Luna woke up amidst a rustling sound.
Outside the cave, the sky remained its gloomy gray, and the sound of rain was endless.
The campfire was about to go out, leaving only a few wisps of blue smoke and glowing red embers, and the air was filled with the smell of damp firewood.
She rubbed her eyes and sat up.
Her physical strength had recovered a bit compared to yesterday; at least her head wasn’t as dizzy, and the churning sensation in her stomach had eased a lot—though that bowl of thin porridge couldn’t do much anyway.
The cave was empty.
Konan was not there, Yahiko was not there, and Nagato was not there either.
Luna dazed for a moment, then heard the pattering sound of rain at the cave entrance and faint voices in the distance.
She propped herself up, leaned against the cave wall, walked to the entrance, and poked her head out to take a look.
Three small figures were walking away in the rain.
Konan walked at the very front, her light blue short hair quickly drenched by the rain, clinging to her cheeks.
Yahiko followed by her side, gesturing as he walked, seemingly talking about today’s plan, while Nagato walked silently at the very back.
They didn’t look back.
Luna opened her mouth, wanting to shout, but closed it again.
Forget it.
She looked down at her own thin and small hands—fair, slender, and completely unlike the hands belonging to an adult man.
Luna took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
“My name is Luna. Starting today, I am Luna.”
When Konan gave her a name last night, her brown eyes shone with an earnest light.
She said that the name “Luna”, thousands of summers, was like a trace of summer warmth hoped for in thousands of rainy days.
Luna felt this name was quite nice.
It sounded better than “Rin”.
She shrank back into the cave, sat down on a stone by the campfire, cupped her chin with both hands, and stared blankly at the flickering flames.
It was still raining outside.
Land of Rain, truly living up to its name.
The sky was always gloomy, rain came whenever it wanted, and there wasn’t a dry moment.
The air was filled with a damp earthy smell, clothes were always in a half-dry and half-wet state, sticky when worn, which felt very uncomfortable.
Luna sighed.
Her current situation could be summarized in four words: utterly impoverished.
A broken cave, a pile of hay, a broken pot, three war orphans as scrawny as her, plus a newly activated system.
Right, the system.
Luna closed her eyes and silently chanted “System” in her heart.
A translucent panel immediately appeared before her eyes, emitting a faint blue light, resembling a UI interface in a game.
[Destiny Rewriting System]
Host: Luna (Past Life: Rin)
Current Status: Weak (Hunger / Fatigue / Mild Hypothermia)
Current Task: Survive (Phase 1) — Survive in the Land of Rain for seven days (Remaining: 6 days 23 hours)
Task Reward: Basic Chakra Refining Technique × 1, System Points × 100
Current Points: 0
That really is simple and crude.
“Survive.” It sounds very simple, right?
But in a place like the Land of Rain, for a weak little girl of seven or eight years old, without any combat power or survival skills, the three words “survive” were far heavier than they sounded.
Luna sighed again.
She looked around, and her gaze fell upon a corner aside, where some odds and ends were piled up—torn cloth strips, withered wild grass, a few thin iron wires, and…
a stack of paper.
Paper?
Luna walked over curiously, squatted down, and flipped through it.
That was a stack of slightly yellowed paper with a rough texture and uneven edges, looking like scraps picked up from somewhere.
The amount of paper was small, about a dozen sheets, carefully stacked on a relatively dry stone.
One could tell that the owner cherished these things very much.
She reached out and picked up a sheet of paper.
As her fingertips touched the rough paper surface, a thought suddenly came to her mind.
The paper flower on Konan’s head.
Yesterday, when she was lying on the bed, feeling groggy, she did indeed notice the paper-folded flower pinned in Konan’s hair.
The workmanship could not be considered exquisite, and the paper was somewhat faded, but it could be seen that it was folded with great care, and the wrinkles of the petals had been carefully smoothed out.
Luna was slightly stunned, and then felt some emotion in her heart.
So Konan had liked origami since she was a child.
That future “Angel”, that woman who could cover the sky with six hundred billion explosive tags—her starting point turned out to be these small hands folding paper.
From folding paper flowers, to folding explosive tags, and then to developing the entire Paper Release secret jutsu system…
It turned out that the source of everything was right here.
Luna held that piece of paper and turned it over in her palm.
She could also do origami.
To be precise, she learned it during manual arts class when she was a child.
However, the types of origami she knew were limited, just a few—paper airplanes, paper boats, cootie catchers, and…
paper cranes.
She thought for a moment, tried to gesture on that paper with her fingers, recalling the movements from her childhood.
The paper was folded in half, opened, folded along the diagonal again, and then creases were pressed out step by step according to the steps in her memory…
The movements were very stiff.
This pair of small hands was not nimble enough, coupled with the fact that the original owner might have never folded paper before, the coordination between the fingers was somewhat clumsy.
But Luna’s mind housed the soul of an adult, and her patience and fine motor control were still stronger than a real seven-year-old child.
She folded it bit by bit, aligning the corners of the paper, flattening it along the creases, turning it over, and folding it again.
About five or six minutes passed.
A white, crooked paper crane lay in her palm.
Luna lifted it up to take a look and couldn’t help laughing—the wings were high on one side and low on the other, and the tail was also crooked, looking inexplicably a bit comical.
“… It’s folded so ugly.”
She muttered to herself, her voice still that soft and sweet little girl’s voice.
If that group of buddies from her past life saw her looking like this right now—a red-haired loli who looked exactly like Konan, holding a crooked-necked paper crane in her hands—they would probably laugh until they rolled on the ground.
Thinking of this, the arc of Luna’s mouth grew a bit larger.
She looked at the paper crane in her hand, thinking that since she had nothing better to do, she would fold it for fun; maybe she could fold a decent one out.
So she unfolded the paper crane she had made and started folding again.
Once, twice, three times…
Each time she folded it, her technique became a bit more proficient, and the finished product looked more and more like the real thing.
She placed the folded paper crane on the stone in front of her, tilted her head, and sized it up.
Hmm, it finally feels right.
…
I don’t know how much time had passed when footsteps came from the cave entrance.
Luna raised her head and happened to see three soggy figures squeeze in.
Yahiko walked at the very front, his chest bulging, with a smug smile on his face.
Nagato followed behind him, carrying a few fish strung together with straw ropes in his hand; although they weren’t big, they looked very fresh.
The last one to come in was Konan.
Most of her clothes were wet, her light blue hair clung tightly to her forehead, and her hands carefully protected something wrapped in a rag.
“We’re back.” Yahiko put the things in his arms onto the ground—they were some wild fruits and wild vegetables—”We had good luck today and caught a few fish in the ditch.
We can have fish soup tonight!”
Nagato silently placed the fish on the stone slab, then sat down by the campfire, reaching out to warm his freezing hands over the fire.
Konan put down the rag bag in her hand, shook off the water droplets on her body, and her gaze subconsciously swept towards Luna’s direction.
“This is…”
Konan walked a few steps closer, looking at the crooked paper crane on the stone, her eyes suddenly lighting up, as if she had discovered some treasure.
Luna felt a bit embarrassed by her expression, scratched her head and said, “Umm… I saw paper over there, so I just folded it for fun. It’s not folded well, a bit ugly.”
“You folded this?” Konan raised her head and looked at her with an almost surprised look, “You know origami?”
“… Just a little bit.”
Konan did not answer.
She bent down to pick up a paper crane, looked at it back and forth for a long time, and her fingertips gently stroked the creases of the paper.
Then, she turned her head with an expression Luna had never seen before—a joy and anticipation of finding a kindred spirit:
“Luna, let me teach you how to fold paper flowers!”
Luna was slightly stunned, and before she could reply, Konan had already sat down beside her, took out a few sheets of paper from the corner, and neatly arranged them.
“Look, fold it like this first… then flip it over and flatten it along this line…”
The rain outside was still falling.
Inside the cave, two little girls who looked identical except for their hair color, with their heads touching together among a pile of rough paper, began a conversation of their own.