## Chapter 231 — The Weight He Chose

By the second Saturday after Isha’s fever ended, Thomas no longer watched how she stood up. He still noticed—the habit would probably survive several more days—but he had stopped translating every pause into dizziness and every quiet breath into a returning fever. Isha had completed three ordinary shifts, returned to the river and eaten enough at breakfast to make his remaining caution difficult to defend as medicine.

The morning was cool and overcast. Rain had passed before dawn, leaving the balcony rail dark and the concrete beneath Mugi's saucer marked by a clean crescent where the cat had drunk. Isha stood near the wardrobe tying her hair into a high tail. Thomas had told her to wear clothes suitable for exercise and shoes she could move in, but had refused to explain further.

“You have checked the train route twice,” she said. “The destination is indoors, requires sports clothing and is close enough that we are not carrying food. It is not judo, climbing or archery, because I already know how you behave before each of those.”

Thomas put his wallet into the front pocket of his bag. “You have omitted the possibility that I am taking you somewhere entirely new.”

“I included it. I do not believe it.”

Her tone remained mild, but her eyes had followed every object he packed: water bottle, small towel, clean shirt, notebook, lifting straps he had placed too quickly beneath the shirt and then decided not to conceal. Thomas had learned that secrecy around Isha worked best when limited to things she had agreed not to solve. She had asked for one morning without questions, and she had granted it after almost forty minutes of observation.

Mugi sat on the folded floor mattress in the second room, occupying the rectangle of space they had recently cleared. The cat watched them prepare to leave with the disapproval of someone whose household had developed unnecessary outdoor habits.

“We will be back before lunch,” Thomas told her.

Mugi began washing one shoulder.

Isha slipped on a light jacket. “She believes your explanation lacks authority.”

“She has no recognised authority over our movements.”

“That has not prevented her exercising it.”

The joke rested there while Thomas opened the door. Mugi did not follow, though she moved to the genkan and sat behind them until the door closed.

The journey took less than twenty minutes. Thomas led them toward the university district, then past the building where his office occupied part of the second floor. Saturday had reduced the foot traffic without emptying the campus. A few students crossed the paths carrying instrument cases or sports bags, and bicycles stood beneath the trees with rain still beaded along their frames.

Isha looked toward his office building, then at him. “This belongs to your work.”

“Not to my department.”

They continued to a low athletics building set behind a larger hall. The glass entrance displayed opening hours, shoe rules and a notice about introductory guidance. Through the doors, Isha could see cardio machines facing broad windows and, beyond them, the darker flooring of a weights area.

She stopped just long enough for Thomas to notice. “You have been coming here,” she said.

Thomas felt satisfaction arrive before embarrassment could make a claim upon it. “Twice most weeks. During lunch, usually.”

The answer altered her face in stages. Surprise came first, then an assessment of his shoulders beneath the jacket, the bag in his hand and the months since he had started work. What followed was not suspicion but pleasure too deliberate to be mistaken for politeness.

“How long?”

“Eight weeks. Nine if the first orientation counts, although I spent most of that learning which machines adjusted in ways that were not obvious.” He held the door for her. “I wanted to know whether I would continue before I told you. Then I wanted to show you properly rather than describe it over dinner.”

Inside, the attendant at reception looked up from a tablet and smiled in recognition.

“Good morning, Albrecht-san. Weekend training today?”

“I brought a guest,” Thomas said in Japanese. “This is Vaeloren Isha. She has not used the gym before.”

The attendant gave Isha the courtesy of addressing her directly rather than asking Thomas to mediate. She explained the visitor charge, indoor-shoe requirement, locker system and the need to ask before using unfamiliar equipment. Isha answered in careful Japanese, signed the form and listened closely enough that the woman shortened none of the explanation.

Only after they had passed through the gate did Isha speak again. “She knows you.”

“She knows my membership card and that I once tried to return a locker key to the wrong desk.”

“She used your name before seeing the card.”

Thomas changed his shoes beside the lockers. “I am a foreign member who arrives at nearly the same time, uses a written routine and asks whether the cable attachment has been moved. Recognition was likely.”

Isha sat beside him, one foot braced upon the bench as she tightened her laces. Her smile remained small, but it had not gone away. “You are explaining evidence that pleases me as though it were an accusation.”

That was accurate enough that Thomas stopped explaining and led her into the gym.

The gym was neither fashionable nor neglected. The machines had been maintained rather than replaced, their instruction diagrams faded at the edges where cleaning had worn the print. Along one wall stood racks of dumbbells, adjustable benches and two barbell platforms. Mirrors occupied only the sections where people needed to check alignment. The air smelled faintly of rubber flooring, metal and the citrus cleaner used between sessions.

About fifteen people were training. Most worked alone. Two students alternated at a bench press while an older man performed slow cable rows with the concentration of someone refusing to surrender a single centimetre to momentum. A woman near the windows walked uphill on a treadmill while reading from a tablet mounted above the controls.

Isha took in the room as she would have taken in a new trailhead: exits, surfaces, equipment, other bodies and the rules implied by spacing. Her attention paused upon the free-weight platforms before returning to Thomas.

“What do you do first?” she asked.

“Today, five minutes on the bicycle, then mobility. My lunch sessions are short enough that I cannot spend twenty minutes pretending the warm-up is the workout.”

Thomas adjusted a stationary bicycle and began at an easy pace. Isha took the machine beside him. She watched his cadence, copied the setup and then reduced her resistance after he pointed out that the purpose was to become warm rather than establish dominance over the flywheel.

“I did not know a flywheel could be dominated,” she said.

“You had begun attempting it.”

She looked at the display, where her output had already exceeded his despite the lower setting. “The machine was giving me a number.”

“That is how they lure you into poor decisions.”

Thomas let the exchange end with the quiet mechanical whisper of the pedals. He had brought her partly because he wanted to share this, but the room had belonged to him before she entered it. That mattered more than he had expected. The routine was not an inheritance supplied by records, a skill carried from another world or a duty he had accepted because someone required help. It consisted of ordinary visits no one had assigned: arriving, recording the previous numbers, adding weight slowly, stopping when form deteriorated and returning several days later.

After the bicycles, he led her through ankle movement, hip hinges, shoulder rotations and two sets of body-weight squats. Isha followed without impatience. Her recovered body made the motions clean, but unfamiliar gym habits still required explanation. She wanted to know why he placed his feet at a particular angle and why he braced before moving when the load was not yet present.

“Because rehearsal becomes the movement you use when it is present,” Thomas said. “At least that is the theory. I am still capable of forgetting everything at once when a set becomes difficult.”

“You correct yourself before the next repetition.”

He looked at her. “You have seen three squats.”

“I have seen you prepare for them.”

The observation settled more deeply than praise about strength would have done.

Thomas began with a seated row machine. He set the chest support, chose a weight that allowed ten controlled repetitions and pulled without leaning away from the pad. The movement was not dramatic. His back and arms tightened beneath his shirt, the cable rose through its housing and the plates touched down with almost no sound between repetitions.

Isha stood far enough aside not to crowd him. She did not speak during the set. When he finished, she looked first at his hands and shoulders, then at the stack.

“You could move more,” she said. “But you have decided the final repetitions should be difficult without becoming different movements.”

“For fewer good repetitions, probably. This is the weight I can control for all three sets.” Thomas wiped the handles and recorded the set in his notebook. “The staff member who showed me this said most injuries begin when a person changes the exercise without admitting it.”

Isha considered the machine with greater interest. “That principle travels well.”

He continued to a dumbbell bench press. The weights he selected were not large enough to attract attention, but they were no longer the lightest available. Thomas set his shoulders, planted his feet and brought the dumbbells down with an even tempo before pressing them back above his chest. The last two repetitions slowed. They did not wander.

Isha’s expression changed during the set. Thomas knew the look from training grounds and difficult roads: she was not admiring the amount of force but the decisions inside it. When he sat up, breathing harder, she took one dumbbell from him before he could return both to the rack. Her hand closed around the handle without testing its weight.

“You have practised,” she said. “I understand repetition. I had not understood that you were doing this while I believed you were eating lunch.”

“I also eat lunch—usually afterward at my desk, which Mori considers a moral failure and a scheduling success.”

Thomas expected a remark about secrecy. Instead Isha returned the dumbbell to its place and touched two fingers lightly against the back of his upper arm, where the muscle remained firm from the set. The contact was brief enough to remain private in a public room and deliberate enough that he felt it after her hand withdrew.

“I noticed changes,” she said. “I attributed them to judo and carrying more shopping when I was tired.”

“You thought I had become stronger through groceries.”

“Groceries are a progressive load if you buy enough rice.”

The humour carried affection rather than dismissal. Thomas drank water and allowed himself to enjoy that she had noticed without solving the cause, then moved to a Romanian deadlift with a barbell. He began with the empty bar, then added plates until the total reached the weight he had used the previous week. It remained modest by the standards of trained lifters and substantial enough that his body had to organise itself honestly around it.

Isha watched the first warm-up set from the side. Thomas softened his knees, pushed his hips back and kept the bar close to his legs. On the working sets his grip tightened and the muscles along his back became visible beneath the dampening fabric of his shirt. He lowered the bar under control, stopped before his spine or shoulders lost position and stood by driving his feet into the floor rather than pulling with his arms.

The final repetition moved slowly. Thomas set the bar down without dropping it and remained bent over for one breath before standing.

Isha handed him his towel. “Again, you could move more.”

“Again, that is not the measure.”

“No.” Her gaze remained upon him rather than the plates. “The measure is that you knew exactly where to stop.”

Thomas wiped his face. The sentence reached the part of him that had once treated stopping as failure and exhaustion as evidence of sincerity. He had not begun gym training to repair that damage in symbolic form. He had begun because sitting at a desk left his hips stiff and because judo made weakness in his legs and back difficult to ignore. Yet the routine had taught him a boundary that no one else needed to enforce.

He moved on before the thought became explanation.

The remaining exercises were less theatrical: a split squat with dumbbells, a lat pulldown, a machine leg curl and a short loaded carry along the marked strip near the wall. Thomas rested long enough between sets to repeat the movement well, noted the weights and adjusted once when his left knee began drifting inward. Isha did not praise every exercise. She asked useful questions, held silence while he worked and occasionally looked at him with open approval that made the familiar room feel altered.

By the time he finished the second carry, his breathing had deepened and sweat darkened the centre of his shirt. He set the dumbbells down inside the marked box rather than at its edge.

“That is my normal session,” he said. “Sometimes I replace the press or the hinge depending on what is available. At lunch I remove one exercise and keep the rest periods shorter.”

Isha looked toward the notebook in his open bag. “You have done this twice each week for two months.”

“Approximately. I missed the week you were ill.”

“You stayed home because I was ill.”

“I also did not think leaving you alone to perform loaded carries would improve either of us.”

She accepted the answer without turning it into gratitude. Her attention moved around the room again, but now she saw the machines through the structure Thomas had demonstrated rather than as disconnected devices.

“I am impressed,” she said.

The plainness of it prevented him from softening the statement into something easier. Thomas had imagined several versions of this morning. In some, Isha found the weights trivial. In others, she watched with protective concern until his ordinary effort became something she tolerated. He had not allowed himself to imagine her standing in a public gym, hair tied high and eyes warm, simply pleased that he had built a skill without her.

“It is not remarkable,” he said, because one part of him still required a final attempt.

Isha stepped closer, close enough that her voice did not carry. “You chose it, learned it and continued when no one was waiting for the result. Do not reduce the work because another person can lift more. You were the one who taught me that after the track.”

Thomas looked toward the barbell platform. “I may have hoped the principle would be applied selectively.”

“It has not become worse because the uncertain person is you.”

She had taken the sentence from her sickbed and returned it in a form he could not dispute without embarrassing both of them through repetition. Thomas accepted defeat with more grace than he had managed during the fever.

“Would you like to try?” he asked.

Isha looked at the row of machines. Interest sharpened, though not into enthusiasm. “Yes. I want to understand what you have been doing.”

Thomas had planned her first exercises carefully. He did not intend to place her beneath a barbell and discover which retained instincts were compatible with modern gym equipment. They began with the seated row because it adjusted easily and gave him a clear view of her posture.

He reduced the weight to a level suitable for learning the movement. Isha sat, set her feet and drew the handles toward her ribs.

The plates rose without apparent resistance.

She paused at the end of the repetition. “This is too light. I have learned the path.”

“You have completed one repetition, but I accept that the path did not change during it.” Thomas stood beside the weight stack and moved the pin down by two plates. “Ten repetitions. Do not let your shoulders roll forward at the end.”

Isha completed ten. The first five looked identical. By the tenth, a line had appeared along the outside of her forearm, but her breathing had not changed. Thomas added weight again.

An older man using the adjacent cable station glanced over, then returned to his own exercise. Isha performed another set with the same controlled tempo Thomas had demonstrated. She did not jerk the handle or turn the movement into a contest. The plates rose, paused and descended until only the softest contact marked the end of each repetition.

“This is beginning to require effort,” she said afterward.

Thomas looked at the stack. “That description may be offensive to the equipment.”

“It is well constructed. It should not require reassurance.”

He stopped himself from adding another remark. The comic fact was already visible in the lowered pin and the older man’s second, less discreet glance.

They moved to the lat pulldown. Thomas explained the grip, the position of her ribs and the reason she should not lean backward until the exercise became an inefficient row. Isha listened, performed six careful repetitions and then asked why the machine existed when a person could simply pull their body upward.

“Because many people cannot do that yet, because the load is adjustable and because it trains the movement without requiring the whole body,” Thomas said. “Can you?”

She followed his gaze toward the pull-up frame. “I have climbed ropes, branches, walls and parts of buildings that were not intended as routes.”

“That is history rather than an answer.”

Isha approached the frame. A notice prohibited swinging and required users to keep the landing area clear. Thomas checked the bar height, placed a step beneath it and indicated a shoulder-width grip.

“Begin from straight arms. Bring your chin above the bar without kicking or using momentum. Stop when the repetitions change shape.”

“You have become authoritative.”

“In this room I possess eight weeks more relevant experience than you.”

Her expression showed unmistakable approval. “Then instruct me.”

Isha stepped from the platform and hung beneath the bar. For an instant her body lengthened into stillness, shoulders engaged but elbows straight. Then she rose.

The first repetition was smooth. So were the second and third. By the sixth, conversation nearby had quietened in the subtle way public attention often gathered while pretending not to. Isha continued without looking anywhere except slightly above the bar. Her shoulders and upper back sharpened beneath the fitted dark shirt, each pull revealing lines usually softened by ordinary posture and loose clothing.

At ten, Thomas said, “Two more if the form remains the same.”

She completed eleven. The twelfth slowed near the top, but her legs remained still and her chin cleared the bar. On the thirteenth attempt, one shoulder rose a fraction before the other.

“Stop,” Thomas said.

Isha lowered herself under control and stepped down. She did not object. Her breathing was deeper now, and colour had entered her face.

“How many did you expect?” she asked.

“Four would have been strong for an untrained woman. Eight would have been exceptional.”

Thomas watched her flex and release her hands, checking that the strain had remained ordinary.

“And twelve?”

“Consistent with the person who ran twelve point seven two seconds after being taught to use starting blocks for one afternoon.”

The older man from the cable station had finished his set. He gave Isha a small nod that recognised effort without requiring conversation. “Very clean repetitions,” he said in Japanese. “Do you climb?”

“I work at a climbing centre,” Isha replied. “But I do not train pull-ups.”

“That may be fortunate for the rest of us.”

His tone was dry rather than intrusive. Isha considered the remark, then inclined her head with the seriousness she used when accepting praise she had not requested. “Thomas corrected the final repetition before it became poor.”

The man looked toward Thomas. “Then he is a better training partner than many.”

Thomas felt the old instinct to redirect credit toward Isha and the newer recognition that doing so would reject the compliment rather than honour her. “I have been taught to stop before the movement changes.” The man nodded once and returned to his cable station.

Isha watched him go. “You did not apologise for knowing something.”

“I am trying a revised policy.”

“I approve of it.”

Thomas chose the next exercise partly because it was useful and partly because he wanted to occupy his hands. He gave Isha two dumbbells for a farmer’s carry, starting lighter than her grip required so she could learn the route and the rule against rushing around other users.

She picked them up and walked the marked strip. Her shoulders remained level. The weights hung beside her thighs without swinging, and her steps made almost no sound upon the rubber floor.

At the turn, she looked at Thomas. “Heavier.”

He exchanged the dumbbells for the pair he had used. Isha carried those with no visible change beyond greater tension through her hands. Thomas increased the load once more, choosing weights he could carry for a shorter distance but not with the calm she had maintained.

This time the effort became visible. Her fingers closed hard around the knurled handles. The muscles of her forearms stood clear, and each step required an exact bracing through her waist. The hem of her shirt lifted slightly when she turned, revealing a pale line of skin above her waistband and faint abdominal divisions sharpening as she resisted the pull of the weights.

Thomas had seen her unclothed often enough that surprise should have been impossible. Familiarity did not make the sight neutral. Her body at rest was lean and graceful; under load, its hidden organisation became briefly legible. The shallow lines beneath her ribs deepened into a subtle six-part structure, not posed or held for display but produced by the necessity of keeping her spine and pelvis still while the dumbbells tried to draw her apart.

She walked toward him with her eyes fixed ahead and her mouth set in concentration. Thomas felt attraction arrive alongside technical approval, neither cancelling the other. He also became aware that two students near the bench press had stopped speaking.

Isha reached the end of the strip and placed the dumbbells down carefully inside the box. “That,” she said after one breath, “was properly heavy.”

Thomas gave her the towel. “Your left grip began opening near the end.”

“I know. I was deciding whether I could close it again without changing my shoulder.”

“You did. Another set at that weight would be unnecessary.”

She wiped her hands and looked at him over the towel. “You enjoyed that.”

“The carry was technically good.”

“That is not the whole answer.”

Thomas had once experienced attention directed at Isha as an implied comparison in which he could only lose. The track had exposed the unfairness of that instinct; the weeks afterward had not removed it so much as deprive it of authority. In the gym, other people’s glances did not make her farther from him. They made the room briefly share what he already knew: she was remarkable, and she had chosen to spend the morning learning his routine under his instruction.

“No,” he said. “It was not the whole answer.”

He let his eyes move once, openly, from her shoulders to the narrow line of exposed abdomen before returning to her face. Isha’s expression warmed in response. The exchange required no further explanation and would have become less intimate if translated into a joke.

For the final experiment, Thomas chose a trap bar rather than the straight barbell. Its handles placed the load beside Isha and reduced the technical demands of the movement. He demonstrated with the empty bar, explaining foot position, bracing and the need to push the floor away while keeping her chest and hips rising together.

Isha copied the movement without weight. Her first attempt was too much like preparing to lift another person: hips low, chest high and attention directed outward rather than into the floor. Thomas corrected her by placing two fingers against the side of her hip and asking her to send it back farther.

She adjusted immediately.

“Better,” he said. “The bar should travel vertically. Do not try to make it light by moving quickly.”

“I cannot make mass light through speed, although momentum has occasionally agreed to similar arguments.”

Thomas added the first small plates before she could improve the defence.

Isha completed five repetitions, paused while he checked her position and then repeated them with a slightly heavier load. Her unfamiliarity remained visible in the care between movements rather than in instability. She asked where she should feel the effort, why her knees must track with her feet and whether the handles were meant to rotate slightly in her grip.

Thomas answered what he knew and said when he did not know. He added weight in measured steps, refusing her suggestion that they could move faster because the previous set had been easy.

By the fourth set, the trap bar carried more than Thomas used for his own working deadlifts. Isha stood inside it, pale hair secured above her shoulders and hands chalkless upon the handles. The room had not stopped for her, but several people had become aware of the lift while continuing their own routines.

“Three repetitions,” Thomas said. “Not five. Reset your breath each time. If your back position changes, leave it on the floor.”

Isha nodded and set her hands. The first repetition rose cleanly. The second moved more slowly and made the muscles along her thighs and abdomen stand out beneath the fabric. On the third, the bar paused a few centimetres above the floor before her legs drove it upward. Her face tightened with genuine effort, but her back held its line and the weight reached full standing without a hitch.

She lowered it rather than dropping it, and the plates settled with a solid rubber thud. Isha released the handles and remained still for a moment, breathing through her nose. Thomas stepped close enough to watch her balance without touching her.

“Well?” she asked.

“The third repetition was the limit for today. Your hips began to rise slightly before your shoulders, but you corrected it.”

Isha opened and closed her hands, feeling the pressure the handles had left across her palms. “I could lift more once, but you will not allow it.”

“Probably, and no. This is not an examination. There is no useful result beyond establishing that you are extremely strong for someone without weight-training experience.”

Isha looked down at the loaded bar, then around the gym. Her attention took in the interested glances, the student at the bench press pretending to adjust a collar that had already been correct, and the attendant near reception who had found a reason to wipe the same counter twice.

She stepped out of the bar. “Then we have established it.”

Thomas began removing the plates. Isha joined him only after he showed her how to lift them from the sleeve without trapping her fingers. The ordinary task dispersed the small audience more effectively than modesty would have done.

One of the students from the bench press passed on the way to the water fountain. He hesitated, then spoke to Thomas rather than directly assessing Isha’s body. “Your friend is very strong.”

“My partner,” Thomas said. The distinction came naturally rather than defensively. “And yes.”

The student glanced toward Isha, who was returning a plate to the rack. “Does she compete?”

“Not in lifting. Today is her first gym session.”

The disbelief that crossed his face was gratifying in a way Thomas no longer felt required to conceal. “Seriously?”

Isha returned in time to understand the question. “He has trained here for two months,” she said. “I am the beginner.”

The student looked from her to Thomas, perhaps expecting them to share the joke. Thomas did not rescue him from the facts. After a brief laugh, the student wished them a good session and continued toward the fountain.

“You enjoyed his confusion,” Isha said.

“I have learned to appreciate evidence arriving in another person. It is a related programme to the revised policy.”

Isha’s look suggested that the relationship between the programmes required further review, but she let the matter rest.

The exchange ended when Thomas bent to remove the final plate. Isha rested one hand briefly between his shoulder blades as she passed, an affectionate pressure that acknowledged the joke and the morning beneath it.

They finished with a slow walk on adjacent treadmills and a few stretches. Isha disliked the treadmill almost immediately. She found the moving belt tolerable, the fixed view pointless and the display’s constant invitation to quantify speed less interesting than the changing ground of an outdoor route.

“It is useful when the weather is severe,” she conceded. “Or when a person needs controlled conditions. It remains a machine that allows walking without arriving anywhere.”

Thomas reduced his speed. “You spent several minutes pulling a handle attached to plates that also arrived nowhere.”

“That required attention.”

“So does not falling off the treadmill.”

Isha looked at him, then at the belt beneath her feet. The argument had enough validity to irritate her and not enough to improve the activity.

After changing, they bought drinks from the vending machines outside the building and sat beneath the covered edge of the athletics hall. Fine rain had begun again, barely visible except where it darkened the path. Students moved between buildings under clear umbrellas, and the trees held the first faint yellowing at the edges of their leaves.

Isha opened her bottle and rolled one shoulder. “I will be sore tomorrow.”

“Probably in places climbing and judo do not usually reach. It should be mild if we stopped at the right point.”

“You did stop me at the right point.” She drank, then looked toward the gym doors. “I understand why you like it. The work is measurable, private and repeatable. No customer needs you. No office decision follows you home. The weight does not become more complicated because you care about it.”

Thomas had not explained any of that to himself so clearly. “It does become heavier.”

“Only when you choose it.”

Rain tapped softly upon the metal canopy. Thomas turned the bottle between his palms, feeling the remaining fatigue in his forearms and the pleasant steadiness beneath it.

“I began because judo made it obvious that my legs and back were weak,” he said. “Then I realised I liked having a record that did not belong to the old world or the supplied life. The first entry is simply mine. It begins with a weight I could move badly and ends, so far, with a weight I can move properly.”

Isha leaned her shoulder against his. The contact carried some of her warmth through both jackets.

“I am glad,” she said. “Not because you need to become stronger for me, and not because I expect you to approach what this body can do. I am glad that you found work which returns something to you without first requiring that you save anyone.”

Thomas looked across the wet path. Once, the difference between them had felt like a distance he needed to cross or justify. The gym had not narrowed it. Isha had lifted more in one morning than he expected to lift after many months, and neither of them had been surprised for long. The difference remained, visible and harmless.

“I also enjoyed teaching you,” he said.

“You were competent.”

The direct answer left him looking down at his bottle before he could disguise how much it pleased him. “That sounds dangerously close to praise.”

“It is praise.” Isha turned her head, studying him with the same direct warmth she had shown after his first working set. “You watched me carefully without treating me as fragile, and you stopped me without trying to prove authority. I liked being the beginner while you knew the room.”

Thomas felt the words settle into the ordinary fatigue of the morning. He had wanted to reveal strength and discovered that what pleased her most was judgement. That should not have surprised him.

“Will you come again?” he asked.

“Occasionally, if you ask. The carries were satisfying, and the bar taught me something about this body. But I would rather climb an actual wall, walk outside or run toward a place that changes as I approach it.” She looked toward the rain beyond the canopy. “This is yours. I do not need to make it ours in order to value it.”

The answer was exactly right. Thomas had not brought her to recruit a training partner. He had brought her because a private routine had become part of his life, and he wanted the person closest to him to see it once it was sturdy enough to stand without explanation.

They returned home after buying lunch from a small shop near the station. Mugi met them at the door and inspected their shoes, then Thomas’s bag. She recoiled from the mixed scent of rubber flooring and other people’s hands, directing a wounded look toward Isha as though the failure belonged naturally to her.

“I agree,” Isha told the cat. “The room smelled artificial.” Mugi accepted this judgement and moved to the living room.

Thomas hung the damp jackets and began unpacking the towels. Isha stood behind him in the narrow passage, close enough that he assumed she was waiting to pass. Instead her arms came around his waist. The embrace was careful because both of them were tired, but her hand settled over his abdomen beneath the edge of his shirt, testing the tension there with quiet curiosity.

“You have changed,” she said against his shoulder. “Enough that I noticed before I knew why. You should not hide the result merely because mine is more visible under load.”

“Marginally,” Thomas said, placing his hand over hers.

He meant the word as accuracy rather than refusal, but Isha’s fingers moved once across the firmer line beneath his ribs as though checking both interpretations.

“You wore a shirt throughout the entire demonstration.”

“It was a public gym.”

“That explains the shirt. It does not explain the modesty.”

He could feel her smile against the side of his neck. The morning had given her enough material that resistance would only extend the inquiry.

Thomas turned within her arms. “You were the one whose abdomen attracted witnesses.”

“I was carrying what you gave me.” Her eyes held his as the unintended double meaning became deliberate. Thomas began to object that the phrasing would not improve his defence, but she had already read the answer in his face.

“It was not intended to,” she said.

The joke ended when she kissed him. There was no urgency in it, only approval, attraction and the lingering physical awareness produced by seeing each other work. Thomas rested his hands at her waist, where the muscles he had watched brace beneath the gym lights were soft again beneath ordinary clothes.

Mugi jumped onto the sofa and made a short, disapproving sound.

Isha drew back only far enough to look past him. “She believes we should prepare lunch.”

“She has no authority over our movements.”

Mugi made the sound again.

Thomas released Isha and reached for the food bag. Some authorities survived every challenge through persistence alone.

Later, while Isha slept on the sofa with one arm over her eyes and Mugi curled against her hip, Thomas opened his training notebook at the low table. He recorded his own sets first. Beneath them he added a separate page for Isha, not as a programme but as evidence of one morning: twelve strict pull-ups, a carry heavy enough to open her left hand, three controlled trap-bar repetitions at a weight he had approached only gradually.

He considered writing *exceptional* beside the figures and left the word out. The numbers already knew what they meant.

At the bottom of his own page, he wrote one line that had nothing to do with load or repetitions.

**Showed Isha. She was proud of me.**

He closed the notebook before she woke.