The warmth that had briefly ignited in Haruki's gut during meditation was not a victory. It was a taunt. A whisper of a power he couldn't grasp. He chased that feeling with a quiet, desperate intensity, but it remained elusive. He would sit beneath the roaring waterfall, his mind a battlefield of past memories and present anxieties, reaching for that spark, but it wouldn't come. He was a starving man who had tasted a single crumb of bread, and now he craved the entire loaf.
The temple's training was a steady drumbeat of physical and mental torment. Haruki's small body had grown stronger, but his mind had become his true training ground. He had a secret no one else at the temple, not even the wise old abbot, could fathom: he knew the future. This knowledge was both his greatest asset and his heaviest burden.
One afternoon, while stacking firewood in the temple courtyard, he watched Krillin struggling to split a thick log with an axe. Krillin's swings were powerful, but unrefined. He relied on brute force, not technique, and the axe head would often glance off the log with a dull thud.
"You're not aiming for the center," Haruki said, his voice quiet but clear. "You're aiming for the grain. The weakest point."
Krillin stopped, his brow furrowed in confusion. "The grain? What's that?"
"It's the lines in the wood," Haruki explained, walking over and tracing a faint line with his finger. "They show you how the wood grew. That's where you hit. You use the wood's own weakness against it."
He didn't know how he knew this. In his past life, he'd only seen it in a movie or read it in a book. But the knowledge was there, a random, practical piece of information that existed outside of his muscle memory. Krillin, a child of this world, learned only what he was taught. Haruki knew things he had no right to.
Krillin, being Krillin, was an open book. He swung the axe again, this time aiming for the line Haruki had shown him. The axe bit deep into the wood, splitting it with a satisfying crack. Krillin's face lit up with pure joy.
"Wow! You're right!" he exclaimed. "How did you know that?"
Haruki shrugged. "I just... saw it." It was the lie he used for everything he knew. He couldn't explain to Krillin that he had seen this in a dozen movies, a hundred video games, that his mind was an encyclopedia of useless facts from a world that had vanished.
That evening, as the two boys ate their simple dinner of rice and vegetables, Krillin's endless stream of chatter flowed freely. He spoke of the World Martial Arts Tournament, a distant, almost mythical event that the temple's oldest students had talked about.
"I bet the contestants can fly!" Krillin said, his eyes wide. "And they can shoot energy blasts! I wonder if we'll ever be that strong."
Haruki felt a familiar knot of dread tighten in his stomach. He knew they would be that strong. He knew that Krillin would face off against a powerful warrior, that their friend Yamcha would be defeated by a villain, and that the Tournament would be a stage for incredible power, and equally incredible peril. He saw the path laid out before them like a map. A map filled with monsters.
"You don't sound very excited," Krillin said, noticing Haruki's silence.
"It's just... a long way off," Haruki said, trying to sound nonchalant.
"But it's going to be so cool! We'll be heroes, won't we?" Krillin asked, his face full of innocent hope.
Haruki couldn't bring himself to answer. He wasn't thinking about being a hero. He was thinking about survival. He was thinking about all the heroes he had seen in his past life, the fictional ones, the ones from the comic books and the movies, and how many of them had died. He was thinking about a world where the heroes were a team, a group of friends who would fight for each other. He looked at Krillin, this boy with a pure heart and an unbreakable spirit, and a new kind of terror settled in his chest. His friend was not just a fellow trainee; he was a future target. A key figure in a timeline that led directly to a series of cataclysmic events.
He had been so focused on his own weakness, his own fear of dying alone, that he hadn't considered the possibility of losing his only friend. He had a duty, not just to himself, but to this child who was oblivious to the dangers to come.
The next day, Haruki went to the old abbot, a decision born of this new fear. The abbot was sitting in the garden, pruning a bonsai tree with a small, sharp knife.
"Reverend," Haruki said, his small voice trembling slightly. "How do you become strong?"
The old man looked up, his eyes a calm, deep brown. "By training your body and your mind, little one. Just as we have taught you."
"No," Haruki said, his voice more urgent now. "Not just... strong. Really strong. To be like the warrior monks who fought a long time ago. What did they do?"
The abbot's expression didn't change, but his gaze seemed to pierce through Haruki's very being. "They did not train to be a hero. They did not train for power. They trained for inner peace. Strength is a side-effect, not a goal."
Haruki's heart sank. This was a world of spiritual platitudes. They didn't understand. This wasn't a world that rewarded inner peace. This was a world that rewarded a raw, overwhelming power. A power that could be measured in Ki, in the ability to level mountains with a single blast. He couldn't tell the abbot about the villains to come, about the necessity of training for combat.
"I don't just want peace," Haruki said, his voice laced with a frustration he couldn't hide. "I want to be able to protect the people I care about."
The abbot smiled, a gentle, knowing smile that seemed to understand far more than Haruki was willing to admit. "Then your path is clear, Haruki. The best way to protect those you care about is to first find the strength to protect yourself. And that strength is found not in your muscles, but in your spirit. Now, go back to your training. Your spirit is troubled. The more you train, the clearer your mind will become."
Haruki walked away, his shoulders slumped in quiet defeat. The abbot was not wrong, but he was not right either. His advice, while sound in a philosophical sense, was completely insufficient for the reality they faced. He was a small, fragile boy with a terrifying secret and a burden that was far too heavy for his small shoulders. He had to become stronger, but he couldn't rely on the temple's teachings alone. He would have to take matters into his own hands, and begin his own secret training. His life, and the life of his friend, depended on it.