Ryu – 11 years and 7 months
The floor is old wood that creaks if he shifts too much.
Ryu stands barefoot on it anyway, one leg raised, eyes closed, counting under his breath.
Forty-seven. Forty-eight. Forty-nine.
His left thigh burns. His ankle keeps wanting to roll. Sweat crawls down his back in a thin line.
Behind him, metal rattles. A drawer slides. The old man moves around his shop with slow, efficient steps that somehow never squeak the floorboards.
"Switch," the old man says.
His voice is rough, low, like someone who spent too long in places full of smoke.
Ryu exhales, lowers his left foot, raises the right. The change of balance makes his hips twitch. He steadies himself. Knees soft. Spine straight. Weight sitting over that invisible point the old man keeps hammering into his skull.
Center first. Always.
He reaches sixty. His leg shakes by the last numbers, but he doesn't drop early.
Fingers tap his shoulder. Two short knocks.
"Down," the old man says. "You're less pathetic than last month."
Ryu opens his eyes. The shop swims into focus: shelves of tools and parts, boxes stacked in ugly, practical piles, dust in the light from the front window.
The old man stands in front of him, sleeves rolled up, arms lean but roped with old muscle. Gray threads run through his short dark hair. His face has lines that don't go away when he stops frowning, which is rare.
"Glowing feedback," Ryu says. "At this rate I'll achieve 'barely acceptable' by adulthood."
One corner of the old man's mouth twitches, but it never makes it to a full smile.
"Hands up," he says. "Neutral guard."
Ryu lifts his hands, setting his feet without thinking. Elbows close. Chin tucked. Weight balanced. Not too far forward, not sitting back.
The old man circles once, bare feet silent on the wood. His dark eyes run over Ryu's posture like he's looking for loose screws.
"Not awful," he says.
"Progress," Ryu says. "Soon I'll be 'borderline tolerable.'"
"Don't push it," the old man says.
He stops in front of him. For a moment, the shop is quiet except for a clock ticking somewhere in the back.
Ryu's shoulders itch with the question.
"Old man," he says finally, "I've been doing this almost a year now. One-leg circus, slow walking, controlled beatings. Does this thing actually have a name, or am I just majoring in 'pain'?"
The old man's gaze lifts from Ryu's stance to his face.
"Why do you care what it's called?" he asks.
Ryu shrugs, the movement small so it doesn't ruin his guard.
"Everything here has names," he says. "Fighting schools, Hunter licenses, family lines. If I'm going to break my joints for something, I'd like to know what I'm breaking them for."
The old man snorts softly through his nose. His eyes narrow a little, not angry, more like he's checking if Ryu is serious.
"You just want a label so you can brag in your head," he says.
"In my head is still private," Ryu says. "For now."
A beat passes. Then the old man exhales.
"My teacher called it Hongan-ryu," he says. "Main Axis School, if you care about old meanings."
Ryu rolls the word around in his mind.
Hongan-ryu.
It feels heavy, like something that should be written on old paper, not tossed out in a hardware shop.
"Axis," Ryu repeats. "As in… this?"
He taps his own stomach.
The old man steps forward and knocks his knuckles against Ryu's lower abdomen.
"Here," he says. "Your center. Your main line. Hongan-ryu is built around one idea: if that line is stable and under your control, you can fight people stronger than you without dying in the first exchange."
He steps back again, crossing his arms.
"Where did it start?" Ryu asks.
"Old places," the man says. "Narrow corridors. Heavy armor. Too many people who wanted to stab you when you walked past. People needed a way to fight in tight space without wasting movement."
"So… close-range survival," Ryu says.
"That's one way to put it," the old man says. "It spread to guard work after that. Palaces, compounds, rich idiots who needed protection. Later, a few people carried it into the tower."
"The tower?" Ryu asks.
The old man's eyes flick up, then away, as if he's looking at something through the wall.
"You know the kind," he says. "Tall place. Many floors. People go there to fight for money and points."
Ryu's heartbeat picks up for a second.
Heaven's Arena?He doesn't say it out loud. He hasn't even confirmed the country yet. No need to throw names around.
"And they used Hongan-ryu there?" he asks instead.
"A few did," the old man says. "Lower and middle floors. The ones who wanted long careers, not quick headlines. Most fighters didn't have the patience. They wanted big moves, fast wins, broken knees by thirty."
His mouth tightens for a moment before he smooths his face out.
"It was never a popular style," he says. "Too simple to impress, too hard to do right."
"And you learned it from your teacher," Ryu says.
"Yes," the old man says. "He said I had a weak personality and decent legs. Claimed that was enough foundation."
"Accurate diagnosis," Ryu says.
This time the old man actually snorts. Very quietly.
"Hongan-ryu has one main rule," he says. "Your center moves first. Not your hands. Not your head. Not your pride. If anything gets ahead of your axis, you're lying to yourself, and someone will fix that lie with their fist."
He jabs a thumb toward the floor.
"Square," he says. "In."
Faint white chalk outlines a box on the boards. It's barely wider than Ryu's normal stance.
Ryu steps into it. The wood feels slightly rough under his soles.
"Reminder," the old man says. "You don't leave the square. I push, pull, tap, annoy. You stay upright. If a foot leaves the box, you lose."
"I love this drill," Ryu says. "It's relaxing."
The old man's face doesn't move.
"Ready," he says.
He steps in close. His presence is heavier up close, not because of size but because he wastes no space. His shoulders are loose, weight settled. No obvious stance, but clearly not unprepared.
The first shove comes at Ryu's left shoulder. It's not full strength, but it has weight behind it. Ryu's foot wants to slide. He forces his hips to turn instead, knees bending to soak it.
"Bend, don't lock," the old man says. "You lock, you crack."
A light tug at his forearm. Ryu feels his upper body want to roll forward. He drags his center back in, stomach tightening, resisting the pull without yanking his foot.
"Your hands are calmer," the old man says. "Before, they dragged the rest of you around."
"How does this stop me getting knocked out?" Ryu asks, teeth clenched as another shove hits the opposite shoulder.
"In real fights," the old man says, "you don't fall because someone touched you. You fall because your center was in a bad place when they did. Hongan-ryu teaches you not to leave your center hanging."
He pushes a bit harder. Ryu's heel lifts halfway, then drops back down. Sweat collects along his hairline.
"If you can stay upright in a box with me annoying you," the old man says, "you've got better odds staying upright in a doorway when someone bigger tries to run you over."
"So this is… anti-wall-splat training," Ryu says.
The old man huffs once. "Call it what you want," he says.
After a few more minutes, Ryu's thighs are shaking more than he'd like to admit.
"Enough," the old man says. "Step out."
Ryu steps out of the square. The floor suddenly feels wide.
He rolls his ankles, flexes his toes.
"So Hongan-ryu is just standing there and suffering?" he asks.
The old man gives him a flat stare.
"No," he says. "Hongan-ryu has three parts: axis, line, break. This is just axis."
"Axis is 'me not falling,'" Ryu says. "What's 'line'?"
"Your path," the old man says. "How you move in and how you move out. Your body's direction versus theirs. Hongan-ryu keeps your line solid and ruins theirs. That's next."
"And 'break'?" Ryu asks.
"Break their balance," the old man says. "Their center goes bad, everything else gets easy. Hits come after that, not before."
He pushes himself away from the counter and walks to a shelf. He grabs a roll of tape, tears off two long strips with quick motions, and lays them on the floor in a cross.
One strip points toward the door, the other cuts the room side to side.
"One line forward and back," he says. "One line side to side. You step on the tape only. Every step starts from your center. No random shuffling."
Ryu stares at the taped cross.
"New torture unlocked," he says.
The old man drops the tape on the counter.
"Congratulations," he says. "You're officially a Hongan-ryu beginner."