Contemplation

"Hi…" Naruto hesitantly smiled and waved back. "Um… are you lost?" His eyes darted to his left and right, looking for parent(s) who probably lost their child. Perhaps he was disturbed by my sickly appearance, I thought, what with my pale skin, sunken eyes, and my lack of weight that did not match my long limbs.

Whatever.

"Not really. I'm just…" Good God, when did talking to another human being become so hard? I really needed to socialize more. I honestly could not remember talking to anyone that was not Sasuke or Mikoto – occasionally Itachi and Fugaku. "You know, walking."

Naruto averted his eyes to me again. "You're going somewhere?"

I shook my head. "Not really."

The blond boy pursed his lips, as if wanting to say something but was not sure how. I patiently waited for him to gather his courage.

Naruto fidgeted under my blank stare. "Then... do you–" he cleared his throat, "do you wanna play with me?"

I nodded. "Sure."

Naruto stared at me in disbelief – as if he did not believe that what he had heard was real, that it could be that simple – before his expression contorted into pure delight. "Yes!" He pumped his fist up.

I repressed a rueful smile, Naruto deserved something more than a pity.

"Wanna play the swing?" he asked excitedly.

My lips contorted into a grin, genuinely affected by the boy's positive energy. "Yeah."

He clapped his hands together. "Awesome!"

I climbed into the swing's seat with Naruto's help. It was quite an odd sensation not to feel the ground beneath my feet. Even after fourteen months I was still not used with the fact that I now had such short limbs.

"I'm going to push you, okay?"

I clenched my fists around the ropes and nodded my head in affirmative.

Naruto pushed the swing then. The force was relatively slow and gentle, to make sure that I did not fall from the wooden seat.

"Um, my name's Uzumaki Naruto, dattebayo! What's yours?"

I stiffened, considering the fact that Fugaku pretty much kept my existence as low profile as possible – for a reason that I still was not aware of – it would probably be for the best if I did not tell anyone my name.

I was just about to sprout some made-up name when the blond boy started to chatter uncontrollably about every topic that had crossed his mind. He talked about how happy he was to have a friend, commenting that I looked funny in my glasses and that ramen was his favorite food. He started to babble about his day after that and I avidly listened to him, nodding and chuckling here and there at his ridiculous story.

But then my mind started to drift off.

I could see why the boy liked to sit in this swing. It had a really nice view. The ground it was located on was slightly higher than the rest of the park, it was a good place to observe the people who visited this place.

I could see everyone's countdowns from here. They were pitch black, akin to a black hole, they stood out like a sore thumb. I didn't even know what their names were, the only thing that differentiate them from each other were their numbers.

I vividly remembered the day when I first watched a person's countdown stopped. I was in the hospital for my monthly check-up. There was a woman, she looked gravely ill. That day she was sitting in a wheelchair, under an apple tree, blankly staring into spaces. I was in my stroller, watching her from the other side of the hospital's garden. I did not know how long I watched her, but I remembered that I had almost dozed off when she just closed her eyes – her countdown was no longer ticking, it was stuck in what seemed to be this random number – she had died.

It should have been something more memorable, not necessarily magnificent, but I was expecting something… more.

Perhaps a metaphysical occurrence or something mystical, even a flash of light or some kind of fireworks will do. But there was absolutely nothing, she simply died and that was it. So did with everyone else, no one was special. They were just another number, and one day they would eventually die too. Once they die, some cannon fodders would pop another cannon fodder to live their meaningless lives, then they too would die and the cycle would go on and on until their extinction.

So what was the point?

All of these people, they faced happiness and hardship throughout their finite life while I sat here, silently watching them as their life slowly burnt away into nothingness.

Thousands of years from now, nothing would remain of them. Thousands of days that they had lived, everything that they had accomplished and strived for, everything that they had learned and mastered, every joys and tears, every fear and insecurities would be nothing.

It was as if they never existed at all.

Billions of people, nameless, storyless, meaningless.

They struggled and worried and cried for nothing. They were stressed and depressed and killed for nothing. Their lives had no meaning. Not a purpose, not a plan. Not a reason, not a cause.

And one day I would be one of them too. Again.

I was too caught up in my musing to remember that I was in a moving swing or notice the fact that the swing had gone faster. Unfortunately for me, I was not in a bucket shaped baby swing or a swing with a safety belt, thus one could guess just exactly what would happen when my already loose grip on the rope went loose, precisely at the same time when the kinetic energy of the swing was on full force.

I flew.

I knew I looked like a misplaced overgrown bird, but still, for that one split-second I was floating. I felt weightless, like a feather.

But then the sweet and friendly neighbor that went by the name gravity just had to rear its ugly head and pull me down from my majestic state like a lump of dirt.

The result?

I awkwardly landed on the ground like a drunken hobo.

My knee was slightly bleeding and my palms were grazed from the impact. Oh, well... at least I did not suffer from other unsavory injuries.

Naruto was next to me in an instant, checking whether I was okay whilst apologizing profusely and helping me to stand up. Thankfully no one played in this part of the park, thus we did not attract any unwanted attention.

Well… except for the earlier haggard looking man who was staggering towards us with his hatred and contempt laid bare in his face for the world to see.