baby milk formula from the bottle, finding that the taste was not all that bad.

Such a thing had not existed back in his former world. Kushina had to feed him goat milk back before she had given birth to his adoptive twin siblings Naomi and Natsume. Its taste truly did leave much to be desired, so the fact that such convenient things existed here made his repeat of his time as a baby much less unpleasant.

He had already understood the spoken form of the language here after less than a week. Vince and Aria had called it English, almost as though there were other languages here. That was exactly not an alien concept since there had been different languages within the Elemental Countries as well in the form of varying dialect. However, the common language spoken there was simply the one used most. This was more so when it came to those of the shinobi villages.

Aria already seemed to see Naruto as a part of the household, but Vince still clung to his hope that he would be able to find Naruto's parents.

Now that Naruto understood the language that they spoke, he found this daunting. He was worried that the man might somehow end up finding a connection between Naruto and a person of this world and abandon him. With the fact that he did not have any roots in this place, that would be troublesome beyond words. His efforts in searching for a suitable couple would be wasted and he would have to search for yet another foster family.

💣

The one month mark came.

Much to Aria and Naruto's joy, Vince had failed to discover Naruto's family and it was not due to lack of trying.

He had chanced upon too many false leads for him to count, but could not seem to be able to find a single piece of conclusive evidence. He started to consider the thought that the child was the gift of the heavens at some point and the idea continued to linger even until now. There were no traces of where the child might have come from. Nothing strange had shown up when he had run the baby through his tests. There was simply no way of knowing from whence the child had appeared.

Vince had received a voluntary account from their neighbour, a batty old lady by the name of Mrs Angelia York, who told him she could swear that she had seen the infant float in on its own. Naturally, both Vince and Aria had regarded the lady's words as utter nonsense, but that indeed had Vince thinking that the little boy might just be fated to be their child. Mrs York's insinuation that the child they were harbouring must have been a demon was not nearly enough to deter the couple from their desire to have a child that they could call their own.

Aria had awoken that morning, all too gleeful at the fact that her husband had lost their bet. He, the person in question, had not slept a single wink over the past three days. Vince took leave from his work and skipped his meals and sleep, all in his final bid to attempt to dig up the truth about the mysterious baby. It was, however, an attempt that bore absolutely no fruit.

The child truly seemed to have appeared out of nowhere on that wintry New Year's Eve evening.

"You win, Aria," he spoke defeatedly when said woman waltzed into his study with the reason for all his stress in the past month in her arms.

"I've already thought of a name," Aria did not hesitate to proclaim.

"I'm picking the middle name," Vince rebutted almost automatically.

Aria rolled her eyes but did not reject the idea.

"His name will be Sirius. After all, I believe that he will be the brightest star of our lives," Aria declared, holding Naruto up high.

"Then his middle name will be S," Vince said with a nod.

Aria stared at him with her jaw agape.

Vince raised an eyebrow at her odd expression.

"The letter S?" she asked incredulously.

"What else?" he questioned with a frown.

He certainly did not see what was so bad about it. A concise, short middle name did no one any harm. Besides, it had quite a nice ring to it. In no way could he see why his wife deemed it so inappropriate.

"At least make it Es," Aria sighed.

"What's wrong with S?" Vince questioned with a sharp look.

"What significance is there in the letter S?" Aria shot back.

"It's his initial!" Vince argued.

"Well, Es would represent his initials!" Aria pointed out.

Husband and wife stared at each other for one long moment before the former snorted.

"What were we arguing about again?" Vince managed to gasp out through his laughter.

"I wonder," Aria sighed, shaking her head despite the fond smile that tugged at her lips.

"Sirius Es Ebon," Vince murmured, pressing a stubbly kiss to his child's forehead.

"Why does he have to take your surname? Now he'll sound so silly," Aria teased.

"And Eris sounds so much better?" Vince asked with a raised eyebrow.

Aria considered it for a moment.

"There isn't much of a difference, huh?" she admitted with a shrug.

"Don't we have to register him?" Vince spoke after a moment as he thought of an important point.

"When you're so clearly itching to have him take after your craft?" Aria snorted.

"Even so, being so extreme as to not register him is just..." Vince muttered.

"I meant for you to pull your strings so that his files never become public. It will be his decision after he's grown whether to follow his mother's footsteps or his father's," Aria explained slowly.

"How about both?" Vince asked, feeling struck by inspiration.

"It's his choice," Aria emphasised her point as she sent her husband an unimpressed look.

Vince pouted but did not argue any further.

That was when the area above Naruto's head which had always been an empty void became filled with a name that held no connection with his previous world whatsoever.

Sirius Es Ebon.

Even so, Naruto - correction, Sirius felt a little warm inside.

It was a nice feeling. He never felt it back when he had been with the cradle-robbers, so he had almost forgotten what it felt like. It was familiar and pleasant. It simply felt right to be here now and, for once, he did not regret having touched that mask. Having come to this world was not a curse, but a blessing. He felt like he had found a home at last.

This was his family.

From now onward, Sirius thought, this man and woman were his beloved parents.

💣

"He's almost one, Vince," Aria sighed, "let him go."

"What if he hurts himself?" Vince fretted, not letting go of his son.

"You wouldn't even let him crawl until we had a room covered in padding! Enough is enough," Aria exclaimed, whacking her overprotective husband on the head.

Unwillingly, Vince placed their son down on the ground gently.

"There," Vince muttered sullenly, "see? Our Siri isn't ready."

He was proven wrong within the next second as little Sirius betrayed his expectations, standing up and tottering over to Aria.

"Momma," Sirius spoke when he reached his mother's outstretched arms.

Vince pouted, grumbling, "He's still so tiny but he already doesn't need his papa anymore."

Blinking owlishly, Sirius stared at his father for a moment before reaching out towards Vince from his mother's arms.

"Papa," Sirius called, ever the peacemaker.

Vince felt his heart twinge at the adorable sight.

"Isn't our little one clever? He even learned his numbers yesterday! He can count up to twenty now!" Aria exclaimed as Vince drew close.

Vince froze as he stammered, "Sirius can count now?"

Aria rolled her eyes as she sighed, "I swear you weren't always this slow on the uptake. Sirius, why don't you show your father how you count to twenty?"

Sirius nodded slowly.

Kushina used to brag about his progress to her husband Minato and her best friend Mikoto, but this was somehow different. Aria was not using his intelligence as a reason to feel superior, but just trying to show her husband how their child is doing. In fact, despite being equally busy, the grey-eyed Vince was more involved in parenting compared to the blue-eyed Namikaze Minato. It might have been the fact that he cared less for his adopted son, though. Naruto never knew if Naomi and Natsume had also been distanced from their father. Though they all appeared to be close on the surface, there had always been some form of invisible tension between Naruto and Minato.

Sirius shook away those thoughts.

He was not being Naruto right now. In this new world, he was not Uzumaki-Namikaze Naruto or even Kagami Naruto. Until the time for him to return came, those names would no longer refer to him. Now, he was Sirius Es Ebon. Now, his parents were Aria Lynn Ebon and Vince Viol Ebon. They were his parents, not Kushina and Minato and not even his biological mother and father.

"One," Sirius spoke shyly, "two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten."

He took a deep breath so he could list the rest without stopping, "Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen and twenty."

When all Vince could do was stare at him with his jaw agape, Sirius briefly wondered if he should have fumbled a little to make it more believable.

What he was not prepared for was the moment when he was abruptly snatched out of his mother's arms and tossed into the air.

When Vince caught the little toddler, he giddily shouted, "Our little one is a genius!"

"Vince dear, Siri would throw up if you did that again," Aria sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

Indeed, Sirius both looked and felt a little queasy at the moment. He had only just had his meal of baby cereal and his stomach was not quite ready for such sudden manoeuvres yet. It would not have affected him as much had he been his usual self and not a baby, but such was his state at present and lamenting over how he had not made his stomach a little stronger would not help matters. What was done was done. It was not as if he would be able to retreat into a mirror to do the necessary edits to his body when there were surveillance cameras all over the house and an attentive parent always watching over him, anyway. Although his parents were busy people, the two seemed to have a fair bit of flexibility in their working hours and managed to plan their respective schedules such that at least one of them would be present at all times to take care of him. Neither seemed to have considered the idea of hiring a servant or babysitter as of yet. Vince and Aria did not appear to like the idea of having other people in their home, as was evidenced by the complete lack of guests. When someone did come to pay a visit, the two would greet their visitor with stiff smiles and engage in some polite chitchat before sending them off on their way.

"Oops," Vince muttered with a sheepish laugh.

"I'll need to get going now, dears," Aria said with a warm smile as she bent down to kiss Sirius on the forehead.

"Stay safe, Aria," Vince reminded as he pulled his wife into a hug, squashing the toddler in his arms slightly.

"Don't do anything ridiculous to our Siri, you hear? If anything happens, you'll be on the couch for a month," Aria warned, jabbing a finger into her husband's chest.

"Right," Vince agreed with an awkward laugh.

Aria eyed her husband in suspicion of his intent but eventually left with a shake of her head.

As soon as the door clicked shut, Vince refocused his attention onto his son.

"Say, little one," he stage-whispered, "now that you know your numbers, how about I start to teach you the alphabet?"

Vince would never know how excited those words made Sirius feel.

He could finally start learning something new! Although learning how to count was indeed a project that had him busy learning the names of numbers and the system behind said names, the truth was that it had taken only one time hearing his mother say them. There was hardly anything amazing or challenging in that. Even if he still had no idea what the alphabet was, he had a feeling that it had something to do with the written language. Being able to read and write was going to keep him busy indeed. His time as a baby, though filled with love and joy, had been starting to get boring. He could not even use chakra here and, though the fact that his dōjutsu is a mirror in itself allowed him to conceal them when he had them activated (something he then realised would enable him to enter his mirror dimension whenever and wherever), there simply was not much that could be done when he could not even obtain anything from or enter mirrors.

On the surface, however, Sirius gave a slightly curious tilt of the head as he echoed, "Alphabet?"

Vince grinned as he explained, "The alphabet consists of twenty-six letters. It is the basis of the English language. Once you know your alphabet and how to pronounce all your consonants and vowels, you will be able to read and write."

Sirius wanted to whack his father on the head. It could not possibly have been as easy as the man had made it sound. English must have grammar and punctuation rules too. He refused to believe that any language could be as simple as merely being able to read the words. Having figured out what a majority of the words that his parents used at home meant did not mean that he could understand formal language. It was the same concept. His father was oversimplifying things, he thought with a pout.

"It doesn't matter even if you don't get it right away," Vince assured with a chuckle. "It's still too soon for you to learn to read and write anyway. It'll be fun."

"Papa," Sirius spoke with an expectant look, "paper?"

Vince chuckled. "Exactly. Crayons too. Just don't tell your momma, alright?"

Sirius nodded, clapping his hands excitedly just like he knew Naomi would do whenever she was happy when she had still been a toddler.

He pointedly ignored Cairn - Kurama - as said kitsune snorted at the sight of Sirius doing such a silly thing.

Cairn had amused himself with watching Sirius play the part of the Ebon family's son and, to Sirius' discontent, had seen fit to pepper the boy's everyday life with his witty commentary. It was, however, some form of entertainment in his dull life where he had nothing to do except for eating and sleeping. Cairn's exploits in this new world where no one had been able to see him were also a great cause for consternation on Sirius' part. Even if becoming the son of an influential family had been his own choice, that did not make acting like a baby any less boring.

He truly adored his new parents. Even so, being treated as though a fragile doll got a little old. If it were up to Sirius, he would have been taught the alphabet back when he was still one month old. He was a little disappointed that neither of his parents would read to him. Had they done it every night from the beginning, he might know how to read by now. Aria and Vince were both new to parenting and had never thought of it.

Vince sat down together with Sirius in the room that Aria had dubbed the playroom.

It was where all the baby toys were. It was also the room that had been completely covered in padding. Vince had insisted that Sirius was not ready for dangerous things that were hard or had sharp corners and had only gotten their son baby toys that were soft. He never even got a baby carousel or baby walker, things which Sirius had seen in his mother's parenting magazines.

Then again, he had never needed those things.

In the first place, he hardly played with his toys, having never done so back when he lived with the Uzumaki-Namikaze family. Buying him such things did not excite him that much. When he had been younger, the only thing in the piles of toys of his adoptive siblings that interested him had been a bouncy rubber ball. He had one now, but it could not bounce. Everything in this room was so soft that the ball often lost its momentum pretty quickly.

"Let's start with the letter A. It is pronounced as 'ah' and you write it like this," Vince explained while picking up a crayon and writing a capital letter and a lower case letter 'A' on a large piece of drawing block.

"Like momma's name?" Sirius asked curiously.

Vince nodded and said with a smile, "Exactly."

With a shaky hand, Sirius copied down both the upper and lower case A.

"You use upper case," Vince explained while he pointed at the letter, "at the start of a person's name or the beginning of a sentence. Do you think you can think of any words that start with the letter A?"

Sirius pretended to think for a moment.

He had already heard the song about ABCs on his mother's computer as well as the weird one where someone kept saying a letter before they stated a word. He now knew that they were all corresponding to the first letter of the word. He had not quite known the significance of letters in the start, after all. He just knew the mail that his parents receive in neat white envelopes had also been called letters.

"Apple!" he exclaimed, picking a red crayon as he drew said fruit next to his wobbly writings.

"Good boy," Vince praised, ruffling the toddler's hair.

Sirius beamed up at him. Being praised like this felt nicer than he could have thought. He never heard such heartfelt pride in someone's voice as they spoke to him before. It made him feel a little warm inside. He suddenly felt driven to do better so his father would praise him again.

"Next is B," Vince spoke while doing the same as he had before.

This time, Naruto's writing was a little less shaky.

"Can you think of anything that starts with B?" Vince asked.

"Ball? Basket?" Sirius suggested.

Vince nodded with a grin.

"You're right. Both of those words start with the letter B," Vince replied.

Sirius finally realised that the alphabet was probably the same as hiragana and katakana. Did English have the equivalent of kanji too? If there were, he certainly had not seen them. He had written countless names and burned near as many bodies in his experimentation to find out the rules of the notebook. In all the names he wrote, most of them had been in letters. He had seen several that still looked like scribbles despite the length of time he had been here, in fact, and he presumed that those had been in a language still foreign to him rather than a kanji form of English. He even saw some names that were fairly similar to kanji, just several strokes off. He still did not understand a single word of their spoken language though.

"Now C," Vince said as he wrote the capitalised as well as the non-capitalised form of the letter.

This continued until they reached Z.

"What starts with Z?" Sirius asked confusedly as he watched his father write the letter.

"Hmm..." Vince hummed, turning to face Sirius.

"You've already learned how to count with your momma, right?" he started by saying.

Sirius nodded, not truly understanding where his father was going with his explanation.

"Then do you know what you call it when there is nothing?" Vince asked, pulling Sirius onto his lap.

The boy shook his head while frowning.

No, he did not. It had never come up, now that he thought of it. Just what was it called?

"This symbol," Vince explained while writing a '0' on a fresh sheet of paper, "is zero. It means that there is nothing."

"It's the second digit in ten!" Sirius exclaimed as though surprised, though he already knew that before.

Vince chuckled, "Indeed."

"Is zero the only z-word?" Sirius asked curiously.

"Of course not. There's also zebra," Vince spoke with a grin.

"Zebra?" Sirius echoed.

He had heard the word in the nursery rhyme but did not know what it meant.

"It's an animal that looks like a horse that has black and white stripes," Vince explained.

Sirius frowned at the odd picture that made in his mind.

A horse that had black and white stripes? Never had he ever seen such a thing. Such a creature was alien to him.

With a chuckle, Vince picked Sirius up and walked out of the room and sat them both down in front of a bulky desktop computer.

He booted it up and searched on the browser for the word zebra.

Eventually, he found a picture of said animal and showed it to his son.

"That's a zebra. Maybe we'll go to the zoo with your momma sometime," Vince informed. "You can see many different living animals in a zoo."

Sirius was both intrigued and confused at the thought of a place where one could see living breathing animals. Did they cage the animals up? That did not sound very nice. Why would people go to a place to watch pitiful creatures that lost their freedom?

"How about we learn how to write your name?" Vince suddenly suggested, lifting Sirius above his head.

Without waiting for the child to react to what he had said, Vince returned to the playroom where crayons and paper were still strewn all over the place. He placed Sirius down gently and sat down next to the toddler before rifling through the piles of paper to find an unused sheet.

"Let's write your name, Siri," Vince declared while picking up a blue crayon.

He wrote 'Sirius Es Ebon' on the drawing block and turned to face his son, who had also found a fresh sheet of paper after some digging.

"This is your name," Vince whispered in a mock conspirational manner, "Sirius Es Ebon."

Sirius stared wide-eyed at the name scrawled on the drawing block.

Somehow, seeing his name written out on paper made all of this seem more real. He was Sirius now. This was not a dream. Until the time came for him to return with Cairn, this was his life. 'Sirius Es Ebon' did not just refer to any other random stranger of this world. It was him.

"Sirius Es Ebon," Sirius echoed lowly, picking up a yellow crayon.

He copied his name, though it was in messy handwriting that was incomparable to his father's neat near-cursive script - the man had made an obvious effort to write it in a way that was easier for a young child to read.

The boy smiled a little at the sight.

"Right," he whispered, "I'm Sirius."

He did, admittedly, prefer Es, though.

💣

"Momma," Sirius said quietly as he tugged on his mother's sleeve.

Aria smiled down at her son, though a little confused.

"Yes, dear?" she responded warmly.

Sirius pursed his lips a little as he hesitated.

Aria continued to look at him expectantly as she bent down so that she was eye-to-eye with the one-year-old.

"Momma, will you read me a book?" Sirius asked shyly.

"A book?" the woman echoed, a little stunned.

"For my birthday," he hurried to explain.

Aria felt her heart clench. Did their son find it that difficult to request anything from his mother? The child had never asked for anything. He had not even cried back when they had still been wary of him. He had always been intelligent, able to communicate his needs in methods besides crying.

She would give him anything that he wanted. Raising Sirius had been no trouble at all. The child had never even demanded attention, as though understanding when his parents were busy with work. It pained her that they might have given him the impression that they would not even give him that much.

"Of course," she whispered, almost choking on her words.

She felt like a terrible mother.

Even so, when Sirius smiled brightly at her response, her worries seemed to be blown away.

"Thank you, momma!" Sirius exclaimed as he pecked her on the cheek.

"It does not only have to be on your birthday, sweetheart. From now on, I'll do it every other day. Will you like that?" Aria suggested with her hands rested lightly on her toddler's shoulders.

Sirius nodded eagerly.

He was exuberant at the thought!

It meant that it would not be long until he could read for himself!

💣

Sirius was fourteen months old now.

Moreover, he had figured how letters are pronounced when they are put together.

It was a system both simple and complicated, he soon realised.

There were many rules behind the written and spoken language that he would not have noticed before his mother started reading children's books to him. Punctuation, on the other hand, was almost the same as that in the language of his previous world. He had noticed that he had never known the name of the language that he used to speak and write. It had been known to most as the common tongue and he never did read broadly enough to figure out its roots.

"I'll read to momma tonight," he declared at breakfast.

This shocked both parents, with Vince choking on his tea.

"Really?" Aria barely managed to say through her surprise.

Sirius nodded, looking determined.

"Siri, papa just taught you the alphabet not too long ago. Are you sure that you are ready?" Vince asked disbelievingly.

Sirius pouted. His father was always underestimating him. Even if he was not that fluent, he was certain that he would be able to read a picture book. Those had such short sentences that there was no way he would not be able to read them. In the first place, there were only simple words in those. His mother would read him books for older children sometimes but she would always go through it slowly when it came to picture books. Where she seemed to only read to him for the story where it was the former, she appeared to make a marked effort to go through the pronunciation of the individual words in the latter.

"I'll read momma a book with pictures!" Sirius declared once more, a little more forcefully this time.

"What about papa?" Aria asked while pushing aside her shock.

"Papa works late on Tuesdays," he responded with a confused frown.

Aria chuckled at this while Vince huffed, crossing his arms in indignation.

"I'll read to papa tomorrow," Sirius placated, patting his father's hand from his highchair.

"What a pitiful papa you are," Aria sighed in mock-disappointment.

Vince scowled. "Aria!"

Aria only laughed in response.

The day passed quickly for the couple.

As Sirius had expected, he managed to read the entire book with only a few corrections from his mother.

💣

"Our Siri is a prodigy," Vince muttered while shaking his head in stunned disbelief after the boy read a picture book about the Ugly Duckling to him.

Aria raised an eyebrow.

"Right," Vince huffed begrudgingly, "it was obvious from the start."

💣

"Papa, what's that language?" Sirius asked curiously while looking over his father's shoulder.

Although the man was at home, he had brought some work back with him and was looking over several files.

"Spanish," Vince replied. "It uses the same letters as English but has accents on some letters."

"And that?" Sirius queried while pointing at a language that looked just like kanji.

Vince blinked before turning to face his son and responding, "Traditional Chinese. There's also Simplified Chinese, which is the same in every way besides the fact that each character has a few strokes less. Aren't you being rather curious today?"

Sirius was not listening.

In his father's inbox, he had noticed a startlingly familiar language.

"What about that?" Sirius asked a little more urgently.

"Japanese. What's wrong, little one?" Vince responded with some worry as he lifted the child up and onto his lap.

"Papa," Sirius said quietly, "I know it isn't my birthday but... will you teach me new languages?"

Vince surveyed the child before him, feeling perplexed.

What was so interesting about these new languages? Then again, there was no doubt that Sirius was indeed a prodigy when it came to languages. Vince had noticed the boredom in his son's expression even when he played with his toys. There was no harm in letting him try.

"Alright," Vince finally spoke, "I'll see what we can do about that."

Sirius grinned, bouncing on the balls of his feet in his excitement.

"Thank you, papa!"

💣

"Sirius needs new toys," Vince told Aria solemnly.

"Well, he told me that he just wanted more books," Aria replied while shaking her head.

"That can wait, honey. He needs to enjoy his childhood," Vince insisted.

"If so, what do you think about building blocks?" Aria sighed.

"Ah!" Vince exclaimed. "That's brilliant! Why didn't I think of it?"

Aria rolled her eyes as she replied flatly, "That's because you weren't thinking, dear."

When Vince handed the boy the box of blocks, Sirius had been at a loss.

What was he supposed to do with them?

"Play with them, of course!" his father had told him with a chortle.

Sirius then realised that toy blocks were a rather good way to pass the time.

First a pyramid, then the Ebon house. He even got around to making bridges and other more complicated structures after a while. It was like his creativity had suddenly awoken within him.

"Perhaps architecture might be a worthwhile endeavour," Aria had informed her husband with a serious look afterwards.

💣

It was on his second birthday that Sirius met Watari.

He had noticed right away that it was an alias - the man's real name was Quillsh Wammy.

Even so, he did not point it out. He had only peered at the man while hiding behind his mother's long skirt. He was genuinely interested. His parents had never been sociable people. His mother was a scientist and inventor, he had learned, and his father an investigator, a detective of sorts. It was not like they never associated with other people. They just chose not to do it any more than they had to. For one, this man was the first person his parents ever allowed to enter their home.

"Siri, my dear," Aria said gently. "This man is Watari. He is a friend of your father and myself."

"Hello, Mr Watari," Sirius greeted politely.

"Hello to you too, Mr Siri," the middle-aged man greeted warmly.

Sirius frowned slightly.

For some reason, his nickname sounded rather odd coming from Watari's mouth.

"Please call me Es," Sirius requested.

Watari chuckled. "How polite of you. If that is what you want, I will call you Es."

Vince sighed. "Watari will teach you the languages that you want to learn."

Sirius' mouth fell open as he turned to stare at his father in shock.

He had long presumed that the man had forgotten his request.

"You don't think that your father is that hopeless, do you?" Vince questioned as though reading the mind of the little boy.

Sirius looked away quickly.

"He does," Aria teased.

Vince stomped off, a scowl on his face.

When Sirius stepped into his room with his new tutor, he had turned to face the man with an expectant look.

"Where do you want to start, Mr Es?" Watari queried.

Sirius' frown from before returned as he glared at the man slightly.

"You prefer for me to refer to you without formalities?" Watari inferred.

"That's right, Mr Watari," Sirius agreed with a nod.

"Then I will have to request that you just call me Watari," the man replied with a smirk.

Sirius pouted but relented with a nod.

"Then, Es, which language do you want to learn first?" Watari asked while taking out several textbooks.

"Japanese," Sirius responded immediately without any hesitation.

Watari smiled mildly.

"Then Japanese it is."

💣

"I have found a child that is almost as gifted as you," Watari spoke out of the blue.

Sirius had learned his priority languages - Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, French, Arabic, Hindi, German and Russian. Currently, only nine months have passed since Watari first started teaching him. Sirius managed to surprise the man time and time again as he easily grasped the basics of each language and became fluent in it within a month. With languages like Arabic and Hindi that had vastly different rules and characters compared to the rest, he took another month to be able to read and write, but he made short work of the rest of it. For Chinese and Japanese, he took a month to learn both. He already knew Japanese and all he needed to do to understand Chinese was to learn the pronunciations of the characters - or pinyin as it was called - and connectors where hiragana would have sufficed in the former.

At present, Sirius was working on Portuguese.

"Almost?" Sirius repeated the word in confusion.

He did not think himself that smart. He was just good at grasping concepts and deciphering things. He was hardly talented. He would certainly excel in physical activity - it was pretty much guaranteed considering how his current body had been designed specifically by himself - but he had never even attempted any form of sport. He was not artistically talented either, with his creativity being derived from things that he saw rather than innovation, and he could not make heads or tails of his mother's scientific research or mathematical writings. He could understand his father's diagrams, though. That was a source of comfort for him.

"Indeed," Watari replied with a smile. "I run a few orphanages but I plan to have one just for the gifted children that I find in the world. Besides this child, I have already placed five others there and am looking at another four more."

Sirius blinked.

"You are collecting talent," Sirius stated.

"I knew you would understand," Watari chuckled.

"Why?" Sirius asked in puzzlement.

"I want to make the world a better place," the man replied with a shrug, "and I cannot do it alone after all."

Sirius found this noble thought praiseworthy. He had been half-expecting some excuses or self-justifications. He had never expected Watari to have such goals. He knew nothing about the man's ideals, to be honest. Despite that, he found himself wanting to support the man.

Watari smiled, not affected in the least by Sirius' silence.

"In the orphanage, noteworthy individuals are granted a letter. The most prominent of them is L," Watari explained on his own accord.

Sirius leaned forward as he asked in anticipation, "Which would I be if were in your orphanage, Watari?"

"Naturally, you will be S," Watari replied with a smile.

"S? It sounds the same as Es," Sirius remarked.

"Indeed it does," Watari agreed graciously.

"Then is Watari also W?" Sirius implored, head tilted to the side.

"Aren't you quick?" Watari chortled.

"Will you teach me mathematics next time? It's not like I don't like learning new languages but it starts to get boring doing the same thing over and over. Please, Watari?" Sirius pleaded, using the moment to abruptly make his request with hope that the man would agree more readily.

"Very well," Watari consented, though the pointed look he gave the boy made it clear that he had noticed what Sirius had been trying to do.

Sirius had the courtesy to look a little sheepish.

"I look forward to seeing your progress when I meet you again in two days. We will be learning basic math then. Anyway, I already spoke with your parents and they decided that you will not attend school. I can teach you everything you'll need to know up until secondary school. If you wish to study any subjects at higher levels, you will have to attend university," Watari told him, not withholding anything just because of Sirius' young age.

Sirius nodded to show his understanding.

💣

By the time Sirius was eight, Watari had taught Sirius everything he knew.

From hacking to history, the man had not cared to differentiate. He simply imparted to the boy whatever knowledge he had deemed necessary and, at one point, even started teaching Sirius all his skills in a bid to extend the time they had together. There was no denying that Sirius had grown on him.

As such, just a week after Sirius' birthday, they reviewed something for the tenth time. Watari also finally came upfront. He knew that he was no longer able to teach Sirius anything. Sirius might already know enough to be able to obtain several doctorates - particularly in the subjects Watari specialised in. The boy was a terrifying prodigy on all fronts. He was a genius in every sense of the word. Despite that, he was still undeniably humble and respectful.

Sirius was intelligent, perceptive and hardworking. This, combined with his natural talent of eidetic memory, made him a force to be reckoned with. The boy could learn anything in the world as long as he had the drive to. Even if it was a subject that he had little inclination for which he had less talent, he would still be able to learn at thrice the speed of an ordinary genius.

Watari knew that he could not take credit for this.

Sirius' progress was entirely the fruit of the boy's efforts.

Watari reached out and pat the boy's head for the first time, surprising the boy who was still solving a complex mathematical problem.

"Yes, Watari?" Sirius responded, putting down his pencil - the boy would never use anything besides a pencil in his academic pursuits.

A pen was forbidden if one wished for the boy to cooperate. Refuse him his pencil and he would not even look at a task one tried to give him. Try as they might, they would not succeed in getting him to solve even basic math in pen. Though he would do things like write his name in pen or use other mediums for art, they were never able to get him to do so in his studies. It was a most peculiar problem as Sirius had no qualms with typing out his essays.

Sirius' side of the story, however, was simply that pens smudged much too easily and were troublesome to use as he would not be able to erase the markings that he made.

"There's nothing left for me to teach you," the greying man replied simply.

Sirius stared at his long-time mentor for a short moment, no disappointment or surprise visible in his gaze. Watari saw nought but expectation and acceptance but knew better than to take it to heart. Sirius had always known this day was coming. He had been expecting it ever since Watari first started teaching him.

Even so, he could not help but feel reluctant.

"Will I see you again, Watari?" Sirius questioned, his clear blue eyes imploring.

Watari was stunned for a moment.

Such a forthright response was unexpected.

Then he smiled, his eyes crinkling.

"If you want to," Watari told Sirius.

The boy smiled then, an expression so beautiful and radiant it seemed to brighten the world.

"Then I will," he declared.

There was a momentary pause, a brief period in which neither moved nor spoke.

"As a final project," Watari eventually said, "you will discover my true name. Whenever it is that our paths cross once more, you will refer to me with my real name."

The man had not bothered to explain.

It was clear that he had expected Sirius to have already known the truth.

Sirius blinked and laughed.

"That's too easy, Watari," he replied in disbelief.

Watari smiled.

"That's good, then. I suppose I wouldn't have to worry you cannot submit your homework."

The man thus walked out of the house in which no photos could be found.

Whatever treasured moments passed, precious memories were meant to be stored within one's mind.

Vince had always told those words to Sirius.

💣

"I don't want to attend university," Sirius spoke quietly.

"That can be done," Vince replied easily.

Aria then prodded him in the ribs and interjected, "However, if you want to take your courses from home, we will have you attend two years of primary school."

"Two years?" Sirius muttered in shocked disbelief and betrayal as he stared at his mother.

"You need to interact with other people," Aria spoke sternly before her husband could start to protest.

The boy hung his head for a moment before meeting his mother's gaze steadily.

"Then I have three conditions," Sirius said firmly.

Vince raised an eyebrow but Aria beckoned him to continue.

"One, I will cover my face," Sirius stated.

Aria nodded.

That was acceptable.

"Two," Sirius continued, "I will receive all the material for a course in advance."

Aria nodded once more in assent.

That was not difficult.

"Three, I will be permitted to consult professors to discuss my concerns whenever I want," Sirius concluded.

Aria frowned a little at the final condition.

That was a slightly difficult but fair request.

"Very well," the woman decided after a minute of pondering.

Sirius pumped his fist in victory.

"Provided that you attend at least half of your lectures, you will get your additional benefits," Aria informed.

"As for tutorials?" Sirius asked tersely.

Aria sighed, "No one will be able to keep up with you anyway. You can skip them."

Sirius grinned.

"Mother, you're the best!" he exclaimed.

"Hey," Vince protested, "what about me?"

"You're the best father I have," Sirius replied in all seriousness.

Vince felt his eye twitch.

"Siri!" he mock-growled, tackling his son to the ground in a tickle-attack.

Sirius could only laugh.

He loved his family so much.

Perhaps this new life was better than his last.