The sting in his palm was a grounding reality. Akira sat on the dirt-packed ground, long after Koji and his sycophants had fled, and stared at the bead of blood welling from the cut. It was a ridiculously small injury, yet it felt monumental. It was the physical proof of a failed hypothesis. His mind, his greatest weapon, was not enough. Not when it was housed in a shell this fragile.
He pushed himself to his feet, a process that still required conscious effort. He walked to the orphanage's water pump, ignoring the curious stares of the younger children and the pitying glance from a caregiver. He held his hand under the cool stream of water, hissing silently as it cleaned the grit from the wound. The pain was a sharp, clear signal. His old methods—intimidation, psychological manipulation—were a language spoken by a king. Here, in this cage of weakness, he was a beggar. And beggars couldn't afford to be clever; they had to be resilient.
That night, sleep was a strategic retreat, not a reprieve. His mind cataloged every physical sensation: the ache in his chest from the shove, the sting in his palm, the leaden exhaustion in his limbs. These were no longer mere discomforts. They were data points. They were the baseline from which he would measure his ascent.
The next day, he began.
He didn't wait for an opportune moment. He rose before the other children, in the gray, pre-dawn chill of the common room. His first objective was simple: a push-up. He'd seen shinobi-in-training do them in the village grounds, a fluid, powerful motion. He placed his scraped palms on the cold wooden floor, extended his legs, and tried to replicate the form.
The result was immediate, humiliating failure. His arms, thin and lacking any discernible muscle, trembled violently and then buckled. His chest hit the floor with a pathetic smack. There was no strength. None. It was like trying to lift a boulder with rotten rope.
A flicker of his old, cold fury sparked within him, but he smothered it. Rage was an inefficient fuel. He needed methodology. He lay there for a moment, analyzing the failure. His core was weak. His arms were useless. His entire body was a disconnected collection of faulty parts.
He modified the objective. If he could not perform the motion, he would master the static position. He got into the plank position again, his body a straight line from his head to his heels. His arms shook, his stomach muscles screamed in protest. He held it. One second. Two. Three. His whole frame shuddered, and he collapsed, panting as if he'd run a great distance.
Three seconds. That was his limit. A new baseline.
This became his routine. Every morning before dawn, every evening after the lights were out, he would be on the floor of the common room. Three seconds of holding his body up. Then rest. Then another three seconds. He did this until his arms felt like jelly and refused to obey. He would then move to his legs, attempting clumsy squats that sent him tumbling onto his rear. He tried to stretch, forcing his uncooperative limbs into positions that felt alien and painful.
His dedication did not go unnoticed. It became a source of immense amusement for the other children. Koji, emboldened by his previous 'victory', found a new favorite pastime.
"Look, the ghost is trying to fly!" he'd cackle, pointing as Akira trembled through a plank in the yard. A kick to the ribs would send Akira sprawling.
He never reacted. He would simply take the blow, wait for them to pass, and push himself back into position. He became their designated punching bag. When they were bored, they would find him. They would push him, trip him, and call him names. Each shove was a lesson in balance. Each trip was a lesson in how to fall without breaking. He learned to absorb the impacts, to turn his body so a kick to the side landed with a dull thud instead of a sharp crack.
The caregivers saw it as a phase. "He's just trying to get stronger, poor thing," one would say to another, shaking her head. They would sometimes shoo the other children away, but they couldn't be everywhere.
Akira didn't want their help. Their pity was as useless as his own weak muscles. He needed the opposition. The taunts were white noise. The physical abuse was a live-fire training exercise. It taught him things his solitary, pre-dawn sessions could not. It taught him about pain tolerance. It taught him to read the tells of an incoming attack—the shift in Koji's weight, the glint of malice in another boy's eyes.
Weeks bled into a month. The other children grew, their bodies becoming sturdier, their movements more coordinated. Akira's progress was almost imperceptible. He was still the frailest, the palest, the clumsiest boy in the orphanage. But one evening, as he lay on the floor, muscles screaming in protest, he pushed himself into a plank.
He held it.
One second. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.
He collapsed, his chest heaving, a sheen of sweat on his brow. Six seconds. He had doubled his record.
Lying there on the floor, bruised from an encounter with Koji earlier that day, every fiber of his being aching with a profound exhaustion, a feeling he hadn't experienced in his entire previous life settled in his chest. It wasn't pride. It wasn't joy. It was the cold, grim satisfaction of a single, positive data point.
The climb had begun. And the wall was a thousand miles high.