The real work began with a harsh lesson in humility. Willpower, I quickly discovered, was not a substitute for calories.
My child-self, fueled entirely by gray porridge and pickled radishes, did not have the energy I once had as an adult. By the end of the first week, I was running through a low-grade fever. My joints ached intensely, and lethargy hung over my mind like a fog.
This body required protein to synthesize muscle and calcium to develop my bones. I had neither. Clearly, nutrition science wasn't a priority in this village and it showed.
I had to adapt my methodology.
Instead of trying to force my muscles and joints to burn energy expeditiously, I'd instead focus on flexibility and balance.
I learned to move silently. I practiced shifting my weight from the heel to the outside edge of the foot, dispersing the impact when rolling toward the toe. I figured that in a world of assassins, silence was the basic skill to stay alive.
The next morning, the routine was interrupted by the arrival of a rationing auditor. The caretakers were on edge, clearly frantic and fearful of him. We were lined up against the wooden wall of the main hall, standing shoulder-to-shoulder in our ragged, oversized clothes.
The head matron, a stern woman with a deep scar on her left eyebrow, held a clipboard. She marched down the line, a representative of the village bureaucracy trailing just behind her.
"Takeshi" the matron barked.
A boy three places down from me flinched. The auditor marked his record.
"Sora"
The girl next to me wiped her nose and stared at the floor. Another mark.
"Raijin."
Silence. I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, analyzing the auditor's flak jacket. It was standard Konoha gear, but it made me daydream about the show I once watched.
"Raijin!" The matron's voice cracked.
I felt a sharp, sudden pain in my shoulders as fingers dug into my collarbone, yanking me out of the line. The matron glared down at me. "When your name is called, you acknowledge it, boy. We don't have time for the slow ones today."
Raijin. I stared up at her. I offered a small hesitant nod. She released my shoulder with a scoff and moved on to the next child.
I stepped back into the line, the name echoing in my mind. Raijin. That was my identity in this world.
Later that afternoon, the rain came. It was a relentless downpour that turned the dirt roads outside the window into brown mud. The drop in temperature drove the orphans to huddle in the center of the room, leaving the periphery relatively empty.
I used the distraction to slip out of the main holding room and down the narrow, creaking hallway towards the washroom.
The washroom was just an utilitarian space, no grand structure to define inside it aside from the function it served. A wooden sink fed by a single iron pump stood tall compared to my height. Above the sink, and firm to the rotting wood of the wall, was an oxidized mirror.
I dragged a small wooden step-stool next to the sink and climbed up, my bare feet slipping slightly on the damp wood. I gripped the edge of the basin and looked into the glass.
It was the first time I had truly seen myself.
The face staring back at me was pale, with a messy, unkempt mop of dark hair. My cheeks were hollow, lacking the standard baby fat children used to have, probably a result of my bad nutrition plan provided by the village.
The eyes, however, were the most jarring element. They were dark, but the expression on them was entirely wrong for the face. There was no innocence, no childish wonder.
I raised a small, trembling hand to my hair. I wasn't here just to look at my reflection.
In my previous life, I had obsessed over the mechanics of this universe. Chakra was not magic, it was a biological system ruled by fluid dynamics. Energy, when forced through a conduit, naturally seeks a rotational path. According to the lore, every living being possessed a dominant chakra rotation, either clockwise or counter-clockwise. Forcing chakra against this natural spiral caused turbulence.
I remembered the excruciating pain in my abdomen when I first attempted to pull the pressure from my core. I had treated the energy like a straight line, trying to yank it upward. I had caused an internal friction burn within my own coils.
The dominant rotation of a human's chakra could be determined by the natural whorl of their hair, the cowlick.
I leaned closer to the glass, ignoring the dust sitting on its surface. I flattened the messy strands of dark hair at the crown of my head, tracing the growth pattern with my fingertips. There it was. The whorl started at a central point and spiraled aggressively to the left. Counter-clockwise.
I let my hand drop back to the wooden sink. A counter-clockwise rotation.
I climbed down from the stool, the cold wood of the floorboards seeping into my soles. I did not return to the main room immediately. Instead, I found a quiet, shadowed corner near the back of the hallway, out of sight from the pacing caretakers.
I sat cross-legged on the floor, resting my hands lightly on my knees. I closed my eyes and regulated my breathing. In through the nose. Expand the diaphragm. Out through the mouth. The ambient noise of the orphanage faded into a dull, white noise. I turned my awareness inward.
I bypassed the lungs and the heart, sinking deeper into my solar plexus.
The heavy, dense pressure was still there. It felt vast compared to the flesh containing it. My spiritual energy, forged in the void, was massive. My physical energy, however, was a sorry excuse. The resulting mixture seemed to be highly unbalanced.
I approached it, avoiding the aggressive "pull" I had used last time. Instead, I visualized a current. I imagine the dense pressure as a pool of water, and my mind as a hand dipping into it.
Slowly, deliberately, I urged the energy to spin. Leftward. Counter-clockwise.
At first, there was heavy resistance. The pressure felt sluggish, reluctant to move. I maintained the focus, my breathing controlled. Spin. Eventually, the pool caught momentum.
A stream of energy separated from the dense mass in my core. I could only manipulate this much, since I had to keep a balance between the massive spiritual energy I had and the thin physical energy this body stored.
It did not tear through my pathways like last time. Because it was moving with my natural spiral, it slid into the narrow chakra coils cleanly.
However, it was not painless. The coils in my abdomen were incredibly tight, entirely unconditioned to channel this kind of current. A deep ache radiated from my center, spearing outward toward my ribs.
I gritted my teeth, sweat beading on my forehead, but I did not break the concentration. I kept the counter-clockwise rotation steady.
The ache soon began to transition. The intense pressure within my coils generated friction and that friction gave birth to heat. A warm sensation bloomed in my stomach radiating toward my torso. It was an intoxicating, overwhelming sensation of power.
I maintained the pressure for sixty seconds, forcing the narrow pathways to stretch and accommodate the flow, before dialing the rotation down and letting the energy settle back into the core.
I opened my eyes and slumped forward, my hands hitting the floorboards as exhaustion washed over me.
I had barely moved a fraction of my reserves, but the mental exertion was staggering. Yet, a small grin tugged at the corner of my mouth.
The coils were narrow, but they were elastic. Like tearing muscle fibers to build mass, I would have to repeatedly force chakra through the pathways, stretching them, damaging them slightly, and allowing them to heal and grow wider and stronger. It would be a daily task.
Thinking about the future, in a few years, my goal would be getting into the Academy. Konoha was rational, they did not send ungraduated children to the front lines. The Academy would provide me with institutional protection, access to superior nutrition and a library of knowledge. I just needed to survive long enough to enroll.
And before that, the shadow of the Nine-Tails attack loomed. Two years. I had exactly two years to prepare myself and turn this fragile body into something capable of surviving that apocalypse.
I needed to expand my territory. Soon, I would begin mapping the perimeter of the orphanage. It was time to see what I could scavenge around this place.