~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter!
Your votes keep this climbing.
Thanks!
[Volume One: Scroll]
Chapter 1: Alive
Year 47 of Konoha.
The Third Great Ninja War erupted in full force.
Sasori of the Red Sand assassinated the Third Kazekage.
The man vanished without a trace.
Sunagakure went mad tearing the world apart searching for him, and overnight, every battle line between the Five Great Ninja Villages ripped open at once.
Konoha sent out everyone they could.
Even the ones who had no business being on a battlefield.
Like Genin.
Like cannon fodder.
…
Border of the Land of Fire.
DRIP!
Something warm hit Kaede Kitahara’s face and slid down his cheekbone.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t lift an eyelid.
Breathing pressed to almost nothing.
Heartbeat deliberately slowed.
He made himself into a real corpse, not a convincing one.
A real one.
Nobody taught him this.
Two missions.
Two teams wiped out.
Twice he’d crawled out from under a pile of bodies.
Instinct took care of the lesson.
He let his eyes open to the thinnest sliver and found the source of the blood, his captain.
More precisely: half his captain’s face.
Half an hour ago this man had clapped him on the shoulder and talked about going home after the battle to meet a girl.
“I’m twenty-six already.
If I don’t find a wife soon, my mom’s going to scratch my name right out of the clan registry.”
Now everything below the waist was gone, vaporized by an Explosive Tag.
His upper half lay slumped beside Kaede.
The hand that had clapped his shoulder was still resting on his arm.
Footsteps converged in the distance.
Sunagakure’s people, sweeping the battlefield.
Every dozen seconds or so, a dull thud.
Then the sound of something being dragged away.
Kaede bit his lip and held perfectly still.
The footsteps got closer.
Someone stopped beside him.
Two seconds.
Maybe three.
One thought, and only one: don’t look down.
Don’t look at my face.
The person moved on.
Another twenty minutes crawled past.
The area for several hundred meters in every direction went completely silent.
Even the birds stopped calling.
Only then did he carefully lift the captain’s hand from his arm, roll over, and face the sky.
He gulped air — great, ragged mouthfuls of it.
Looked down at his hand.
It was shaking.
“Third time.”
The corner of his mouth pulled.
He wasn’t sure if it counted as a smile.
Fifteen years since he’d transmigrated into this world.
No Kekkei Genkai.
No Sharingan.
No Byakugan.
His parents were ordinary Chunin.
They died in the field before he was old enough to remember them, leaving behind a crumbling apartment and a thin stack of savings.
Six years at the Ninja Academy.
Farthest corner seat.
Grades below average.
Barely scraped through the graduation exam.
When the war ignited, Genin with no connections and no backing were the first ones shoved toward the front lines.
He’d stayed alive this long on three things: playing dead fast, playing dead convincingly, and luck that hadn’t completely abandoned him yet.
He turned and looked at the captain’s half-frozen face.
“Matchmaking’s off the table now, Captain.” His voice came out quiet.
“I’ll take your tools.
You…
won’t be needing them.”
He opened the ninja tool pouch.
Two Military Rations Pills.
Three Explosive Tags.
He chewed the pills on the spot.
Tucked the tags into his pocket.
Bandaged the Shuriken gash on his left leg well enough to stop the bleeding, then limped toward the encampment.
…
A little over two hours later.
Konoha Border Temporary Encampment.
The moment Kaede pushed through the tent flap, the noise inside died.
Everyone turned to look.
Then everyone deliberately looked somewhere else.
He knew that reaction well.
The Special Jonin at the registration desk looked up, and his brow pinched together.
Not relief.
Not even pity.
Just the expression of a man who’d stepped in something foul.
“Kitahara…
you’re alone again?”
“The squad was ambushed by Sunagakure.
All members killed in action.” Kaede kept his head down.
“The captain covered my retreat.
I barely —”
“Barely?”
The Jonin’s palm cracked against the desk.
His voice shot up.
“Three missions.
Three full squads.
Twelve people.
You’re the only one standing every single time — Kitahara, are you born to bury your teammates?!”
The tent went dead quiet.
A few resting ninja subtly slid sideways, putting half a body’s worth of distance between themselves and him.
No one said a word.
He didn’t need them to.
He could read the looks just fine.
They were staring at him like a disease with legs.
Nobody wanted to be the next poor bastard assigned to his team.
Kaede said nothing.
What was there to say?
That he wasn’t trying to survive?
That he was just better at playing dead than anyone else?
A coin purse hit the corner of the desk.
The Jonin didn’t bother passing it over.
“Your pay.
Seven days’ leave.
Report for reassignment in seven days.
Go.”
Kaede picked up the pouch and felt the weight of it.
“Thank you, sir.”
He walked out.
The hushed voices started up behind him before the tent flap even settled.
“Third time…
guy’s cursed.”
“Don’t put me in his squad.
Anyone who ends up with him is done for…”
The flap dropped and swallowed the sound.
Being called a jinx, the first time, it stings.
The second time, it makes you angry.
By the third time, Kaede clenched the coin purse and shoved it into his coat.
Living mattered more than pride.
…
He reached Konoha at dusk.
The streets were busy.
A line stretched out from the dango shop.
A few girls spilled out of a dessert place laughing, shoulder to shoulder, talking over each other.
Kaede glanced down at himself.
Blood and filth head to toe.
Like a rat that had hauled itself out of a storm drain.
He didn’t slow down.
Went straight to his apartment.
He emptied everything he owned onto the table and counted it twice.
Three missions’ worth of pay.
What his parents had left behind.
The odds and ends he kept hidden under a loose floorboard.
14,800 ryo.
On the way back, he’d stopped to ask prices at a ninja tool shop.
Chainmail from the craftsmen’s country — the kind rated to stop a Shuriken.
120,000 ryo.
Nearly ten times what he had.
And in four days, he’d be reassigned and sent back to the front.
It wouldn’t go better than the last three times.
Word had already made the rounds.
His teammates wanted nothing to do with him.
The Jonin handling assignments would be quietly thrilled if he never came back.
Next deployment, he’d almost certainly draw the most dangerous sector on the map.
Worse than that: if he ran into a sensor-type, playing dead was finished.
Heartbeat could be suppressed.
Breathing could be hidden.
But the chakra inside a body couldn’t lie to a sensor-type.
When that happened, there’d be nothing left to fake.
He’d just actually be dead.
Kaede stared at the ceiling.
Fifteen years.
No Kekkei Genkai.
No fateful encounter.
Not a single lucky break, none of the things that were supposed to happen to someone who transmigrated into a story like this had ever happened to him.
He closed his eyes.
A sound rang out inside his head.
[Ding,]
[Detected host’s overwhelming desire for survival.]
[White Moonlight Simulator has been activated.]
Kaede’s eyes snapped open.
A semi-transparent panel materialized in front of him.
Lines of text scrolled down, one after another,
[White Moonlight Simulator]
[Core Rule: The host will enter special instances and experience an entirely different life.
Within each instance, you must capture the heart of the designated target, becoming an existence they cannot forget, cannot release, unwavering until death.
An indelible mark on their soul.
That is the “White Moonlight.”]
[Settlement Rewards: Upon simulation’s end, the host may inherit abilities acquired within the instance according to evaluation rank, including but not limited to: physical enhancement, Kekkei Genkai, ninjutsu, chakra reserves.]
[Evaluations are ranked C, B, A, and S.
The higher the rank, the greater the inheritance ratio and the richer the bonus rewards.]
[Core Evaluation Criterion, your weight in the target’s heart.]
[Granting complimentary simulation attempt ×1.
All subsequent simulations require payment to activate.]
Kaede read every line.
Then read them again.
His hands were still shaking.
But this time it wasn’t fear.
It was something he’d nearly forgotten the shape of, like a drowning man’s fingers scraping against solid ground.
A simulator.
With inheritable abilities.
Evaluation criterion: your weight in the target’s heart.
He sat with it for a moment.
White Moonlight.
He knew exactly what that meant.
Not sweet romance.
Not lovers finally together.
White Moonlight is wanting something you can never have.
It’s the person the other can’t forget for the rest of their life, no matter how hard they try.
The name that still draws tears at midnight, years later.
The shadow every future love gets measured against and falls short of.
In other words,
It had to hurt.
Had to hurt deep enough to leave a permanent wound.
The more heroic the death.
The more devastating the loss.
The more completely it broke the target’s heart, the higher the evaluation.
Kaede was quiet for a few seconds.
Then he smiled.
In reality, he kept his head down and his mouth shut.
Lived small, stayed invisible.
He had to.
In reality, dead meant dead.
No second chance.
But inside the simulator?
Death didn’t matter.
He could die, come back, and collect his rewards.
He stared at the panel.
His eyes were bright in a way they hadn’t been in years.
God above.
Wasn’t this made for him?
…
➤ Next: You Teach Me