A FATHER'S COLD
The problem with gaining awareness at an inconsistent rate is that the revelations were jarring more than not. It was not as if it was shocking, but more so that sense struggled to differentiate Minato's surroundings from his past until it was starkly distinct.
Minato learned simply, and the more he did, the more uneasy he felt. Somehow, wherever he was reborn, it was less technologically advanced than he was used to. Maybe his family was old-fashioned, but they had neither a TV nor a car. Instead, their house was organized with a small bookshelf dawning the entryway, and various boxes of everyday items his mother and father used. There was also a box of his toys and books in a box in the corner. When his mother did not sweep in a couple of days, he would ignore the feeling of sand and dust to play in silence.
His new life was peaceful, a bit quiet, but peaceful. Almost too peaceful. Minato did not realized how much siblings distracted you until he did not have them. Even though his memories were jumbled together and faded, and it hurt to think so hard, he often found himself thinking of his past memories to distract himself. Of growing up wild and all the things he had ever witnessed.
It was not enough to keep him from boredom. The boy often reread his books or took frequent naps.
He had no idea of what the outside looked like. His only physical world was the two houses he switched in between.
The other key difference was that Minato was no longer in a western-centered world. His mother and absent father were East-Asian, and he assumed he was. There were also some Japanese influences in his life, but he had too little knowledge of the culture to articulate the changes fully. The characters in his books and the clothes his family wore was all he had to go on.
Most of the food he ate or was introduced to was either pickled or mainly vegetables. Protein always came second, and there was always a bowl of rice on the table when his mother fed him.
The language he was learning to understand was just... his new language. For some reason, he was not able to recognize if it was truly Japanese or not. Maybe it was because it was the only language his baby brain had ever heard.
Sometimes, he tried to speak English in the quiet of the night, but the words were even more jumbled than his wrecked proficiency in his current native language.
Minato's father worked at the fish yard.
He knew this because the man was gone all day, for one, from the early morning to the late evening. When he came home, the man often sat on their small balcony outside and watered their plants, or sat in his room reading. He smelled of fish and sweat, and they ate from the sea more often than not.
Since Minato had started to understand more language as he slowly grew, he caught his mostly quiet father speaking of shipments and the lack of them. Wherever they lived, there was a delay in commerce.
"Has your mother fed you?" his father rumbled out of his burly chest. The man worked hard labor and had the muscles to show for it.
Minato was shy around his father. The man seemed to believe that only women tended to the children. Or, worse, he just wanted nothing to do with his toddler son.
"Yes sir," Minato said. He fidgeted his clumsy fingers together as he sat on the floor in front of his picture books. His father had been reading a book quietly across the room from him.
The man stared at him, his face tired and worn. He rose from his seated position and walked over to his son with a careful gait.
"Do you want to see something?" the man asked him as he knelt in front of him.
"Yes sir," he said shyly, and his father did not hesitate to pick him up awkwardly.
Minato knew he was lucky that while his parents took care of him, they also never used a baby voice with him. For some reason, it also made him feel bad because he knew it was his fault they did not have a normal child, but Minato put on the act of a smiling child enough that he felt as if there was not much more that he could do.
"When I was a couple of years older than you, my father taught me how to catch fish." The deep rumble of his father's voice was comforting against his ear as he pressed it to his father's chest. Minato nodded.
"That was before we lived in the village."
The village? Minato peered as his father guided them to their balcony and sat him in front of their plants. His baby eyes were still growing out of their blurriness, but that did not prevent him from looking around. Where they were was a residential area, with mostly multiple-story buildings with flat tops by each other.
His sight was restricted, but he was able to see that there were pipes scaling the walls of multiple buildings, various colors lining the roofs as various machinations lined the buildings. It was like organized street maximalism, with all the signs and the plants hanging from windows.
Minato leaned forward to peer into the street further and almost fell on his face.
"Stay away from the rail," his father ordered as he started to tend to his plants, with a short side-eye at his toddler. The man's silence smothered the air. Did his father want him around, but not know what to say?
He sucked at pretending to be something he was not. His parents seemed to realize that, and while they did not treat him like he was not a child, they seemed to realize that they did not have to act like he did not understand them either.
Maybe that was why his father rarely interacted with him- the man did not have a chance to bond with him as a baby because Minato was a freak of nature. A ghost masquerading as a child.
Minato slumped as he was handed to Baba when his mother left for her morning shift. It was cold, and he woke up thinking of things that no longer existed. The innate and gone. He tried to play it off as being grouchy for his mother, but his heart ached as he watched his parents gently talk around their morning tea.
He did not want to think about it. So he was trying to focus on everything around him.
Baba immediately sat him down with a writing set, some scrolls, and pens, and motioned for him to get at it. She started to unwrap a parcel he could not see from his position, but there was a glint of metal. He peered at the statues of animals he did not recognize she had behind her. If he peaked out the doorway, he would see the incense the woman always burned in the morning curling at a small shrine she had.
He stared down at it, momentarily, before peering back at the old woman who tended to him.
"Do you have music?" he asked, and at her dry look, he felt abashed.
"Do I have music?" she said, sitting back and staring at him. "Did your mother get a radio?"
Radios? He was in the time of radios? Minato knew that he was born somewhere else, in maybe a society without the technological advances he was used to, but the possibility of being somewhere back in time was... disturbing.
"No, Baba."
"Well, I do not think it is possible to 'have' music. You can create it, by playing an instrument or singing, but I do not have any in my possession."
The state of life before science had advanced was not something he was looking forward to.
"Oh," he said shyly, feeling like an idiot for his lack of speaking and awareness. "I am sorry."
The words were slow, since if he tried too hard, it would warble and be incomprehensible. The old woman just eyed him critically like she usually did and motioned towards his scroll.
"Start writing, we can play after you learn your daily hiragana," she remarked as she focused back on her task.
Minato sulked for a second, bored. Then he gave in to the woman's demands and started to carefully copy the symbols in front of him.
He was so used to the fact that Baba sharpened her knives in the morning to question it. Now, however, he was wondering if she was just an avid collector or if she used to be a martial artist.
Whatever. A thought for another day.