Chapter 3: A Glimpse Into The Greater Mysteries Of This World

(Morning)

Consciousness returned to me slowly. It has been a month since I spilled the beans on my parents. Tomorrow is my birthday.

Shaking my head, I pushed myself from the bed and went to the bathroom for my morning ritual before rushing downstairs to greet the morning with a song.

Today I felt like Higher from Bishop Briggs, but obviously modified.

I shifted left and right in my seat as I began playing. That was the problem with Koto, you had to be stable. I just wanted to bang my head and move my legs from time to time when playing it, but it didn't allow for that. Which meant I knew what I wanted for my birthday present.

"Higher, your love has set me free. Now nothing's out of reach Higher, higher, ooh!"

Most would think this verse is for a romantic love, but it can also work for familial love.

"I run the days into the night! I feel my heart is goin' rogue here! But I kinda like it (I do)!"

Who doesn't love exercise when it is done the fun way, and shows actual results fast?

"You run your mouth, I ran a long while! Well I'm done, I promise!"

I spilled all the beans there is to spill about my foreknowledge, and the liberative feel is still going strong. I do not even feel depressed anymore.

"Yeah I will Scream out my burden into the night, I lost control doing what I like!"

Still about the past but that was the limit of using that song, the next few lyrics started to split from the original more.

"I once heard, sharing is caring so I went ahead, shot my Signal Flare, the fireworks kept going higher!"

"Don't wanna wake up anymore! Keep sleepin', those walls I've been hidin' are gone and all I'm seeing, is this beautiful dream I'm livin'…"

I took a breather and looked at my parents going about their business, mother tinkering with a radio while father sways to the music and cooks.

"Laughter bubbling under my skin, this giddiness I'm feelin', my lucky stars are shinin'. Don't wanna wake up anymore!"

I paused, and shook my head, that part sounded like something I would say if I was under Madara's Genjutsu.

"D'aww, and it was so good, why did you stop Sakumo?!" Dad protested playfully from the kitchen.

"It's easy for you to say, I saw you dancing, do you know how hard it is to sing and not dance? That is the one drawback of Koto-chan."

Mother snorted from her seat: "Still can't believe you named that, that. How unimaginative!" She teased with a smirk, not even looking up from the radio.

"Mom, until you name something inanimate you don't have the right to criticize my naming sense."

She turned to me and raised a brow: "Do I need first hand experience to know a bad name when I see one?"

I rolled my eyes: "You need to display a good example before pointing out what is wrong with the only example at hand and what can be done better, it is called constructive criticism, you know?" I said and crossed my arms.

"Sure, sure." She said simply, clearly the conversation was dead.

Not feeling the desire to continue playing I went to father's side: "What'chu' cooking good lookin'?"

He smirked: "Shouldn't you be saying that to your mother?"

"Three people you do not anger are the one who cooks your food, who works to heal you, and your superiors. I don't see her in the kitchen sweating and working tirelessly for my meal."

He paused, thought about it, and nodded: "That's a good one, from your past life?"

I nodded: "A translation of it. Originally is was chef, barber, and tailor. It was about maintaining good relations with people who are in charge of your wellbeing and appearance. Since we aren't that depended on appearance compared to my old world, I changed it to work with our culture, it doesn't roll down the tongue like my previous language but it gets the point across."

"That it does. I'll use it somewhere sometime later on." He said as he ruffled my hair: "Now what do you want?"

I hummed, truthfully I did not want anything, since my mood was good and I was exercising my appetite has grown many fold. I stopped picky about food and anything they put in front of me I did my best to devour. I did not wish to be so short forever after all.

"Do you need help?"

He hummed again then asked: "Do you mean help that you can give, help that I need, or a help that gives you something to do?" He asked, not bothering to sugar coat things.

"… Can you elaborate on that?" Always get the full picture as you can get because misinformation kills, or so they taught me, his momentary smile said that I passed the test.

"In reverse order, if you want something to keep busy I could give you something fun to do but ultimately not needed, if you want to do something that I need then that would be nothing because I am just waiting for this to cook properly then will set the table, and if you want to give that only you can give, then that would be watching me cook and telling me whether there are better techniques for what I am doing. You come from a more advanced civilization with a level of interconnectivity that I still can't wrap my head around, there is bound to be some things you might've learned but don't remember."

I nodded, remembering some food competitions: "That is true but I don't think my world can be of any help on that front because this world is more connected to nature and even without the Wood Release we can influence the growth of plants so I think culturing of the various plants has resulted in much different outcomes, our bodies are stronger thus we can eat more ingredients which creates different spices and tastes, not to mention how chakra enhanced our bodies to allow for enhanced tastebuds which, while protects from poison, also allows us to taste a much greater variety. Then there is the Akamichi with their chefs and passion for food in general. Ninja skills also adds variety too, a person would be world class chef if he could slash through his ingredients once in the air without sending them flying at the surroundings. And these are just off the top of my head! So, yeah, I do not think my old world is any better at culinary arts from this world." I grimaced in disgust.

"Ugh, they are so much worse when you consider the pollution and the need to mass produce everything, to the point of adding certain preservatives and bloodline modification that just damages us in ways we cannot see but can clearly see in the future generations in their accelerated maturation speed. You cannot leave bread outside of a closed off environment for a day without it starting to spoil, here we can keep it out in the open and it won't grow spoil for a week!" I scowled, the difference was light and day.

It is not that I enjoy shitting on my old world but it is just that the difference is night and day, and when you see what could've been you just can't help but get a bit angry.

I looked at father and saw him smirking down at me.

"What?!"

"Just glad you opened up, that's all. You finally feel like my child now."

The blush that spread my cheeks did not exist, and his cackling earnt him a punch to the tight and I stomped off towards mom.

And buried my face in her lap, he gently patted my head like a cat while tinkering still.

...

"What even are you doing with that?" I asked as poked an eye over the table, it seemed beyond salvaging from how she broke pieces and fused them back together.

"What does it look like?" She asked instead of answering.

I looked at her face to see if she was embarrassed by ruining the perfectly working radio and trying to hide that, but she had a blank expression yet focused eyes: "It looks like you broke it beyond repair." I heard father snort from kitchen and laugh again, and mother's eyebrow twitched.

She raised her face up, clearly trying for a proud and regal look: "Sakumo, never be afraid to follow your curiosity. Even if this got broken, which it isn't, my cause was just."

"And what was your cause?" I asked instead of pointing out that she could've probably learned how a radio worked by reading a book or something, rather than gutting it open and destroying it beyond repair. Then again in this world knowledge of any sort is highly guarded, I doubt even something simple like a radio would be shared in a book.

She grinned and pointed at the outer parts of the machine: "This thing can receive signals that we cannot see or feel to form into sounds, how does it do that, can we replicate that with a jutsu? What about seal work? If we can replicate this with a jutsu then could've reverse engineer another way for the famed Yamanaka telepathy?!!" She theorized excitedly, hands waving around left and right to express her interest and the importance of her tinkering.

"Did you learn anything then?"

…

"Not this time, I learned that this part is the receiver, then it sends electricity into this part to vibrate it according to sound waves to generate the sounds. What I don't understand is how it calculates the required frequencies for the sound."

"Wouldn't it be based upon the input, look, this bit here is the receiver, it receives the frequency and, I think, the frequency gets disturbed according to the sound waves. Do we have graphs for sound frequencies in this world?"

"Of course we do, how else would we work on making sound based Genjutsu? But it is hard to relay sound into an understandable standard form. The machines have to be operated by the same person's chakra, the more precise the machine the more it depends on being fed the owner's chakra."

"Okay, not the thing I was asking. Look you see the receiver is focused on a certain type of energy, I think Hertz was the name in my old world, it gets this energy wave and the fluctuations in the Hertz wave makes the vibrations needed for the sound. Then this part, combined with this part, sends electricity according to those fluctuations which creates the vibrations that are a match for the input elsewhere. I don't know, I am not an engineer but I am sure this is how it works, it makes sense that way."

"How about this bit, what do you think this is? That is the one part I don't get." She pointed to a box shaped object that was opened up.

I looked at it, there were wires to feed it electricity and its making was rather different from the rest of the radio. I took it to take a closer look, turned it left and right before frowning…

"This bit here is a voice coil, this is what I was talking about when I said it turns sound frequencies into energy waves… But why would a radio need to hear us? It doesn't need to, mom… Where did you buy this?" I looked at my stone faced mother, her expression blank but a growing fury in her eyes.

She took the box and put it back on the table before carrying me to the kitchen with quick steps and put me on the counter and looked me in the eyes: "How large do you think its sound receiver is? Can it keep sending noise when unplugged? Is there a limit to the distance they can listen to us?" She asked rapidly, making father cut off the fire and turn to us with a serious expression.

"I don't think the range to gather understandable noise is that large, it would need to have better and larger microphone. If it is playing then it wouldn't be able to pick much either, unless there was a way to split the sound of the radio from the received audio. There was a thing that looked like a battery to me but I am not sure, I don't think it could last longer than a few hours at maximum, the battery would need to be much higher quality or larger for that, minimum is half an hour if it is new but over time the battery gets worn down so it might fall down to five minutes. This is serious isn't it?" I asked at the end, feeling a growing sense of unease at the discovery I stumbled into.

She paused, looked at dad, then patted my head: "It is, but this just shows that I was right, you need to let your curiosity run while from time to time, it just might let you save lives in this world."

Dad snorted: "Of course you would twist things like that. The food is ready by the way. Lets eat, we'll report things later. What has happened, happened, even if we rush now it wouldn't make a difference if we report things after a meal." He hugged us both: "So, lets eat the food I slaved over while you two played around and uncovered a national level threat in our living room. You don't want to anger your chef, do you?"

Mom turned to him in the embrace, took a deep breath while resting her forehead on his chest then hummed in agreement.

Then we were seated on the dinner table, with me on mom's lap though I protested to the babying it was more of a protest for formality's sake, a single refusal was enough to make me stop. I missed out on enough skin ship so far, and it wouldn't be long until I could do this no more. So cuddling and coddling was fine by me.