detail from katsuya terada’s rakugaking, page 0598

Brenda caught Karen throwing punches at the bathroom mirror at work. It was nothing extreme, just a few quick and reliable combos that she wanted to commit to muscle memory. She cycled from jab-jab to feint-hook to jab-uppercut-hook-overhead right and back again. Karen liked to throw in a random bob between combos sometimes, just to stay on her toes and keep things fresh. It was nothing more than a lunchtime lark, a bored data entry specialist with too much time to kill at work, but still: she got caught.

Worst of all, she was caught by Brenda, of all the people who could have wandered into the bathroom. Cruel Brenda. Hated Brenda. Brenda-the-gossip. Karen froze when she realized that Brenda was watching her in the mirror. Her mind turned over quickly, simultaneously trying to gauge how long Brenda had been there and the best way to escape the situation. An image flashed into her head of Brenda with a bloody nose, her impeccable make-up smudged across her face in an ugly smear. She almost smiled at the thought, but waved it away. Karen opened her mouth to speak, but Brenda spoke first.

“Does that actually work?”

Karen worked her mouth, surprised and confused, but no sounds came out. She tried again. “What?” Ugh.

“That thing you’re doing, the aerobics or whatever. Does that work?”

Karen breathed out through her nose, nice and slow. “Yeah.” She breathed in. Escape route found; salvation in sight. “Yeah, it does. Um. I do an hour a day. It’s great.”

“Is it a hips thing? What does it work?”

“Oh.” Pause for thought. “It’s mostly cardio and flexibility, that kind of thing. More of an uh overall health sort of deal than toning.”

Brenda looked at her. “Mm.” There was something snide even in that simple sound, like everything in the entire world wasn’t interesting enough for her to bother with a full syllable. She looked Karen up and down, turned, and left the bathroom.

Karen breathed out and stretched. The routine was almost unconscious now. She worked her arms, her chest, her shoulders, her arms again, and then finished with a few light ab stretches. She muttered something under her breath while she stretched, something full of hard Ks and a light, keening whine. She finished stretching and threw another combo at the mirror, 1-2-1. She couldn’t help but smile at her image in the mirror. She turned the water on and rested both hands on the sink while the water heated up. She splashed her face, dried her hands, gave her hair a once-over, left the bathroom, and tried not to think about the tall tale Brenda was undoubtedly spinning to whoever she hadn’t yet alienated in the office.

Karen was useless the rest of the day. She wasn’t focused on her job. She was focused on what was going to happen after she clocked out. She was focused on the bell that was going to ring at 1930. She was focused on everything but her work, and she knew it. She sprinted to the bathroom and threw up her lunch a little after 1600. It made her feel better and worse at the same time.

—

Karen joined a boxing gym three months ago. She was drunk at the time. She wasn’t falling down drunk, but she was just drunk enough to appear sober but still manage to make a series of terrible decisions. The thought of learning how to fight appealed to her, in her haze, and that appeal remained as she sobered up. The week before her first training session was filled with daydreams about fifteen-second knockouts, vicious uppercuts, and every boss she ever loathed clumsily apologizing through a broken jaw.

She vomited twice in her first session. She’d been through P90X, and hot yoga had put her through her paces a couple years ago. But the training at this gym was on an entirely different level. They made her work the bag for the first half hour after stretching. They called it a stress test and preliminary assessment. It felt like torture. She threw punches as hard as she could, left-right, left-right, but the bag barely moved at all. At one point, she’d caught the rhythm the coaches had told her about, got excited, and watched in horror as one punch missed entirely. She slowed her pace, refocused, and tried not to think about how the muffled laughter elsewhere in the gym made her want to die. Later came sprints, and worse. She lost it while running sprints, barely making it to the bathroom before her stomach turned her upside down.

When Karen woke up the next day, she felt great. She felt loose in ways she never believed were possible, and she blazed through the workday. The next morning was less kind. She found out later that it was called “delayed onset muscle soreness.” Her primary trainer laughed when she asked about it. Her arms and legs hurt so much that even curling into the fetal position to escape the pain was impossible. She called in to work — texted in, actually — and spent the day in bed, feebly sipping from a bottle of water and noshing a series of omelettes until nighttime.

Two days later, she was back at the gym. One week after that, she went in two days a week. Two weeks after that, she was at the gym a minimum of three times a week, and sometimes four if she could manage it. Training and conditioning hurt. It was the most evil thing she’d ever experienced. But she kept at it. Karen didn’t have much, but there was something pleasant about hitting a bag until your arms were too weak to swing and running suicides until your knees felt like jelly and your heart tried to bang its way out of your chest.

Tonight was her first official match. It was just against someone from her gym, as part of an internal ranking system, mere prep for a local amateur league. It wasn’t a big deal. Except it was. This was her first chance to show and prove, to get a taste of what she spent the last few months training for.

She subtly practiced her shoulder roll at her desk. She disguised her head bobbing as the result of pop music in her earphones, even going so far as to sing along every once and a while. She practiced breathing. She let her hindbrain watch for Brenda while she mentally prepared herself for tonight.