Sleep was a resource, not a state of rest, and Akira allocated it with miserly precision. In the deep, silent hours of the night, while the orphanage slumbered around him, his mind was a brightly lit laboratory. The fleeting, almost accidental pivot against Koji was replayed on an endless loop, dissected frame by painstaking frame. It was no longer a moment of instinct but a replicable formula of mass, vector, and timing. He broke down the physics of his own weakness, charting the clumsy movements of his tormentors as if they were predictable orbital mechanics.
Koji was a creature of straight lines, his aggression a telegraphed charge. Ren, one of his main cronies, favored wide, sweeping kicks, his body off-balance for a critical half-second before each attempt. A third boy, Kenji, was a grabber, his hands always reaching, his footwork sloppy. Akira built a mental bestiary of their habits, a catalog of vulnerabilities that existed entirely outside the realm of strength. In the darkness of his cot, he choreographed tiny, hypothetical ballets of evasion, a dance where the sole objective was to occupy the space where the attack was not.
His physical regimen became a dual-purposed agony. The morning planks, now held for a torturous count of ten seconds, were not just for building core strength but for teaching his muscles to remain steady under duress. The desperate, scrabbling attempts to hang from the oak branch, which now lasted for two whole seconds before he dropped, tore fresh skin from his palms but also taught him the true, pathetic limits of his grip. He learned to feel the precise moment a muscle was about to fail, adding another layer of data to his understanding of the faulty machine he inhabited.
To this routine, he added a new, bizarre set of exercises. He would stand in his corner of the yard, eyes closed, and practice shifting his weight from the ball of one foot to the other. He would execute small, quarter-turns, focusing on keeping his center of gravity low and stable. To any observer, it looked like the aimless, strange fidgeting of a deeply troubled child. To Akira, it was the practice of a single, crucial principle: efficient movement. He could not afford to waste a single ounce of energy on a panicked leap or a clumsy scramble. His survival depended on moving just enough, and no more.
The proving ground for his theories was, as always, the harsh daylight of the orphanage yard. His continued existence, his refusal to break or flee, had become a personal affront to Koji. The bullying sessions evolved from casual cruelty into a focused, group activity.
It came to a head on a particularly humid afternoon. He was practicing his pivots near the water pump when they formed a loose, menacing circle around him. Koji stood directly in front, cracking his knuckles with a theatrical flair he'd clearly copied from an older student. Ren and Kenji flanked him, cutting off any retreat.
"Still playing at being a shinobi, ghost?" Koji's voice was low, carrying a new edge of genuine malice. "We're tired of you. Today, we're going to teach you to stay down."
Akira's heart rate remained steady. This was not a random assault; it was a controlled experiment. He lowered his stance almost imperceptibly, feeling the familiar dirt under the thin soles of his shoes.
Koji charged, just as the mental blueprint predicted. A straight, artless push aimed at his chest. Instead of bracing, Akira pivoted on his left foot, the movement he had practiced a thousand times in his mind. It was slower, more sluggish than his mental rehearsals, but it was just enough. Koji's hands, expecting to slam into a solid torso, met mostly empty air. The force of the shove grazed Akira's side, spinning him slightly, but it did not unbalance him. Koji, overextended and surprised, stumbled a step past him.
Before Koji could recover, Kenji lunged from the side, his hands reaching for Akira's shirt. This was a different variable. Akira took a short, quick step backward, Kenji's grasping fingers brushing the front of his tunic but failing to find purchase. Simultaneously, he saw the blur of Ren's leg beginning its predictable, sweeping arc. He couldn't step back further without being cornered. His only option was to move forward, into the space they had just vacated.
He tried to dart past Koji, but his body screamed in protest. His legs were not fast enough. The motion was ungainly, a desperate shuffle rather than a sprint. Koji, having regained his footing, let out a roar of fury at being made to look foolish. He didn't charge this time; he simply spun and swiped, his arm catching Akira across the back and sending him stumbling to his knees.
The system failed. The circle collapsed. A foot, Ren's, caught him in the ribs. Pain, sharp and electric, lanced through his side. Kenji grabbed a fistful of his dark hair, yanking his head back. He saw Koji's face, contorted with rage, looming over him. A fist came down, not a proper punch, but a wild, angry clubbing blow that struck him on the cheek. The world exploded in a flash of white, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth.
He didn't fight back. He went limp, making his body a dead weight. He protected his head with his arms, absorbing the flurry of clumsy kicks and shoves that followed. He focused on his breathing, on the points of impact, on the searing pain in his ribs. This, too, was data. This was the price of miscalculation.
The assault ended as quickly as it began, the arrival of a shouting matron scattering the boys like startled crows. She rushed to Akira's side, her face a mask of alarm and pity.
"Akira! Oh, you poor child, can you hear me? Let me see," she fretted, trying to lift his head.
He allowed her to help him up, his body a canvas of fresh aches that overshadowed the old ones. He was led inside, his lip was cleaned, and he was given a cup of lukewarm water. The matron scolded him gently for "provoking" the other boys, a piece of flawed logic his mind dismissed as irrelevant emotional noise. He sat on his cot, staring at the wall, ignoring her fussing. He looked like a victim, a small boy lost in trauma.
But inside, the scientist was already back in the lab. The pain was secondary. His analysis was ruthless. Failure point one: underestimation of the opponents' recovery speed. Failure point two: insufficient explosive power in his legs for a forward dash. Failure point three: allowing himself to be fully encircled. The pivot had worked. The backstep had worked. The system was viable, but the hardware it ran on was critically flawed. The pain in his ribs was a reminder that even a perfect theory was useless without the physical capacity to execute it.
Later that night, long after the matron had checked on him one last time, he slipped out of his cot. His side throbbed with every movement. He ignored it. He stood in the center of the moonlit common room floor. He didn't practice planks or push-ups. Instead, he stood on one leg, his arms outstretched for balance, and held the position. He was training a new attribute. Not strength, not evasion, but stability. His cheek stung, his lip was split, and a deep, purple bruise was blooming on his ribs. But he felt no despair. He felt the cold, thrilling certainty of a problem that was, with enough data and enough pain, ultimately solvable.