“So you train here too?” his acquaintance asked.

Raine was racking his brain trying to remember the guy’s name. “It’s my first time here.”

“Oh, cool. It’s my third or fourth time now.”

His acquaintance went in first, and, after a moment of hesitation, Raine followed. It would be embarrassing to run away now. After entering, he saw that there was no one behind the counter. He rang the bell on it and waited. Meanwhile, his acquaintance took off his shoes in front of the mats, placed them on the shoe rack, and put his bag up on a nearby shelf.

Raine took a look around. The light-grey mats seemed as good as new, if they weren’t actually new. Eight punching bags hung from sturdy metal bars extending from one end of the gym to the other. A TV was mounted on the wall opposite the punching bags and showed the time. One part of the gym was set aside for a rack of dumbbells, a weight machine, and a few stationary bicycles, one of which his acquaintance was now getting on. Most of the gym was open space.

“Sorry for the wait.” A dark-skinned man strode out of a door with a “Staff Only” sign on it. Raine recognized his voice. It was Walt, who looked mostly like Raine had expected, with a bald head, a short beard, and a muscular build. An unusual tattoo peeked out of the sleeve of his left arm, showing a wolf’s head over a shield. “Raine, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Before we start, you’ll have to sign this. It’s a typical contract about injuries and safety for martial arts gyms.” Walt passed the contract to Raine, who nodded and started skimming through it. As he did, Walt asked, “I’m just curious, but how did you meet Levin?”

“College. In my sophomore year, he was in my group for a project, and we hit it off on the first day.”

“Ah.” He sounded unsurprised. “So you went to UCLA?”

“Yeah. My time there was a wild four-year party.”

Walt chuckled. “My niece dreams of going.”

“It’s a great school to aim for. I loved the place, and most of my friends who went there did too,” Raine said. Done reading the contract, he signed and passed it to Walt.

As Walt took a quick look at it, Raine’s gaze wandered and spotted on the counter an open notebook whose pages were packed with writing. He didn’t want to invade anyone’s privacy, but his curious eyes landed on it on their own. The script was neat and tightly packed, like the writer couldn’t bear to waste even a millimeter of space. The date at the top of the page was today’s. Since the notebook faced the other way, the writing was upside-down to Raine, so he couldn’t tell what it was about before Walt put away the contract in a file and Raine took his gaze off the notebook.

“Okay, now we can start,” Walt said. “Put your shoes on the rack and your bag on the shelf. Do you have any previous experience with martial arts?”

“Yeah, but it was too long ago to matter. And I’ve never kickboxed before.”

“That’s fine. We’ll start from the basics.” They placed their shoes on the rack and stepped onto the mats. After Raine put his bag away, Walt handed him a jump rope. “Warm up with this first. Try to do it for as long as you can and make sure to start slowly.”

Raine nodded and did just that. The rope was heavier than any he’d used before. He messed up his timing on his first try and hit his toes with the rope. It hurt like hell. After a few more attempts, however, he got the hang of it. Kind of. He landed more heavily than he would have liked, and he already felt a burn in his feet and calves.

He soon had to stop to catch his breath and massage his aching legs. The TV showing the time was in front of him, so he knew that less than five minutes had passed since he’d started. Damn, this is way harder than I thought it would be.

“Okay, that’s fine,” Walt said. He took the rope from Raine and passed him two fingerless cloth gloves. “Try them on. Normally we use hand wraps, but these are faster to wear.”

Raine slid them on. Walt then passed him a pair of boxing gloves, and Raine expected him to go get boxing mitts. But instead, Walt stayed where he was.

“Stand with your feet in a straight line and relax your arms,” Walt said. “Lock your lower body in place and rotate your upper body like this.”

Walt demonstrated. It looked ridiculous, but Raine did as he was told. His arms flopped around and hit his stomach.

“Okay, so that’s hip rotation. That’s how you generate power. It lets you use your weight to deliver a hard blow efficiently. Look.” Walt walked up to a punching bag. “Without hip rotation, you get a kid’s kick.” He lifted his left leg and, as his body folded awkwardly, hit the bag. It sounded more like a slap than a kick. “With hip rotation, you get a kick that can knock someone out.”

His leg swung at the bag like a baseball bat. The rest of his body moved in coordination. The sound of the impact rang throughout the gym. Raine stared in amazement at the spot Walt had hit. It was at eye level.

But after a moment, Raine frowned, realizing that although he saw what Walt did, he didn’t really see it. The details eluded him.

“That’s all hip rotation,” Walt said. “Fighters with incredible, seemingly inexplicable power aren’t born with superhuman strength. You don’t knock someone out with strength; you knock them out with your weight. Heavy hitters are people who are great at connecting their weight to their blows. Hip rotation is the most common way to do that.”

Raine nodded. He listened more carefully than before. He’d seen people hit hard before, but not that hard. And it was incredible how Walt had done it so casually.

“We’ll get to punching in a bit. Before that, you have to learn how to get into a proper stance. There’s no such thing as a perfect stance, but a good stance has a balance of offensive potential and defensive potential, and...”

The lesson lasted an hour. In that time, Raine learned enough about striking that he had trouble remembering everything afterward. And he was now exhausted. He grabbed his bag and sat on a bench beside the mats. His legs were so spent that he felt a sharp pain in his quads as he sat down. Even though he just wanted to rest, he got his phone and started writing a message to himself, trying to put down everything he could remember about what he’d learned. If anyone had seen him, they probably would have thought he was furiously texting someone.

When he was done, he grabbed his bag, clambered to his feet, and trudged into the men’s shower room. Even while half-distracted by his phone and the pain in his legs, he immediately realized it was no normal shower room. It was certainly clean, but beyond that, it was just oddly…luxurious. Elegant leather benches sat beside the walls. Near the shower stalls, there was a wooden rack holding piles of neatly folded clean towels. The faint scent of berries filled the whole shower room, and as soon as he’d stepped in, the speakers had started playing pop music. There had to be a sensor somewhere; he definitely hadn’t heard music on the way in.

Then he thought about the size of the gym and the quality of its equipment. It actually seemed pretty upscale. He almost felt bad for having Levin pay for his training. Almost.

After showering, Raine somehow felt even more tired than before. He headed for the counter, and as he did so, he noticed that his acquaintance was still training, alternating between lat pulldowns and squats. The size of the dumbbells he was lifting left Raine speechless. The guy was about a head shorter than Raine and had to be at least 20 pounds lighter.

“Kayden has freakish strength for his size,” Walt said from the counter, staring at Kayden for a moment. He shrugged. “I don’t know what he eats to get that strength.”

Kayden! Yeah, that’s his name. Raine nodded. “By the way, how much for the lesson?”

“No need to worry about that. Before you came, Levin paid for a package of 20 private lessons and unlimited group classes.”

“Oh, alright,” Raine said. Odd, Levin was a hell of a procrastinator in college.

“Do you want some water?” Walt poured himself a cup of water with the fancy water dispenser beside the couch. Raine hadn’t even noticed it earlier.

“Sure, thanks.”

Walt passed Raine a cup. Raine felt how cold the water was through the paper and took a gulp. The cool water tasted great after the exhausting training.

Walt stared at his phone as he also drank. He asked, “Have you ever seen this?”

He showed Raine a video on his phone. It started with a guy in a hoodie walking down the street and a much taller man going the other way. The latter hit the former’s shoulder. The hoodie guy cursed and told the tall guy to watch where he was going. They started arguing. The situation quickly escalated, and soon, the tall guy swung at the hoodie guy, who ducked and countered. A left hook met the tall guy’s temple. He went stiff and fell like a freshly cut tree. The video ended there.

“The guy in the hoodie trained here for about a month last year,” Walt said.

Raine’s brows rose. “Is he good?”

“Well, he isn’t bad, but he isn’t great. You can see how sloppy his technique is with his hook.” Walt rewound the video and showed Raine the punch again. Raine couldn’t say it was sloppy, since he didn’t know the right technique, but it did look a little slow. “The good thing about striking is that you can end a fight in an instant. Have you ever been in a street fight?”

“No, never. I almost got into one at a bar a while ago, but I talked my way out of it.” The well-practiced words came out almost too easily.

Walt grinned. “Yeah, that’s the best thing to do. I wasn’t smart enough to do that when I was younger. I got into a fight practically every time I went out for a drink.”

Raine had trouble imagining the average Joe mustering the courage to fight someone like Walt, at least not while sober. The man looked like a killer.

The two chatted for a while before Raine finally had the strength to get up. He bid Walt farewell and left. His legs hurt with every step, but he felt oddly refreshed. He had fun.

Raine headed home at a relaxed pace. On the way, he stopped by a small taco shop and had the cheapest food item on the menu. With his stomach full, all he wanted was sleep. He passed the Gemini Cafe, crossed the street, walked by the corner store, and reached his apartment building.

“Under repair. Use back entrance.” A sign with those words (written with a cheap black marker) was taped to the front door, which was blocked off with barricade tape. But there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the door. Raine sighed. Management, you guys suck.

The sun had already bowed out of the sky. He wasn’t keen on going to the back entrance in the dark. There were few lights, and all of them were dim. And the rats. Squeak, squeak, rustle. He wanted to get a shotgun and blast the godforsaken things.

He shook his head and went into the alley. With the darkness, the quietness, and the complete lack of people in sight, his irritation gradually made way to anxiety. He kept his eyes wide open, and looked back every so often to make sure no one was following him with a weapon in hand and a mugging in mind.

Just as he turned his head to look ahead after having shot a glance back, he saw a blur near the back door. His body froze.

Squeak. It was a rat.

He almost howled with anger. If it weren’t a quick little bastard almost certain to be carrying some god-awful disease, Raine would have grabbed it by the tail and flung it at the wall. It ran into the shadows, as if frightened by his murderous thoughts. He watched it go as he walked.

The back door wasn’t far. But when he was just a few feet from it, another sound made him freeze again. This time, it wasn’t from a rat.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Footsteps from behind. Raine felt his heart sink like an anchor. He wanted to think they just belonged to someone heading home like him. But his body moved on its own, leaping for the handle of the back door. He grasped it in a death grip and turned it. Or tried to. Click. Click, click, click. It was locked. Why the fuck is it locked?!

A snicker came from behind. “Bad day for you. Now hand over everything you’ve got. No funny shit.”

Raine felt his face go numb. He turned around mechanically. He saw the blade first. Or rather, that was the only thing he could see. It came closer and closer, until it was just a few feet away. Four inches of steel. It must have been newly stolen. It looked new. And shiny. And deadly.

Raine took a deep breath. And another. And another. And yet another so he could muster the courage to look beyond the cold metal and see the human being holding it. Under a blue-and-yellow baseball cap, the man’s sunk-in eyes had bags that said he hadn’t slept for days. His stubble of a beard was caked in filth, and he wore a dirty white shirt and a pair of ragged trousers. He was approaching casually, almost carelessly.

Raine’s eyes returned to the blade. His arms and legs felt powerless, like their strength had just checked out and abandoned him when he most needed it. Fuck, I wish I was drunk.

“Okay, okay,” Raine said. His hand trembled as he grabbed his wallet and held it in front of him. “Take it.”

The man frowned and stared at him for a moment. His gaze went to the wallet briefly and then snapped back to Raine’s face.

“Like I said, no funny shit, kid. Drop it and kick it over.”

Raine nodded hesitantly. The man’s gaze stayed on him even as he squatted down to put his wallet on the ground. Raine bit his lip. Once he gave up his wallet, then what? He’d seen the man’s face clearly; there was only one way out of the alley; and Raine was unarmed and visibly tired and scared. Stab, stab, and the man would rid himself of future trouble.

Raine’s hand was just an inch from the ground. He gritted his teeth. One shot. Fuck it.

He flung the wallet at the man’s face. He dropped his bag and sprinted at the man, who slapped the wallet aside. With the help of that distraction, Raine managed to grab the man’s knife arm, both hands on the wrist. Something hard and sharp beat his head from the side, and he grimaced but held on like his life depended on it, because it did.

He knew what to do, but he hesitated. He would have to let go of the man’s arm for a split second.

Throw. Throw. Do it. Throw! He still hesitated and was rewarded with another elbow to the head, the hardest yet. Dizzy from the blow, he finally pushed the man with his shoulder. The man pushed back. One hand let go. Raine hooked the man’s arm with his own. He spun around while his legs coiled and straightened like a spring.

The world spun too. Raine felt weightless. The throw was perfect, and a relieved smile came to his face on its own. Then he hit the ground.