The first hour didn't just hurt. It tried to murder him and claim self-defense.

Kieran kicked things off with the rowing machine, that smug bastard with its sliding seat and digital smirk. "Five hundred meters. Pace yourself."

Phei did not pace himself. He attacked the handle like it had personally insulted his mother, yanking with everything he had, feeling like a god for roughly forty-five glorious seconds before his lungs filed for divorce and his lats threatened to secede from the union.

By three hundred meters he was gasping like a fish on a dock. By four hundred he was negotiating with whatever deity handles cardio. By five hundred he folded over the handle, wheezing, and briefly considered converting the machine into a permanent residence.

"Two minutes eighteen," Kieran said, calm as a man reading the weather. "Not bad for a rookie. Sixty-second rest, then legs."

Sixty seconds? I need geological time.

But sixty seconds was all he got.

The leg press looked harmless—padded seat, big platform, some plates.

A lie in steel form.

Kieran loaded what he called "light weight." Phei's quads disagreed, staging an immediate protest that felt like someone had poured molten lava into his thighs. Ten reps. Rest. Ten more. Rest. Ten final reps, by which point Phei was inventing new curse words and violating several city noise bylaws.

"Good," Kieran said, unmoved by the symphony of suffering. "Squats next."

"I can't feel my legs."

"Perfect. Less whining."

Squats. Lunges. Calf raises. Box step-ups onto a platform that definitely grew taller with every set. Kieran prowled around him like a shark, correcting form, demanding one more rep when Phei was certain his tank was bone-dry.

"Three more."

"Can't—"

"Three. More."

Somehow, three more happened. Gravity lost that round.

Upper body was next, and it was personal.

Dumbbell presses with weights so light they should've been humiliating

—except by rep eight Phei's arms were shaking so badly those five-kilo bells felt like medieval anvils.

Lateral raises. Front raises. Overhead presses. Each rep introduced a fresh flavor of shoulder agony, like his delts were being slow-roasted over an open flame.

"Shoulders are weak," Kieran observed, as if discovering a new species of pathetic. "We'll fix that."

Everything is weak, genius. Shoulders are just today's featured disaster.

Biceps. Triceps. Cable rows. Kieran marched him through muscle groups with the cold efficiency of a butcher, never letting the burn fade before serving up the next course of torment.

Then came core.

Kieran led him to a mat that looked innocent. It was not.

Planks. Side planks. Dead bugs. Bicycle crunches. Russian twists with a medicine ball that clearly weighed more than most small planets. Every exercise hunted down abdominal muscles Phei didn't know he owned and introduced them to fire.

"Thirty more seconds."

"I'm dying."

"Twenty-five."

"Tell my family—actually, no. Burn the note. They don't get closure."

"Fifteen."

His entire body shook like a phone on vibrate. Sweat poured off him in sheets. Arms: jelly. Legs: overcooked pasta. Core: one giant cramp with delusions of grandeur.

"Time." Kieran glanced at his watch. "Solid first session. Let's cool down and—"

"Again."

Kieran blinked. "Come again?"

"Again." Phei pushed up from the mat, legs wobbling like a newborn foal's. "Whole thing. From the top."

"Phei, that was a full workout. Your body needs recovery to—"

"Again."

Something in Phei's voice made Kieran stop mid-sentence. The trainer studied him—really studied him—like he was seeing past the sweat and the shaking into whatever was burning underneath.

"That's not how training works," Kieran said slowly. "Doubling a session doesn't double gains. It just invites injury. You'll wreck yourself and lose weeks."

"I get the risks."

"Do you? Because what you're asking is—"

"I know exactly what I'm asking." Phei locked eyes with him, didn't flinch. "I've lived in pain for ten years. Real pain. The kind that doesn't end when the set does. This?" He waved a trembling hand at his wrecked body.

"This is a vacation. This is nothing compared to what I've already survived."

Kieran's mask cracked just a little further. Something raw flickered in his eyes—curiosity, sure, but also the weary recognition of a man who'd trained broken people before. The ones who weren't running from debt or deadlines, but from something uglier.

Something that lived inside the bones.

"If you push too hard—"

"Then I'll pay the bill when it comes due." Phei snatched the medicine ball again, fingers trembling but grip stubborn. "Every rep I grind out today is one I won't have to suffer through next month. Every fiber I rip now grows back meaner. That's the deal I'm making."

Kieran opened his mouth, closed it. "That's… technically true, but the body doesn't run on motivational posters."

"No buts." Phei's knuckles whitened around the ball. "I'm not here for the gentle eight-week transformation package with progress photos and gold stars. I'm here to become someone else. And that doesn't happen in one polite hour followed by a protein shake and a nap."

Kieran stared at him for a long, measuring moment.

Then he nodded, slow.

"Fine. But my rules. Perfect form every rep. You feel something pop, tear, or otherwise go catastrophically wrong—not just pain, actual wrong—and we stop. You drink water between sets or I yank the plug. Clear?"

"Crystal!"

"Don't make me regret this, kid."

Too late for that, but not for the reasons you think.

The second hour wasn't worse than the first. It was the first hour's evil twin who'd spent years in prison lifting weights made of hate.

Back to rowing. Another five hundred meters. Phei's time crawled to two thirty-one, but he stayed upright at the end.

Small mercies.

Legs again—same exercises, same weights, now on muscles that had already filed their resignation letters.

The leg press felt like being slowly crushed by a very polite but determined elephant. Squats were penance for crimes in a past life. Lunges nearly brought tears; actual, embarrassing tears that he blinked back because dragons don't cry in public.

"You're shaking like a chihuahua," Kieran observed.

"Observant."

"Your form's going to shit."

"Then fix it."

Kieran did—hands firm on Phei's shoulders, hips, forcing alignment even as the pain dialed up to eleven. Professional sadist with a heart of slightly smaller sadism.

Upper body was pure spite at that point. Phei's arms had declared bankruptcy, but somehow the reps kept coming. Five-kilo dumbbells felt like fifty. Shoulders burned with the heat of a thousand bad decisions. Biceps cramped. Triceps had apparently left the chat entirely.

"Five more."

"Fuck you very much."

"Not a rep count. Five. More."

Five more. Then five more. Then five more, because Kieran had clearly decided that if Phei wanted self-immolation, he'd at least do it evenly.

Core work was where hell got creative.

Planks that had been hard the first time were now a personal vendetta. Phei held them anyway, body quivering like a tuning fork, sweat pooling on the mat beneath him in what felt like gallons.

"You're the color of an overripe tomato."

"Means the blood's moving."

"Means you're flirting with a stroke."

"Noted. Keep counting."

Russian twists, bicycle crunches, mountain climbers, flutter kicks—each one a new circle of Dante's gym inferno, abs and obliques screaming in four-part harmony.

When the second hour finally ended, Phei couldn't stand without leaning on something. His legs had downgraded from limbs to decorative jelly.

His arms hung like wet laundry.

Kieran shoved a water bottle into his hand. "That's it. You've made your lunatic point. Any more and you'll—"

"One more round."

Kieran stared like Phei had suggested they rob a bank. "You're shitting me."

"Do I look like a comedian right now?"

He looked, objectively, like a corpse that had lost a fight with a steamroller. Shirt plastered to him, hair dripping, face a lovely shade of cardiovascular distress.

"Phei, I've trained pros—actual pros—who'd tap out before attempting three full cycles in one go. This isn't grit. This is a suicide pact with your muscles."

"Maybe." Phei chugged half the bottle, hands barely cooperating. "But I need it."

"Need what? A hospital bed? Rhabdo? A nice morphine drip?"

"I need to know where the edge is." Phei set the bottle down with a clunk.

I've spent seventeen years being told exactly how small I am. How weak. How worthless. Today I find out what happens when I ignore every voice—inside and out—that says stop.

His voice came out scraped raw, but steady.

Kieran's jaw worked. He glanced away, then back, something conflicted warring behind his eyes.

"This isn't about limits," he said quietly. "It's basic physiology. Without recovery—"

"I'll be sore. I'll hurt. I'll hate stairs for a week." Phei straightened, legs protesting like rusty hinges. "But I'll also know. I'll know exactly how far I can go when every part of me is begging to quit."

The gym hummed around them—distant treadmills, the faint clink of weights, the two perennial Valentina admirers still accomplishing absolutely nothing.

"You're going to wreck yourself," Kieran said at last.

"Likely."

"You probably won't walk tomorrow."

"Guaranteed."

"This is the opposite of smart training."

"Fully aware."

Kieran exhaled hard, dragged a hand through his hair, and looked at Phei like he was both impressed and mildly terrified.

*****

A/N: Give it up for my top fans; @ Nagumo-san, @ Joseph_Sferrazza-san, @ delley-San(this one has been with me from the very start) @ Naotochan. All you other guys thank you so much. I will mention you guys slowly.

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