CHAPTER 24: THE ILLUSION OF MASS (part 1)
Following that final, fateful night within the cold, black walls of Hakuho Academy, Renjiro Hoshino's world had fundamentally changed.
Akuro's reign of terror had ceased entirely. Perhaps the brush with death he had experienced at the hands of Raizen Kurotsuki had burned away the demon's arrogance, turning it to ash.
Under President Souma's strict new regulations, the overt, physical bullying had dwindled, but the isolation in Renjiro's life had only deepened into a dark, bottomless abyss.
Meiko Fujiwara had started ignoring him completely. The girl for whose fake smile Renjiro had risked his life now actively changed her path whenever she saw him in the corridor.
The people around him still treated him like a plague. Renjiro, in turn, had given up hoping for friendship or sympathy.
He was a living ghost haunting the school.
His massive body moved through the halls, yet his existence mattered to no one.
But in the deafening silence of his isolation, a single voice echoed relentlessly in his mind.
It was the icy, calm voice of that white-haired boy, Raizen, outside the convenience store:
*"Don't try to become like me...
make your weight, your heavy skeletal frame, your greatest weapon.
If you have absolute control over the ground beneath your feet, the enemy's impact becomes zero."*
That night had ignited a fire within Renjiro. He promised himself he would turn his perceived weakness into his ultimate strength.
He would become an immovable, massive 'Mountain' just like his grandfather, Kenji Hoshino.
His grandfather was his hero, his god. When everyone else saw a weak, fat child, it was his grandfather who had placed a hand on his head and told him he would be strong one day.
But the tragedy was that a lonely, broken sixteen-year-old boy had completely misunderstood Raizen's advice.
Renjiro believed that becoming a mountain simply meant increasing his sheer mass.
He thought that the wider and heavier he became, the more gravity would anchor him to the earth, rendering him immovable.
That innocent misconception dragged him into a horrifying, lethal diet that would have caused a normal person's organs to fail.
Seven thousand calories a day.
Food was no longer a means to satisfy hunger. It had become a chore, a severe punishment.
He abandoned healthy food entirely, developing a dark addiction to junk food.
His daily intake was nothing short of a grotesque joke.
On a normal day, he forced down ten heavy beef burgers, five whole cheese pizzas, a massive bowl of french fries, and no less than twenty cans of black cola.
Even when he wasn't hungry, he forced himself. His body constantly tried to reject the garbage, but he violently shoved more food down his throat, telling himself,
*'Grandpa did this too...
Grandpa was heavy too.'*
His body had become entirely dependent on this high-calorie sludge.
One night, sitting alone in his room, he swallowed his fourth heavy beef burger and two cans of black cola in quick succession.
His breathing was already heavily labored.
Suddenly, a terrifying, agonizing cramp seized his stomach.
Renjiro's eyes went wide.
His massive frame lurched forward.
A strange, sour, and metallic taste flooded his mouth. His breath hitched.
He pushed himself up from his chair, his legs feeling like lead.
Dragging his heavy footsteps, driven by fear and pain, he bolted for the bathroom.
He shoved the door open and collapsed to his massive knees right in front of the toilet bowl.
He gripped the edges of the porcelain so tightly that his thick knuckles turned stark white.
In the next second, his stomach violently rejected the horrifying seven-thousand-calorie intake.
He began to vomit brutally.
His gigantic body convulsed and trembled with every violent heave.
The dark, acidic mixture of half-digested beef, cheese, and black cola burned his throat as it spewed out.
The veins in his neck bulged as if they were about to burst. It felt as though his internal organs were trying to rip their way out of his mouth.
After three or four agonizing bouts of vomiting, his breathing shattered. He collapsed onto the cold, white bathroom tiles.
Acid and saliva dripped from his lips, pooling on the floor. His throat was on fire, and hot tears of pain and absolute helplessness streamed from his eyes.
He lay there on the ground, his cheek pressed against the freezing tiles. His breathing wheezed like a ruptured pipe.
*"Grandpa..."*
he whispered to himself, his voice raw and broken.
*"Grandpa...
why does becoming a mountain...
hurt so much...?"*
He wasn't a glutton.
He was just a sixteen-year-old broken child who, in his desperate bid to become 'strong', was slowly torturing himself from the inside out.
But the fat boy who gagged on garbage in the daylight was someone entirely different under the cover of night.
Dead silence blanketed the house.
His parents were fast asleep in their room.
In Renjiro's room, a small desk lamp cast a pale, jaundiced glow over his sweat-drenched face.
On his desk sat the framed photo of his grandfather.
And right in front of that photo, resting on the floor, was a hundred-kilogram rusted iron barbell.
Renjiro peeled off his sweat-soaked T-shirt and tossed it onto the floor. He was panting.
He stepped forward and rubbed chalk powder onto his massive hands.
He lay back onto the cold, unforgiving iron bench.
He gripped the iron bar with both hands, his knuckles turning white.
The barbell lifted slowly from the rack.
A hundred kilos of solid iron hovered directly over his chest.
Renjiro took a deep breath and lowered the bar.
The muscles in his chest ignited.
His massive frame began to shake.
He pushed the bar up with everything he had.
He swallowed his grunts so he wouldn't wake his parents. His triceps and chest fibers stretched to their absolute limits.
Sweat dripped from his forehead into his eyes, blinding him and amplifying the sting.
He did set after set of bench presses.
After that, he hoisted that same hundred-kilo barbell onto his shoulders and performed deep squats on his heavy legs.
The wooden floorboards of his room creaked agonizingly under the immense combined weight.
His breathing would fracture, his knees would threaten to buckle, but he would stare at his grandfather's photo in the mirror and force himself back up.
Every night, while the world slept, Renjiro fought a lonely, death-defying battle in his room.
He channeled the massive energy from those horrifying seven thousand calories into pushing that heavy iron.
Without knowing the sports science behind it, the boy was executing a monstrous 'Dirty Bulk'.
Because of the heavy lifting, deep beneath his chest, his shoulders, and his thighs, solid, iron-like muscle mass had begun to build. Right beneath the fat, a literal monster was being forged.
It was the kind of brutal core strength found only in heavyweight powerlifters.
But the tragic irony was...
nobody could see that strength from the outside.
The seven-thousand-calorie junk food diet had completely buried that iron-hard muscle beneath a grotesque, thick layer of flabby, hanging fat.
When Renjiro walked, people didn't see his core strength; they only saw the fat on his arms and thighs jiggling.
All his grueling hard work was trapped inside the ugly cage of his own obese body.
To be continued ...