"Okay, bye, Mrs.Hihi! Thanks again for letting me hang out!"

  "Anytime, Pakin. It's nice to have someone to chat with about my books. It was such a pleasant surprise to learn you were interested in our land's history! Remember to come back if you have any questions, okay?"

  Pakin flashed his most charming smile and threw her a thumbs up as he jogged past the garden in her front yard. Mrs.Hihi had apparently trained as a historian before her husband suddenly got sick and she had to return home before she could graduate. Pakin didn't mind keeping her company, especially since it let him put together some semblance of understanding about the world.

  Fuwayama is located near the border of two nations: the Kingdom of Frost and the Kingdom of Lightning. The Kingdom of Lightning governs Fuwayama, and across a long desert past one of the mountain ranges hugging their village is the Kingdom of Frost. Mrs.Hihi said the two countries were allies, but it was only on paper. If it hadn't been for that long desert, Frost would've focused far more on their Eastern neighbors.

  Pakin had also learned that Fuwayama's geography was strange for the Kingdom of Lightning, being a relatively dry valley. Most of the mountains in the Kingdom of Lighting rage with thunderstorms that pour water into the valleys between them. That's how the kingdom got its name and what forced most folks to settle near the coasts, not in the plentiful valleys that crisscross the peninsula that houses their nation.

  The culture seemed similar to the Eastern ones in his old world. His village had trappings similar to Mongolian herders, but the overall government reminded him of a Japanese-style system. Although they had a daimyo instead of an emperor and no prime minister. They had prefectures, municipalities, and other stuff. It seemed there was a parliament, but the daimyo still held most of the power. It was a strange system that seemed rather strained. He asked Mrs.Hihi about it and she said “That's because we’ve only recently experienced peace long enough to develop complex bureaucracies.” However, that seemed like it wasn’t the whole picture. Plenty of countries in his old world were bureaucratic labyrinths during warring periods.

  Mrs.Hihi wasn’t exactly the best source of political knowledge, to be fair. Most of her books were less historical and more historical drama. Which mayor was sleeping with which governess, enemy generals engaging in taboo trysts, that kind of thing.

  He was interrupted from his rumination when the sound of running footsteps alerted him to a presence behind him. Turning in anticipation, he tried to dodge, but his assailant was far quicker and managed to tackle him to the ground.

  "OOF!" Pakin felt all the air rush out of his lungs as he hit the dirt.

  Ecstatic giggling bubbled from a girl latched tightly around his waist. She would probably be the same height as him, had they been standing. She wore a deel, baggy pants, and boots just like Pakin but had a small set of ribbons keeping her white hair in double braids down her back.

  "Hika! That hurt! Just like all the other times you've done it since you got back." Pakin tried to pry the girl off of himself, but the difference in strength made it impossible.

  She raised her head to look at Pakin, and her smile could have melted even the grumpiest miser's heart. Pakin, through his inherited memories and recent experiences, had built an immunity to charming smiles and simply schooled his face into an unamused expression.

  Once Hika realized he wasn't going to play along, she puffed up her cheeks in the way only an annoyed child could and released him from her grasp.

  "Papa told me I have to look out for you, and I'm just trying to do my job." Standing up, she dusted off her knees and gave Pakin an assessing look before shaking her head in disappointment. "You still can't even dodge my slowest tackle! I've been knocking you down for months!"

  Pakin simply sighed and pulled himself to his feet. Ever since Hika had returned with her mom from the capital, she'd made it her mission to try and get Pakin's fitness up to where it should be for a kid his age. Unfortunately for him, Hika's chosen methods were rather violent. She chased him around the village with a stick to build stamina. She wrestled him to train his strength. Finally, as she'd just exhibited, she'd sneak up on him and pin him to the ground to train his reaction speed.

  "Why can't you just take me on runs or help me lift weights or something? Why do you have to beat me up?" He'd figured she was being tough on him, in part, because she felt guilty about leaving him alone to play with those other kids that pushed old Pakin too far. She'd been inconsolable when she'd heard about what happened, and the only thing that managed to calm her down was learning that Pakin no longer had the wasting.

  "It's what the samurai do in the capital! They beat each other up and get stronger!"

  "The ones who serve the daimyo? They beat each other up?" Pakin knew the daimyo had a large body of retainers that acted like his military generals. However, he hadn't found much information about them in Mrs. Hihi's books outside of how they’d steal glances and how sweaty their palms got. She probably shouldn’t be letting me read those. He thought as he pushed himself to his feet.

  "That's called sparring-" He tried to explain "-and they don't do it just to beat each other up." Pakin ran his hand over his face in exasperation. He didn't mind Hika when she wasn't beating him up, but he sometimes forgot she was only ten years old and sometimes she thought like one.

  "I know that, you dummy!" She stomped her foot in aggravation. "They do it to hone their techniques and prepare for a real battle. But, when I asked Papa about it, he said they also do it because extreme bursts of activity train the body for combat. So I figured that if I can force you into extreme bursts of activity, it could train your body like the samurais'"

  "Oh." That's actually pretty smart. Maybe I’ve been expecting too little of her. Pakin tilted his head as if to let the thought tumble around. After a few seconds of tense silence, he threw his hands up in defeat.

  "Fine, it probably is helping me. Maybe we can do it in a way that doesn't require you to hit me all the time? I'd have said yes if you'd asked me to run with you or something."

  "No, you wouldn't have." She retorted, "You'd rather stay inside and read or go get all gross at your dad's forge."

  Pakin opened his mouth to deny her, but she was kinda right. That was all he'd been doing with his free time lately. Since the kids in the village only receive a basic education till ten, most of them get homeschooled by their parents until they're old enough to work. They also learn the family business or get sent to apprentice somewhere else. Pakin can't work at the forge every day, so he has considerably more free time than most of the other kids, and he'd been filling it by studying the history of his new home country.

  "See! I knew it, so stop complaining and start running!" From somewhere behind her, Hika pulled out a stick and began chasing Pakin across the village.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Pakin sat on a bench behind his house, looking over the snowy landscape.

  It had been about a year since he'd woken up in his new body, and by now, it truly felt like his own. He'd spent hours and hours at the forge, and now he could complete most small tasks by himself, such as sharpening, riveting, and oiling. He'd grown close with most of the villagers. Hika's spartan training regimen seemed to be working, as Dr.Kucha had remarked that he'd hit all his growth milestones for an eleven-year-old.

  He'd just turned eleven a few weeks ago, the birthday lining up to be about three weeks before he'd reincarnated. His birthday was November 18th, and his reincarnation day was December 2nd.

  It all seemed so surreal to him. Like any day, he'd wake up from a dream. However, the cold wind on his face and the smell of hay from the goat barn told him it was all real.

  All things considered, he was pretty happy here. He didn't remember enough of his old life to want to go back. He liked everyone in his new hometown and enjoyed his work at the forge. He could even see himself settling down here, finding a nice girl, raising some goats, and taking over the forge when his dad got too old. There was just one thing that bothered him.

  As he learned more and more about his new world, he felt an irritating sense of deja vu. Like all the kingdoms being named after elements or how the language he now spoke was so similar to Japanese that it often felt uncanny. The way everyone seemed to talk about the samurai, the daimyo, and the past "Great War" kept ringing bells in his head. However, for all that familiarity, he still couldn't pin down what was making him so unnerved. It felt like he was missing some big piece of the puzzle that'd bring it all together.

  Maybe it was that Life force/Spiritual energy that he just couldn't pin down?

  Every time he asked an adult, they'd tell him some spiritual hoo-ha about the God of Thunder or just straight up shrug. Dr.Kucha seemed to be the only person with a solid idea of what it was.

  He'd told Pakin that they'd never gone over specifics in his school, but everyone had it and needed it. He explained it as something like oxygen or water, a vital substance their bodies use to keep them alive. He explained that just like he was born with a disease that leaked it, other people were born with too much. Overall, it seemed like a very fuzzy subject to the doctor. However, Pakin could tell there was something the doctor wasn't telling him. He got all cagey if Pakin asked too many questions, and if he was really annoyed, he'd call Hika to take Pakin away for more training.

  Looking down, he rolled up his sleeve to see the arm underneath.

  As much as he hated admitting it, he needed that training. Before Hika returned, he'd been slowly building muscle at the forge with his dad, but he was still dangerously underweight. Now, he had packed on enough fat and muscle to look appropriate for a kid born out in the sticks. He had enough stamina and strength to finish his chores on time and play with the other farm kids in the afternoon.

  His train of thought had veered off his main concern, and with a mental shrug, he decided to just give it time.

  It's not like I'm going anywhere.

  Pakin hopped off the bench and made his way around the house. Hika should be done with her medicine lessons with her dad by now, so he figured they could make snowmen or some other child-like frivolity.

  So, he crunched through the thin layer of snow between his house and the road before turning toward the town hub.

  On the way, he saw people exiting their homes and making their way down the road. They all seemed to be heading in the same direction, and a murmur of excited conversation seemed to permeate the growing crowd.

  Looking around, he saw Mr.Goro walking amongst some other adults and sharing an excited conversation. Pakin quickly picked up his pace to join his neighbor and caught the tail end of their conversation.

  "-believe she's finally back? It's been how many years since she left?" Mr. Goro asked

  "About four or five, hasn't it? She was only eleven at the time." Mrs. Byuu answered

  "Do you think she'll have any medals, or do they even give those out to- Oh, hello, young Pakin! Come to join us in welcoming Gera home?" Mr.Boto had spotted Pakin as he made his way over.

  "Yeah, I guess I am…" Pakin felt the familiar sensation of old Pakin's memories supplying him with information. Gera was a girl several years older than him who used to babysit him and Hika when they were very little. She'd gone somewhere about five years ago, as Mrs.Byuu had said, but old Pakin hadn't ever asked or been told where she'd gone. At least now he knew where all these people were going.

  "Is everyone going to see her?" Pakin could see almost half of Fuwayama in the crowd he'd joined. Calling it a crowd might've been an embellishment, given that Fuwayama's population was about fifty people and an uncountable number of goats.

  "Of course, little Pakin! "Mr.Boto replied, with a hint of pride in his voice.

  "It's not everyday someone from our little village gets recruited by a famous village." Pakin could tell that Mr.Boto had used two similar but slightly different words for 'village' but couldn't parse the difference.

  Pakin was still getting used to the sensation of not knowing words. The effect had tripped him out at first. His dad had said the name of a specific metal and, instead of the usual translation he'd had since reincarnating, he'd heard the actual word in Pakin's native language. It seemed that if the old Pakin hadn't heard the word before or simply didn't know what it meant, Pakin would hear the word in their native tongue. Learning the word seemed to fix the issue. Still, if Pakin focused, he could turn off the natural translation and listen to people as if he only knew the language of his old life. He'd played with the ability a little, but it was mostly a novelty.

  Pakin flipped the word over in his mind as they reached the town hub. No matter how he thought about it, he couldn't place how it was different. Just like with his deja vu, some vital piece of knowledge was keeping him from putting it all together.

  As they approached, Pakin could see the crowd that had formed in front of the town hall. The whole town really had gathered up to see Gera.

  Perplexed, Pakin did his best to look through the crowd and catch a glimpse.

  Man, sometimes being ten years old again really sucks. He lamented as he tried to get closer. However, the crowd bunched him out and no one seemed interested in giving up their spot. So Pakin crouched low and tried to peek through the shuffling mass. while Pakin looked through about three pairs of legs, he made eye contact with someone in the center of the chaos.

  Hika? Only a few seconds after he'd had the thought, the crowd started to part in front of him until a teenage girl appeared from among the throng of people. She was only a little taller than Pakin, with an incredibly athletic build. She wore black cargo pants, open-toed sandals, a tactical-looking blouse that was cropped to show her belly, and a small amount of some sort of mesh underclothing poking out from under that blouse, all wrapped in an obscene amount of bandoliers housing cylindrical pockets.

  All that faded from view as Pakin stared at the girl's long purple hair, held in place by a bandana with a metal plate at its center. What drew his attention and took his breath away was the etching on that metal plate: three ovals stylized to look like clouds.

  Gera seemed to notice his attention and lowered her head so he could see the plate better.

  "Pretty swanky, huh? Your old babysitter has moved up in the world." She lifted her head back up to look at Pakin, her eyes locked on his. "Good to see you still kicking Pakin."

  There was a hidden meaning to her words that was completely lost on Pakin as his mind blossomed with four hundred and some odd memories of a young boy who always wanted everyone to 'Believe it!'. His jaw hung open, and for a few seconds, he could only stare. Until, finally, some of his senses returned, he took a big breath, raised a pointed finger, and cried out:

  "YOU'RE A FUCKING NINJA!?!?!?"