The sun was just starting to rise when Itsumi opened his eyes in the barracks of Company 290. A year had passed since a little boy's hands were buckled into a uniform—and now, at six years old, his body moved with the stiff precision of a soldier. Quiet and withdrawn, he followed every order from the corporals and sergeants without a word.
Training was brutal. Instructors yelled until their faces turned red, forced them into grueling drills, and made them crawl under barbed wire until their knees bled. Every day tested their discipline and endurance. Memories of his past life flickered in Itsumi's mind like distant dreams—fragments that mixed with the cold metal of a bayonet and drove him to obey without question.
He was placed in Platoon 10, one of twenty boys his age (or just a year older). Though the other kids shared nervous glances and hushed jokes, Itsumi stayed distant, barely whispering a syllable. On his very first mission—exactly on his sixth birthday—he was handed his first rifle.
The battle was chaos. Smoke and gunfire filled the air as Platoon 10 stormed the enemy trenches. In moments, every one of his friends fell. Panic gripped him, but he held firm, plunging his bayonet into any attacker who came too close. When the shooting finally stopped, he found himself standing alone, covered in dirt and the blood of strangers, hidden behind his fallen comrades. No one understood how he'd survived.
That "miracle" reputation led to him being shuffled from platoon to platoon. By age eight, he landed in Platoon 299 of Company 300—a unit full of adult soldiers who sneered at the boy among them. They underestimated him until, during a live-fire drill, he dropped three targets in under a minute. From then on they respected his lethal skill, but he was still the silent oddity in their ranks.
At ten years old, Itsumi and his platoon were sent to the Pacific islands. There they ran into the United States Army of this world—well-armed and battle-hardened. The ambush hit fast. His comrades tried to escape by boat but were cut down. Itsumi was left alone with only a rifle and a handful of bullets.
In the thick jungle heat, he stalked through tangled palms as enemy patrols closed in. He jammed radios, rigged booby traps from discarded rifles, and shifted positions at dawn and dusk. The attackers thought they were facing an entire battalion—so they kept sending more troops: squads, platoons, entire companies. None spotted the lone boy moving like a ghost through the undergrowth.
By the fifth sunrise, over five hundred enemy bodies lay motionless in his wake. His rifle still smoked in his hands. Under the scorching sun, the blackened island had become the testing ground for a child's instinct and strategy. No rescue came; no officer ever learned his name.
As dusk fell on the empty beach, Itsumi stood in the silent aftermath. Ten years of relentless war had carved his soul into something both obedient and unbreakable. Afraid more reinforcements would find him, he crawled into a half-buried bunker and waited in the darkness for night to fall.