Time doesn't jump here. It drags.
Days stack into weeks, then blur. Ryu doesn't notice the exact moment "the boy who almost fell over" becomes "the one Sister sends when something heavy needs carrying."
He just wakes up one morning, swings his legs off the bed, and realizes his feet hit the floor with less complaint.
He stretches his arms overhead. The aches feel different now. Less "breaking." More "building."
Good, he thinks. About time.
The city outside hasn't changed much. Prices go up, like everyone keeps whining about, but the streets are the same bones. Lower market, uphill climb, station, square, pit, liaison office.
He's the one shifting.
The training doesn't look like training. That's the point.
Running laps around the yard like a tiny maniac would get him yelled at. Punching walls would get him either punished or laughed at. So he hides it.
Morning: he volunteers for water duty. The well is not close. Carrying two sloshing buckets up the slight incline to the orphanage is a full-body complaint.
At first, he has to stop halfway, set them down, pretend to admire absolutely nothing while his arms shake.
By the third week of doing it "whenever his turn comes up," he can make it in one trip if he grits his teeth a little.
"Getting stronger," Daro tells him once, watching him come in with barely a huff. "Soon you'll be able to carry me."
"Too heavy," Ryu says. "I only lift useful things."
Daro throws a stale bread crust at his head.
He starts using the city itself as a gym.
On the way to Toma's, he takes the stairs instead of the gentler slope when there's a choice. Up and down, up and down, legs burning by the time he reaches the shop.
Coming back from errands, if the nun isn't watching, he adds unnecessary detours. One block extra uphill. One alley that forces him to sidestep stacked crates instead of walking in a straight line. It doesn't look like anything from the outside.
Inside, he keeps score.
Today: no shaking hands when I put the bag down. Improvement: minor, real.
He does push-ups in the sliver of space between his bed and the wall at night. Quiet, slow, counting under his breath. At first he can barely manage five without his arms trembling. By the end of the month, he can do twelve before his form gets ugly.
No one notices. Everyone's too tired.
Mentally, he ramps up too.
Sister has a small, locked cabinet of books. School primers, old novels, religious texts, a couple of outdated atlases that might be more useful than any of them. She unlocks it twice a week for "study hour."
Most kids groan.
Ryu is first in line.
He doesn't make a big show of it. He picks a book, sits down, and reads with the boring focus of someone resigned to his fate. Inside, he's scanning like he's looting treasure.
Geography. History. Political structures. Names of foreign capitals, old wars, mentions of the Hunter Association stepping in as "neutral investigators" on rare occasions.
He builds a framework: this is how countries talk to each other, this is how borders work, this is who controls what.
He cross-references that with what he hears in the market and from the charity pamphlets.
By the time a year crawls past, his mental map of the world is still full of blanks, but at least the coastlines aren't completely imaginary.
He also practices memory. Not on purpose at first, but out of fear of losing details.
He repeats things in his head at night.
City name. Guard captain's face. Hald Kiren's name. The Association emblem. The schedule of when the pit seems busiest. Words from the Hunter's speech.
Over and over until they sink.
Sometimes, when he's in the lower market, he watches the Fighters more carefully.
Never staring. Just… letting his gaze brush over them like he's bored.
He notes how they move. Their balance. The way they shift weight without thinking, how they keep people out of their blind spots. He tries to copy some of that in small ways when he walks, when he turns, when he handles heavy bags.
It's clumsy at first. His body doesn't have their experience or scars. But even trying changes something in how he feels his own center of gravity.
Nen is still off-limits. A theoretical framework he pokes with his brain but can't touch.
Physical basics? Those he can steal.
One night, about a year after he woke up in this world, he catches himself in the cracked shard of mirror again.
He looks… different.
Still small. Still pale. Still more edges than softness. But there's less fragility in the way he holds himself. His arms have faint lines that weren't there before. His posture is less "crushed leaf," more "branch that hasn't broken yet."
He snorts at his own reflection.
"Congrats," he mutters quietly. "You've unlocked basic child."
He flexes a hand. Grip stronger. Joints less whiny.
It's not satisfying.
But it's something.
There is a small time skip whether he wants to admit it or not.
He measures it in things like:
The younger kids calling some of the new arrivals by name, while he was once the new one.Daro growing taller, complaining more, laughing at slightly darker jokes.Sister trusting him with money amounts that would have made her nervous months ago.
"Ryu," she says one day, pressing a folded note and a heavier pouch into his hand. "This is for the wholesaler by the station. You go straight there, straight back. This is more than usual. You drop it, you don't come home without it."
"Interesting definition of incentive," he says. "Got it."
He notices who she doesn't send for things like this. The reckless ones. The easily distracted ones. The ones who talk too much.
She thinks I'm reliable, he realizes. Useful. Boring in the right way.
Good. Being seen as "solid" is as much of a shield as any half-formed aura.
The walk to the wholesaler feels like the final exam of his quiet training program.
The pouch is heavy at his waist, tucked under his shirt. The bag on his shoulder digs in. The slope feels a little steeper today, because of what he's carrying.
He adjusts his breathing, lengthens his stride instead of shortening it. Remembers all the stairs, all the water buckets.
He can feel his heart, but he doesn't have to stop.
At the station market, the wholesaler is brisk and all business. No time for banter, just goods weighed, coins counted, receipts scrawled. The amount exchanged would probably keep the orphanage fed for weeks.
Walking back down with that much food in his bag and the phantom weight of money in his pocket that's now gone, he realizes something else.
If someone jumps me right now, I have nothing.
No weapon. No Nen. Just slightly above-average conditioning for a child and a decent awareness of where to run.
He doesn't panic.
He maps.
Every corner, he asks: If something happens here, where do I go?
Every open space: Who sees me? Who might help? Who might join in?
He doesn't expect to use any of it. But the practice sharpens something.
By the time he gets back to the orphanage and drops the bag onto the table, his shoulders ache. His head feels clearer.
Sister checks the contents, then looks at him for a second.
"You make it all right?" she asks.
"No one tried to proposition me or stab me," he says. "So I'd call it a success."
She shakes her head. "You and that mouth."
But she's hiding a small, reluctant smile.
That night, he doesn't do push-ups.
He just lies there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the slow thump of his heart settle into a rhythm that isn't panicked.
He thinks of the Hunter in the square, of the way people looked at him. He thinks of the pit under the city, of the threats in the alley behind the workshop, of the guard at the station who didn't even blink at a license.
The gap between him and them is still enormous.
But it's smaller than it was.
Step one: don't die walking down a street, he thinks. Step two can be… more interesting.
Nen is still a distant target, a locked door with "later" written on it in big letters.
For now, he has a body that works better, a brain full of maps and systems, and a city that no longer feels like it's trying to throw him off every time he moves.
He'll take that foundation.
The grind continues in the morning.
He intends to be harder to kill every time the sun comes up.