If there was one thing I learned early in my second life, it was this: consistency beat talent.
Unfortunately, my father had both.
Not in the way most people would recommend, mind you. He had talent wrapped in absurdity, discipline wrapped in shouting, and sincerity so intense it circled back around to looking deranged. But it was talent all the same, and worse, it worked.
By three, understanding people was no trouble at all. My mother from my first life had made sure of that. Japanese had been in my ears early and often, and death, for all its inconveniences, hadn't shaken it loose. I understood the women in the compound, the market gossip drifting over fences, the older children whispering insults they thought I was too young to catch, and every blazing word that came out of my father's mouth.
Reading was another matter.
Speaking was worse.
My mind moved clean. My mouth did not. My tongue still fumbled certain sounds, my jaw tired easily, and whole sentences sometimes came out looking like they had been assembled under poor supervision. That was the true indignity of childhood—not ignorance, but bottleneck. Understanding everything and sounding like half your thoughts had fallen down a well on the way out.
Children, naturally, noticed this.
They notice weakness the way crows notice shine.
If I spoke too slowly, they stared. If I spoke too precisely, adults stared. Once, trying to ask for another bowl of soup, I tripped over a sound badly enough that one boy laughed milk out his nose and another asked if I had rocks in my mouth.
I hit him with a wooden spoon.
Not hard. Just enough to improve his education.
The caretaker on duty took the spoon away and informed me, with the weary calm of a woman who had seen every variety of nonsense a child could invent, that capable language was better than capable violence.
She was right, of course.
Didn't make the spoon any less satisfying.
Dad came home like weather.
No warning. No buildup. No soft approach down the lane. One day the compound was orderly, practical, full of the ordinary sounds of women working, children squabbling, sandals scuffing dirt, and somebody near the kitchen arguing over bean prices.
The next—
"MY SON!"
I barely had time to turn before I was scooped clean off the ground and lifted into the air like I weighed nothing.
Which, to be fair, I didn't.
Still didn't make it dignified.
"You have grown!" he declared, holding me out at arm's length and inspecting me as if I were a particularly promising crop. "I can feel it! The fire of youth burns brighter within you!"
I stared at him.
He stared back.
His smile widened.
That was concerning.
He hadn't changed. Same bowl cut. Same eyebrows. Same pressure in the air around him, as if enthusiasm itself had somehow acquired mass. Up close, he still looked painfully young. Seventeen, maybe, with the kind of boundless conviction that usually belonged either to prophets or idiots.
Sometimes both.
I had known grown men in my first life who could not match that level of certainty. It didn't make him less ridiculous.
Just harder to dismiss.
"You have been training!" he said suddenly.
Not a question. A verdict.
I blinked at him. "…train. Yes."
That was about the level my mouth and I had negotiated.
His eyes lit up as if I had confirmed a prophecy. "EXCELLENT!"
I still do not know how one man made a single word echo in open air, but he managed it.
He set me down and dropped into a stance so fast it kicked dust up around his sandals.
"Show me!"
I looked at him. Then at the yard. Then back at him.
There are moments in a man's life where he may choose dignity.
This was not one of them.
So I did a squat.
It wasn't impressive. Not objectively. It was a three-year-old doing a squat in the dirt while his teenage father watched like a priest witnessing revelation. But it was controlled. I went down slow, held the position, and came back up without wobbling.
Duy gasped.
Actually gasped.
"PERFECT FORM!"
It was not perfect form.
It was acceptable toddler form.
But he reacted like I had just founded a new school of taijutsu.
"Again!"
So I did it again.
And again.
And again.
By the fifth one I felt it: the quiet burn in the thighs, the pull through the hips, the deep working tension that said something useful was happening. My legs trembled. My balance shifted. I corrected and kept going.
Duy dropped beside me and started doing them too, faster, louder, and with a level of commitment squats had never deserved.
"FEEL THE FOUNDATION OF YOUR YOUTH!"
He stamped the ground on every rise like he was trying to intimidate the earth into cooperating. Dust rose around us. A few of the other children stopped to stare. One caretaker closed her eyes briefly with the look of a woman revisiting an old and exhausting memory.
We kept going until my legs started to shake in earnest.
I sat down.
Duy did not.
Of course he didn't.
He flowed straight into pushups like the concept of rest had insulted his ancestors.
"You must build your body!" he declared between reps. "A strong spirit without a strong body is like a blazing fire with no wood! Bright, but fleeting!"
That, annoyingly, was an excellent analogy.
I frowned.
I did not like agreeing with him this early in the day.
I leaned back on my hands and watched him. Every movement he made was excessive. Too big. Too loud. Too much. But underneath all of it was structure. His breathing stayed clean. His balance never broke. His rhythm held even when he sped up. There was nothing sloppy in him at all.
It only looked ridiculous because he refused to do anything halfway.
That was when it clicked.
This wasn't nonsense.
"Why?" I asked.
He paused mid-rep and held himself at the bottom as if gravity were open to debate. Then he turned his head and looked at me.
"Why what, my son?"
"Why… train like this?"
The words came out slow and uneven, but they got there.
He smiled then, and not the overwhelming smile either. A smaller one. Still intense. Still him. But quieter. Real.
"Because effort is the only thing that belongs to you," he said.
I blinked.
That wasn't nonsense either.
He pushed up, stood, and crossed the yard, then set a hand on my head.
"Talent fades," he said. "Circumstance changes. But effort," He tapped my forehead lightly. "Effort remains."
I stared up at him.
Seventeen years old. No money worth speaking of. No safety net. Working missions to keep himself fed and me housed. Still training like the fate of the world might someday ask something of him and he intended to be ready when it did.
"…yeah," I muttered. "Makes sense."
He beamed, and the small, human moment vanished under the return of full theatrical force.
"COME, MY SON! WE WILL RUN!"
We ran.
Well, he ran.
I participated.
Around the compound first, then past the fence, then down a dirt path that had seen better years. I focused on my steps. On my breathing. On not pitching forward into the ground.
Left foot. Right foot. Steady.
Duy stayed beside me the entire time, matching my pace exactly. Not surging ahead. Not dragging me forward. Just there, thundering encouragement at a volume fit for public announcements.
"Good!"
"Consistency!"
"Again!"
It would have been unbearable from another man.
From him, it was simply weather.
We passed a small enclosure near the outer edge of the compound. A few animals were kept there—goats, chickens, and one young calf with a dull coat and tired-looking eyes.
I slowed.
Just a little.
Something in my chest shifted.
That same quiet warmth I had felt before. Faint. Barely there. Not chakra exactly. Not in the way people meant when they talked about molding it. This was subtler. A low pull, a living recognition, like some part of me had looked at the animal and sat up.
I turned my head toward the calf.
It looked back.
For a breath, the world narrowed.
Not to the whole creature. To particulars. Coat. Weight. Dullness. The lack in it. The room for improvement.
Then Duy clapped once, loud enough to scatter the thought.
"FOCUS!"
I snapped forward and picked up my pace again.
But I didn't forget the feeling.
We ran until my lungs burned. Until my legs felt heavy. Until each step took a little more decision than the last.
Then we stopped.
I bent over, hands on my knees, breathing hard. Duy stood beside me not even breathing heavy, which felt rude on a personal level.
"You did well," he said.
Simple. No shouting. No grand performance. Just the truth as he saw it.
I glanced up at him. " it was a small run."
"No my son it was TWO HUNDRED STEPS OF YOUTH!"
There it was.
I snorted despite myself.
We walked back slower.
"Your body is changing," he said after a while.
I didn't answer.
Didn't need to.
I knew.
Balance. Strength. Endurance. All improving. Slow and steady, the only kind that mattered. And underneath it, that deep lake inside me had changed too. It wasn't fighting me anymore. It wasn't battering the walls.
It was waiting.
"You must continue," Duy said. "Every day. No exceptions."
I nodded.
That part, at least, I understood better than most.
We reached the yard and he stopped, looking down at me with that same ferocious, impossible sincerity.
"Next time," he said, "we train harder."
Of course we would.
I glanced back toward the enclosure. The calf was still there, watching through the fence.
That warmth flickered once more in my chest.
Not just vitality.
Potential.
I turned away.
One thing at a time.
Body first.
Everything else would follow.