A girl with stamina

Thankfully the rest of her training regimen wasn’t quite as Spartan as the hellish warmup she put me through. It mostly just consisted of her showing me basic punching forms and making me hit a bag endlessly. This must be what Sisyphus feels like. Doing the same damn thing over and over again.

I’m definitely not fucking happy though, Albert.

I honestly didn’t understand why we’d spend most of an hour learning ‘technique’ for a sport that can be summed up as ‘punch each other in the face until one of you gets brain damage’ but if it meant not being subjected to her fitness training, I was more than okay with it.

We cooled down with some more stretches, and as soon as we were done I slumped against the wall. I chugged my entire (refilled) water bottle in one go again and breathed heavily. A whole hour of exercise. I’d claim that every muscle in my body ached, but I could already hear Mai’s voice in my head saying ‘there is no muscle in your body,’ and that pissed me off enough that I stopped thinking about the pain.

“That was great work, Nanako!” said Touka excitedly, leaning against the wall next to me. “I could see how tired you were, but you really gave it your all. I’m proud of you for not throwing in the towel.”

I was suddenly conflicted over whether to feel immense joy over hearing “I’m proud of you” or immense irritation that I had apparently set the bar so low that just doing the training I was told to do exceeded expectations. Did I really seem that lazy?

I mean, I am that lazy, but I thought I’d hidden it better.

“I don’t get it…” I said, still panting for air. “You worked twice as hard as me, but you barely look like you’ve broken a sweat. How can you do all that and still have such boundless energy?”

I didn’t even have the energy to snark or snide, I just seriously wanted to know. Because I was there feeling like I had just finished a marathon swim through the Phlegethon, and she looked like she was ready for a modelling gig. Must be nice not having your hair look like a right bloody mess from all the sweat.

“I’ve been doing this every week since I was ten,” she said with a shrug and a smile. “I’ve got over ten years of practice, but you’re totally new to it all. It’s normal that your body isn’t used to it.”

It was her attempt at making me feel better, but it honestly just made me wonder what sort of masochist she was. If I had to put myself through the labours of Heracles every week to play chess, I’d have thrown the board out of the window and mastered draughts instead.

“Boxing is fundamentally a cardio sport,” she continued, paying no mind to my pitying gaze. “You can be the strongest slugger in the whole league, but if you don’t have the stamina to back it up you’ll just wear yourself down. So I train my fitness above everything else. That’s why I have so much stamina.”

“As much as I love a girl with stamina, I get the feeling I’ll never be able to keep up with you,” I panted. Each breath of air relieved the aching in my lungs, but was always accompanied by its own sharp pain. “I’m not exactly in the habit of running laps around the city.”

“That’s perfectly fine. You don’t have to keep up with me, you just have to keep improving. The only person you have to be better than is yourself from yesterday.”

“And my opponent, right?”

“Always so literal,” she giggled. Almost felt like a barb. “You’ll be fighting other chess players, not boxers, so you shouldn’t be too outmatched on stamina. Training with me should be enough for learning technique, so an hour or so of running a week should do for cardio. Reckon you could do that?”

“More work? This wasn’t it?”

“Only if you don’t want to step in the ring and collapse from exhaustion.”

I groaned, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t somewhat expect it. I had the fitness of a newborn with asthma. Getting in shape for this thing was gonna be an uphill battle.

I could hardly walk uphill, let alone battle.

Honestly, I felt like it wasn’t logically worth the effort. All this suffering every week plus more, just to stay in the chess club? Not to mention the actual fights themselves? It seemed like an abjectly miserable trade for me.

But every time I entertained the thought of throwing in the towel, it felt wrong, and I couldn’t explain why.

Was it Mai’s words that kept me going? When she told me she knows what I’m capable of with effort, did it strike a deeper chord with me than I thought?

Was it the counsellor? Did I actually care that much about not disappointing him, deep down somewhere?

Or… did I just want to hear her tell me she’s proud of me again?

Whatever the reason, the idea of quitting here and saving myself the suffering simply wasn’t one I could stomach. I was gonna see this stupid tournament through, whether I liked it or not.

Besides, I wasn’t the only one here who had something they needed to learn.

After a few more deep breaths, I finally got to my feet, my body still aching from the intense training.

“Well, all suffering has its reward, right?” I said, picking the box with the chess set up off the ground. “Now, it’s time for you to learn my domain.”