Chapter 20: Breathing Room
The sun rose slowly over the war-torn forests surrounding the hidden camp. Morning mist clung to the grass, turning golden in the early light. After the chaos of finding Kota and the tension of their midnight return, everything seemed strangely peaceful.
Ren sat just outside the infirmary tent, arms wrapped around his knees. Aki and Taro were still asleep, sprawled out in their shared corner of the sleeping area. Kota hadn't woken up yet. His leg was bandaged, his skin pale, but the steady rise and fall of his chest reassured Ren that he would live.
The search had ended, but something inside Ren still felt unfinished. He hadn't really known Kota. He wouldn't have noticed if the boy had gone missing two weeks earlier. And yet—he couldn't stop himself from caring.
The thought nagged at him as he sat in the soft morning light.
"Why do I care so much?"
It was a quiet question, more to himself than anyone else. He looked down at his palms. They were scratched, dirty, the nails chipped. He remembered diving down into that hole, helping Kota out, the smell of earth and sweat and fear.
Back in his old world—Earth—people cared. People panicked when someone went missing. News alerts, search parties, photos on street poles. It was normal to care. Maybe that part of him had never left.
---
Later that morning, Juro-sensei assigned them chores.
"I don't want any of you getting into more trouble. Help the med-nin, clean the training field, whatever it takes. Stay busy."
He didn't say it with anger, but with a kind of exasperated weariness that only grown-ups in war seemed to master. The kind that meant: I care, but I can't afford to show it.
Ren ended up helping one of the older boys carry broken training dummies to the burn pile. It was tedious work, but his thoughts kept drifting.
That night, as the camp quieted down and the stars pushed through the darkened sky, Ren sat cross-legged in the corner of his tent.
Meditation.
It was one of the only things he could still do that reminded him of his old life. He let his breathing slow. He pictured the seven chakra points he remembered: Root. Sacral. Solar Plexus. Heart. Throat. Third Eye. Crown.
He focused on them one by one, guiding his attention slowly upward, just like the guides had said back home. But when he reached the top—the seventh, the crown chakra—he paused.
It was already open.
There was no resistance, no wall, just an overwhelming stillness.
Ren opened his eyes with a frown. That shouldn't have been possible. Not unless—
He sat up straighter, heart beating faster.
"Has it been open this whole time?"
He remembered something else from the old world's teachings: seven main chakras, twenty-one secondary ones, and eighty-six smaller points throughout the body.
"If I train all of them... maybe I can control chakra more freely," he muttered.
It sounded stupid the moment he said it out loud, but it lit a fire in his chest.
His world had been filled with philosophy and yoga and spiritual guides. Here? This was the world of chakra, of shinobi. He had a method from his old life—a map. Maybe it was wrong, but it was something. It made him feel like he had a head start.
But what Ren didn't realize was that the system here wasn't built around those seventy-one points.
Here, chakra flowed through 361 tenketsu.
He wasn't walking a shortcut. He was walking a different road entirely.
---
The next day passed in relative calm. Kota stirred once in the morning, eyes fluttering open just long enough to see Ren beside him. He whispered something unintelligible, then fell back into sleep.
Ren didn't leave his side for a while.
Aki and Taro eventually found him there and wordlessly dropped off a piece of bread and a small container of soup.
For a while, it was just the three of them sitting outside the tent, watching the sky darken.
Taro broke the silence. "You still think about him? The real Ren?"
Ren blinked. It wasn't the question he expected.
"Not really. I didn't know him."
Aki looked uncomfortable. "He didn't talk to anyone. Not really. Just us."
Ren nodded slowly. "Then maybe it's better this way."
They didn't ask what he meant.
---
That night, he meditated again.
But this time, he tried something different.
Instead of focusing just on the seven chakras, he imagined energy flowing through his hands. His legs. His spine. He pictured it like rivers of light, moving along paths he couldn't name.
It was difficult—exhausting, even. But something shifted.
His breathing deepened. His skin prickled. And for the first time, the energy didn't just rise. It flowed.
Not in a surge. Not a flare.
But like a stream learning to follow its riverbed.
And Ren, sitting alone in a war camp far from everything he once knew, smiled quietly.
Because even if he was on the wrong map, even if his road was different—he was still moving forward.
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