The streets are busy this time of day. Shinobi in dark blue hurry past with scrolls under their arms. Children in bright summer clothes chase each other around a fruit stand. A brown-haired woman sweeps her doorstep, glancing up as you pass, then down again quickly, as if she’s seen something she shouldn’t.

You walk. Past the old red-and-white tiled roofs, past the wooden signs and the rustling trees and the flower shop with its buckets full of sun-colored petals. The village feels both foreign and familiar, like a place you might have dreamed once and then forgotten.

A man in a shinobi vest stops mid-conversation with a friend to stare at you. The friend elbows him. They both look away too fast.

It happens again near the tea shop. A woman with a toddler on her hip looks at you, and for a moment, her mouth opens slightly, as though she might call out to you. She doesn’t. The toddler tugs at her shirt. She lets him.

The path slopes upward. The houses thin out. The trees grow taller. And the village below hums with life, oblivious to the fact that everyone who has looked at you so far has seen a ghost wearing someone else’s face.

The front gate of the house is familiar in the way old memories are—blurred at the edges, too small, too bright. The paint on the fence is cracked. The mailbox by the door is the same one from the photograph. Your father’s house. Or what used to be, once.

And standing just beyond the gate, still in her sandals, a girl your age with pink hair and green eyes—

—no.

Not just pink hair. Not just green eyes.

Sakura.

She hasn’t seen you yet. She’s looking down the road, toward the market, one hand resting on the gate as if she’s been waiting for someone. Her hair is shorter than yours. Tied back with a red ribbon. There’s a smudge of dirt on her knee.

The afternoon light catches her face. And for one terrible, impossible moment, it’s like looking into a mirror that remembers everything you don’t.