Trials of the Orc

Shibou Butaro – that was his name.

As if it wasn bad enough to have a family name that basically translates to fat the parents with that unfortunate surname bestowed their son with a name that meant pork.

Their intentions were pure…

Probably…

After all, fat pork is the most delicious, right?

…

Sigh…

Anyway.

As if it wasn enough for that unfortunate child to have such a name, papa Shibou and mama Shibou both seemed to belong to the so-called ig boned kind of people and so their child was gifted with the most supreme genes that coupled with the indoor-type of lifestyle so popular nowadays resulted in young Butaro morphing into a shape more fitted for a beach ball than a human child before he was even six years old.

Its not easy being that fat kid in the neighborhood. It never is.

Each time our young Butaro stuck his chubby body outside the door of his parents apartment he would get picked on and sometimes even bullied…

Well…

Actually, scratch that last one.

Butaro was indeed too large for his age, not to say morbidly obese for a child, but he wasn a wimp, and he wasn weak either – top it off with a hot temper and would anyone be surprised over the end result being rather explosive?

The first ever person to bully him experienced that to the fullest.

Poor Kuso Gaki…

Nah, he wasn poor or pitiful, just look at his name!

It was a spoiled brat who wanted to bully Butaro the moment his little beady eyes spotted the beach-ball-like stature of the inheritor of the Shibou family name.

One time Gaki went ahead and snuck up behind Butaro, pushed the unexpected fatty into a puddle while calling him a porker and then started running towards the big slide to have a better vantage point from where he could laugh at the fat piggy struggling in the mud!

What fun he expected to have!

Heh~

Oh, how surprised he was when he turned around just to see a furious Butaro already right behind him in the middle of a full-body tackle!

Kuso Gaki learned a valuable life lesson that day.

Mess around, and find out.

Being crushed into the ground under an adult-weight-class opponent just to be swung around and slammed against the ground a few more times before anyone managed to stop the rampage – the wanna-be bully was lucky to escape with multiple fractured bones and missing most of his teeth.

But lets not be mistaken here.

By no means young Butaro was a bad kid.

He was a kind-hearted boy, sometimes maybe too trusting, but definitely not the type to take pleasure in bullying weaker.

If others left him alone, he did not have the slightest intention of harming them either.

The years went by and Butaro grew up to be a towering figure amongst his peers – a mountain amongst the rest of the population.

While still in middle school he was already taller than most high-schoolers and by the day of his entrance ceremony at his dream high school, he struggled greatly to get in, since he was average at everything except his almost superhuman physical ability, he was already higher than any of the adults in the faculty.

With the local thugs quickly learning that it was better off to move to the other side of the street – or city – when Butaro was passing – causing the drastic improvement over the safety of the area, the nickname gentle giant sipped its way from Butaros neighborhood.

Considering that his demeanor towards anyone leaving him be was just like that, gentle, and his frame was, well, gigantic, it soon stuck to him for good.

Everyone knew that they could count on him in need and was treating him like a friend.

But only as a friend.

Butaro was an adolescent boy, he was already thinking about girls, but not even one of the ones he knew saw him as a boyfriend potential.

That might have been because Butaros exterior was still very similar to the beach ball with a head, arms, and legs sticking out, or just that he was simply too large.

At least that was what Butaro himself have blamed.

Of course, he tried working out very hard and dieting rigorously, but no matter what he have done, the roundness of his body never decreased.

The gym near his house soon didn have the right number of weights heavy enough to make Butaro work up a sweat and he had already long forgotten the taste of sweets or greasy food by that point.

But even so, nothing helped with his physique, although he became much better with keeping his temper in check as sending people to the hospital every so often was not good for his households expenses.

In the meantime, when he was only a first-year student in the local middle school Butaro developed a crush on one of his classmates. A pretty girl with long straight hair named Nikutani Ai.

Butaro promised himself that he would confess as soon as he would lose at least ten pounds, but as you already know, the weight-loss never happened, leaving his love unfulfilled even though Ai and he ended up in the same schools and classes ever since.

And Butaros first year in high school was slowly coming to an end without putting his feelings into words.

He didn feel good about that, so he decided to make a step in the right direction. Our brave boy change his previous goal and decided that he would confess before the end of the semester!

…If the situation would be promising…

…preferably without anyone else looking…

Butaro didn actually think that his confession would be accepted, he was ready for the rejection, but he would prefer that there would be no one around to laugh at him for trying to woo Ai…

And during one particular day, he got just the chance he hoped for!

It was just a normal evening, his mom asked him to go buy her a special limited-time flavored pudding and since there was nothing better to do, Butaro put on his shoes and jogged to the closest convenience store.

But they were sold out on the special pudding…