The orphanage was a quiet place, filled with children who had "the look." It was the look of someone who had seen the "Symbol of Peace" fail to save the only people who mattered to them. We were the statistics of the All Might era.
For the first two weeks, I didn't speak. None of us did. We just sat in the common room, watching the news or staring at the walls. Eventually, the resilience of childhood began to win out. Kids started playing again.
"Kota-kun! Come play with us! Heroes and Villains!" a girl named Miwa called out, her face beaming.
I looked up from my lap. "I'm coming," I said, forcing a small smile. Even though I had the mind of an adult, the simple interactions helped dull the nightmares of that night.
"I want to be All Might!" one boy shouted, striking a pose.
"No, I want to be All Might!" a girl argued back.
I watched them with a bittersweet feeling. They still loved him. Despite everything, they still worshipped the man who, in their eyes, was invincible. I didn't hate All Might—he had almost died to stop a monster—but the worship felt hollow to me. I didn't want to be a symbol. I just wanted to be strong enough to never feel that weight on my chest again.
I spent my mornings running. 10 kilometers every single day. I had discovered something the anime never emphasized: a rubber body is taxing. Every time I stretched, I felt my heart rate skyrocket. It was like pulling a massive, heavy-duty exercise band. If I wanted to use my Quirk for more than five minutes, I needed a gas tank that didn't quit.
Then there was the hunger. My God, the hunger. After a morning of light stretching, I would finish breakfast and still feel like I hadn't eaten in a week. My metabolism was clearly working overtime to keep my cellular structure "elastic." I began to understand why Luffy ate like a black hole.
But the biggest hurdle wasn't the stamina; it was the physics.
I went to the playground every afternoon to practice. I wanted to master the "Gommu Gommu no Pistol." It was the most basic move, the foundation of everything.
I would stand in front of a wooden post, pull my arm back as far as it would go, and shout, "GUM GUM... PISTOL!"
And every time, my arm would snap back and simply coil around my own neck or chest, tangling me up like a mess of spaghetti.
"Dammit!" I growled, untangling my arm for the hundredth time. "Why does it work for Luffy? He just lets go and it flies forward. Why does mine just... flop?"
I was doing exactly what I saw in the anime. I was stretching, and I was releasing. But there was no force. No "punch."
I spent weeks failing. Ms. Minami, the orphanage head, would often have to come find me in the park as the sun went down, dragging me back before I "accidentally tied myself into a knot."
One morning, I decided I was going about this the wrong way. I was a modern man with an education—why was I trying to learn via cartoon logic? I went to the local library and spent three days buried in physics textbooks and material science journals.
Elasticity. Kinetic Energy. Potential Tension.
I found my answer in a chapter on "Recoil Dynamics."
"I'm an idiot," I whispered, staring at a diagram of a slingshot. "Luffy doesn't just stretch and let go. He's using the contraction of the muscle simultaneously with the release of the tension."
I realized that if I stretched my arm back and held it there for thirty seconds, the "snap" lost its explosive potential because I was fighting against my own body's resistance to stay stretched. To make a "Pistol" work, the stretch and the punch had to be one fluid motion. I had to store the kinetic energy and release it in the same heartbeat, using the elasticity to accelerate the limb, not just snap it back.
I ran to the park, my heart hammering. I stood before the post. I didn't pull my arm back and wait. I wound up, throwing my arm back with a deliberate, high-speed swing, and the moment it reached its peak tension, I shoved my shoulder forward.
"GUM GUM... PISTOL!"
CRACK.
My fist didn't coil. It didn't flop. It screamed through the air, propelled by the violent contraction of my rubberized bicep. It slammed into the wooden post with a sound like a gunshot. The wood splintered, a deep indentation marking the spot where my knuckles had hit.
The recoil sent a jolt of vibration through my entire arm, making my skin ripple like water in a pond.
"Yes!" I screamed, jumping into the air. "It works! It actually works!"
I looked at my hand. It was slightly red, but it didn't hurt. The blunt impact had been absorbed by my rubber structure. I had finally taken the first step. I wasn't just a "stress toy" anymore. I was a weapon in the making.
But as I looked at the splintered wood, I knew I was far from ready. One punch had left me winded. One punch was just the beginning.