The first time I killed someone, I was eight years old. It wasn't heroic or dramatic—just desperate survival in the endless rain of Amegakure. A bandit thought I was an easy target, a lone child gathering supplies for my growing community of refugees. He didn't expect the paper to slice through him like razor wire and didn't anticipate how I could manipulate the blood in his body to freeze him in place.
I vomited afterward, memories of my past life clashing with the harsh reality of this Shinobi world. In my previous existence, violence was something you saw in movies or read about in newspapers. Here, it was as constant as Amegakure's rain.
"You did what was necessary," Tsubaki, one of the older refugees in our settlement, told me as she held back my hair. "This is the world we live in."
But I refused to accept that violence was the only answer. My unique combination of abilities—paper manipulation strengthened by blood control—gave me options others didn't have. When rival groups threatened our growing community, I developed a technique to create paper barriers infused with blood-enhanced chakra. These walls didn't kill; they contained and redirected.
By age nine, our settlement had grown to over a hundred people. We called it Origami Valley, a network of structures built into the hillsides, protected by my paper techniques and hidden by the constant downpour. But with growth came attention—the kind we couldn't afford.
Hanzo's forces began to take notice. They called us deserters, criminals, threats to the natural order. I knew the history from my past life's knowledge—how Hanzo's paranoia would eventually lead to his downfall. But knowledge of the future was both a blessing and a curse.
"They're coming," I announced to our council one stormy evening. "Hanzo's forces. They'll be here by dawn."
The others looked to me—this child leader who spoke with an adult's wisdom. "What do we do?" asked Ryuu, a former merchant who'd become our logistics expert.
I closed my eyes, feeling the rain through my paper sensors spread throughout the valley. "We have three options. We can fight—and many will die. We can run—and lose everything we've built. Or..."
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"Or?" Tsubaki leaned forward.
"Or we can disappear." I opened my eyes, already forming the hand signs. "I've been practicing a technique combining paper and blood manipulation. I can create an illusion so perfect even the Byakugan would struggle to see through it."
That night, I learned another harsh truth about this world: sometimes the greatest violence isn't physical. As I manipulated the blood of every resident—with their consent—to sync with my paper techniques, creating a massive genjutsu-like effect that hid our entire community, I felt the weight of their lives in my hands. One wrong move, one slip in concentration, and I could hurt everyone who trusted me.
The next morning, when Hanzo's forces arrived, they found nothing but empty hills and rain. The massive chakra expenditure left me bedridden for a week, but our community survived.
Yet survival came with its own costs. The more we grew, the more I understood why Shinobi villages became necessary. Security, education, healthcare—all needed organization and structure. And structure, in this world, meant dealing with the darker elements of power.
By my tenth birthday, when Mito Uzumaki's sealing knowledge finally unlocked in my mind, I had already learned lessons no child should know: that peace often requires the threat of violence. That protecting people sometimes means deceiving them. That the line between savior and tyrant is thinner than paper.
But I also learned to find strength in these contradictions. Each time I had to make a difficult choice, I remembered my past life's death—that moment of clarity when I understood how precious each moment truly is. In this world of Shinobi, where children become soldiers and villages wage silent wars, I chose to build something different.
Origami Valley became known as the Ghost Village—a mystery that even Hanzo couldn't solve. We developed our own way of training Shinobi, focusing on protection rather than assassination, on community rather than blind loyalty to a single leader. When orphans from the endless conflicts arrived at our hidden gates, they found not weapons of war but tools for building a future.
The rain never stopped in Amegakure, but in our valley, each drop carried not just the weight of the past but the promise of something new. Something that balanced the darker necessities of the Shinobi world with the hope for a better tomorrow.
After all, paper may be fragile, but when folded correctly, it can be stronger than steel. And sometimes, the greatest strength comes not from fighting the darkness but from learning to shape it into something that protects the light.