'What's wrong with me?'
'Where am I?'
'And... who am I?'
His head spun dizzily, his mind a chaotic void, utterly devoid of memories.
The surrounding clamor and roughhousing only deepened his already profound confusion, adding a layer of irritation to his bewilderment.
'Is this Japanese?'
'What is Japanese?'
As these thoughts raced through his mind, he tried to open his eyes and move, but found himself utterly paralyzed.
'Anesthetic? Poison? Or am I truly paralyzed?'
The questions lingered for only a moment before a soul-searing pain suddenly erupted in his mind.
Accompanying the agony came a torrent of fragmented memories, flashing like fleeting images in a revolving lantern.
"Ah!"
Overwhelmed by the agony, he involuntarily let out a weak, muffled groan.
"Sasuke-kun, what's wrong?"
Though his voice was barely audible, it was immediately noticed by a pink-haired little girl who had been watching him intently.
The pink-haired little girl was adorably cute, with fair skin, large eyes, a delicate nose, and a red ribbon tying back her pink hair, revealing a forehead slightly larger than average for her age.
Though the red ribbon looked somewhat worn, it was perfectly intact, suggesting it held special significance for her—perhaps a cherished gift from someone important that she protected with great care.
Noticing Sasuke seemed unwell, the pink-haired girl's heart tightened.
She rushed forward to check on him, but another blonde-haired girl beat her to it, reaching Sasuke first and asking solicitously, "Sasuke-kun, are you feeling unwell? Should I tell the teacher to take you to the infirmary?"
"Ino-pig! What do you think you're doing?"
The pink-haired girl's anger flared instantly. She clenched her fists and charged forward to confront Ino.
"Hmph! Forehead," Ino sneered, rolling her eyes and turning her back to Haruno Sakura with a dismissive glance.
"Can't you see Sasuke's not feeling well? What if your shouting scares him? You idiot!"
"Damn you! You're the type of idiot who suddenly barges in on people and scares Sasuke, you stupid pig!"
The two young girls glared fiercely at each other, their eyes burning with rivalry, like proud lions asserting dominance over their territory.
Meanwhile, the other young ninjas nearby merely glanced at them before casually turning back to their own business, as if nothing had happened.
Such squabbles were a daily occurrence; they were long accustomed to it.
"Forehead!"
"Ino-pig!"
"—"
Just as their argument reached a fever pitch, Sasuke, who had been sitting with his eyes closed, abruptly opened them.
His gaze swept across the room, and for a fleeting moment, his memories clashed with the classroom environment, creating a disorienting haze.
But within seconds, he cleared his mind, his eyes regaining their usual composure.
The arguing girls froze mid-argument, their gazes snapping to him, filled with anxiety, adoration, and concern.
"I'm fine. And..."
Sorting through his memories, Sasuke adopted the pose he remembered—resting his chin on his hands—and spoke with a hint of irritation and impatience, "Besides..."
"Get away from me, you're too noisy!"
Haruno Sakura was about to retort when Ino interjected, "Sasuke, I promise I'll sit quietly by your side. I won't bother you like Sakura does."
'Damn it!'
Haruno Sakura felt her forehead veins bulge, her heart burning with resentment.
Sasuke frowned slightly but continued in a low voice, "Didn't you understand? I said both of you should get out of my sight. You're hurting my ears with your noise!"
His mind was still throbbing with needle-like pain, and fragments of memories belonging to this body kept flashing through his mind—memories of Uchiha Sasuke.
Between the throbbing headache and the bizarre circumstances, all he wanted was some peace and quiet.
He had no energy to care about the girls' feelings. The fact that he could still maintain the original Sasuke's persona and tone under such duress was a testament to his extreme self-restraint.
The two girls eventually left, their faces crestfallen. As they walked side by side, they couldn't resist exchanging barbed sisterly banter and petty gestures.
In the afternoon, the sunset painted half the sky above Konoha a fiery crimson.
The vibrant, burning hues streamed through the classroom's transparent glass, bathing the interior in a dazzling, colorful watercolor-like light.
'I've transmigrated!'
Though utterly inconceivable, after confirming it wasn't a dream, his years of cultivated composure allowed him to adapt within minutes.
Sasuke maintained his usual pose—chin propped in his hand, expression cool and aloof, radiating a "keep away" aura.
Yet his mind raced, organizing and analyzing.
'My last memory is falling asleep in my room at home.'
'No electric shock, no car accident, no unremarkable antique purchase, no bizarre encounter, and certainly no strange old man. I even finished watching Naruto a year ago.'
As he pondered his final memories before transmigrating, he desperately sought clues to explain his arrival in this world.
Even faced with such an extraordinary event, his mind remained calm, determined to deduce his circumstances using logic and experience.
But the information was frustratingly scarce. Despite his lifelong reputation for meticulous thinking and sharp insight, he couldn't find a single thread to follow.
Fortunately, Sasuke was never one to stubbornly cling to dead ends.
Seeing that his initial efforts to reason through the situation had failed, he felt no lingering hesitation and immediately began sorting through the memories of this body.
'So, it's this time period...?'
Sasuke's eyes narrowed slightly, his breath hitching, and his heart pounded fiercely, yet his face remained impassive.
When reviewing the body's memories, he swiftly glossed over emotionally charged events like family interactions, sibling training, clan life, and ninja academy studies, skimming through them like a rapid slideshow before finally settling on the present day.
In the memories, as Sasuke left for school that morning, he noticed an unusually large number of clan members gathered within the Uchiha compound.
Among them were not only full-fledged ninja and Uchiha security forces members but even distant relatives.
In essence, every Uchiha Sasuke knew—whether by blood or affiliation—had returned to the Uchiha Clan today under various pretexts.
'This isn't normal!'
'Absolutely not normal!'
Even the Clan Festival, the grandest gathering, could never draw every individual with Uchiha blood together. Moreover, the festival was still five months away.
The Uchiha Clan had many ninja and security personnel. When urgent missions arose, they would miss the Clan Festival, and the clan members would never blame them—after all, they were ninjas.
Secondly, it was already late afternoon, approaching evening.
Under normal circumstances, Sasuke should have been home eating dinner by now.
However, today the school had announced an extra training session lasting an hour or two tonight to prepare for the final exams in two days, meaning he wouldn't be home until at least 8:30 PM.
This was abnormal!
In his two years at the Ninja Academy, the original owner of this body had never experienced extra classes before.
While such sessions weren't unprecedented in the academy's history, when combined with the earlier anomalies, he could now guess what day it was.
What's more, among the dozen or so sixth-grade classes at the Ninja Academy, all the other classes had been dismissed, leaving only Sasuke's class behind for supplementary training. After all, other grades and classes also had Uchiha members.
Compounding this with the subtle tensions he recalled between the original owner's father and brother, as well as the memory of Shisui's disappearance two years ago and the clan's subsequent uproar...
Today was the day the Uchiha Clan would be annihilated!