Akuma sat in his small room, the dim light of the moon creeping through the window, bathing the space in a pale glow.
His first day at the Ninja Academy had ended, and though he was physically exhausted, his mind raced with thoughts.
The protagonist had reincarnated into Akuma's body, but who was Akuma before all this? Who was he, before someone else took over his life?
Sitting on his bed, Akuma tried to process everything new around him, and slowly, memories of Akuma's past began to surface.
Deep within his mind, blurry images of a childhood filled with pain and isolation emerged.
Akuma hadn't lived like the others in the village; he didn't have a family to support him or friends to stand by his side.
He was born under mysterious circumstances and abandoned as a young child.
There was no one to care for him, no one to look after him, until an elderly woman named Masaki found him.
She lived alone in a modest home on the outskirts of the village and had decided to adopt him and raise him as her own.
Masaki was a woman with a large heart, but she couldn't provide him with what he needed to be strong in the world of ninjas.
Despite her best efforts to nurture and care for him, Akuma remained physically weak.
He didn't possess the strength or skills to become a proficient ninja like the others.
This weakness made him a target for bullying and neglect from the village children.
The other children constantly laughed at him, mocking his lack of ability and strength.
They excluded him from games and training, often leaving him alone on the playground while they played.
Akuma would watch them from afar, his heart aching as he saw how they excelled, while he remained powerless to keep up.
But what hurt him the most was the sense of isolation, as if everyone around him lived in a world he didn't belong to.
Each day, Akuma would return home to Masaki, physically and emotionally drained.
She would greet him with a warm smile and prepare a simple meal, but his heart was always heavy with sadness.
He tried to hide his feelings from Masaki, not wanting her to know how lonely he felt.
But at night, when he was alone in his room, the tears would silently fall, carrying all the emotions he had tried to suppress.
One night, when Akuma was still young, he sat beside Masaki in her room, and she gently held his hands.
She looked into his eyes, her gaze calm, and said,
"Akuma, strength isn't everything in this world. You may be weak now, but true strength comes from the heart, from the will to keep going despite the odds."
Her words held a deep comfort, but Akuma, in that moment, couldn't fully grasp their meaning.
He only wanted to be like the other children, to feel like he belonged, to be strong enough to prove his worth.
As time passed, Akuma's sense of despair grew. He wasn't progressing in his training as he should, and he couldn't keep up with his peers at the academy.
No matter how hard he tried, his results were always below average. With each failure, his confidence shrank even more.
One day, after an especially exhausting and demoralizing day at the academy, Akuma decided to stray from his usual path home.
He wandered through the thick trees surrounding the village, trying to escape his harsh reality.
Sitting on a rock by a small stream, he watched the water flow before him. In that moment, it felt like life had abandoned him.
Everything seemed to be conspiring against him, children laughed at him, teachers overlooked him, and even his own ambitions felt out of reach.
But despite all of this, there was something deep within him that refused to give up.
Maybe it was Masaki's words echoing in his mind, or perhaps it was a faint, almost imperceptible sense of hope still beating within him.
He decided then and there that he wouldn't surrender to his weakness, even if it meant failing over and over again.
When Akuma returned home that night, Masaki greeted him as usual, with her kind smile.
"You're late today," she said gently, then added,
"But I know you'll be fine. You're strong on the inside, Akuma, don't forget that." Her words carried a confidence in his abilities, even if he didn't feel it himself.
The years passed, and Akuma continued to live under the weight of this challenging life.
He always felt like someone unwanted, whether by his classmates at the academy or even by the community he lived in.
He didn't have the ninja skills to make him stand out, nor was he strong enough to leave an impact in battle.
He was just another weak child in the background, rejected and outcast.
But one day, in a moment that would change his life forever, everything shifted.
A mysterious event, one he couldn't explain, caused him to transform into someone else.
The protagonist had taken over his body, someone who carried with him the knowledge and experience of a completely different world.
This change wasn't just physical, it was spiritual too.
Suddenly, Akuma found himself with the opportunity to alter his destiny, to rewrite his story from the ground up.
Now, Akuma was no longer just a weak, abandoned child.
He had become someone with a strong will, armed with knowledge of the future.
He knew that his fate was no longer tied to what he had been, but to what he could become.
He realized that this reincarnation wasn't mere chance; it was an opportunity to fulfill all the things he had once dreamed of.
Akuma, once a lonely, abandoned orphan, now stood on the edge of a new path.
A path where his strength, his resolve, and his knowledge would pave the way forward, allowing him to reshape the life he had been given.
…