WHO: Shin-hwa Kim, Nick Langer and Milo Zhang-Barbashov, with cameos by Lillian Poole and Sue Kim WHAT: Shin deals with two new boxing students, one reluctant and one under outright duress WHEN: Monday night WHERE: Kim's Gym, District 3 RATING: PG
SHIN: Shin-hwa maneuvered amongst the various bodies engaged in various stages of warmup throughout his gym, offering criticism or gruff encouragement with a series of unintelligible sounds and occasionally just the toe of his shoe. The place was cleared of the usual pugilists for the Monday night beginner class, a surprisingly popular slot judging from the number of bodies.
A cursory glance at the clock was given more for show than anything; the decision for lessons to begin was done on an entirely arbitrary basis. He clapped his hands together once, drawing such a potent sound from the simple gesture that it echoed throughout the whole of the gym. "Pairs!" He barked, as bodies scrambled to jump out of stretching positions and find partners. Shin assessed the pairings critically, occasionally grabbing a student by the shoulder to push them towards a new sparring partner based on his own mysterious calculations.
MILO: Milo had only agreed to come to this whole 'boxing' thing because Lillian had asked him to. He wouldn't have had any interest in it otherwise -- he'd gotten more than enough of sports in secondary school, and memories of being everyone's favorite punching bag during school rugby matches were not ones he particularly wanted to revisit. A soccer (or 'football,' as he would've called it) game he could deal with. Not anything that required aggression. So he was hanging back in the stands, hoping no one noticed him standing there and wishing that he had something to eat. Or that he could be working on his Intro to Cartography homework.
Who would have thought that he would've found something which made cartography seem appealing?
NICK: This time Nick didn't have the excuse of not knowing where the gym was, having been there before, now. However, despite having no other obligations that day, he still managed to arrive at the gym a few minutes late. If he had thought about it, he probably would have admitted to some kind of subconscious reluctance. What did he know about boxing, after all? He never watched it, unless a few viewings of Rocky counted. No, he was more into things that involved balancing on some kind of board, not getting hit repeatedly in the face or whatever it was he was in for.
He tried to open the door and slip into the gym as inconspicuously as possible. Maybe he could just watch this time and then get into the action next time. It looked like everyone already had partnered up. Maybe he would be lucky tonight.
SHIN: "Late." Shin barked the word without even turning to see who had walked through the door, his keen paternal senses detecting Nick's arrival with perfect acuity. When he did turn to regard the tardy student there was some small measure of surprise in his hangdog eyes; it would seem he hadn't actually expected the surfer vagrant to show up. Whether or not he was impressed or annoyed by being proven wrong was impossible to discern.
"Hmph. Odd number." Shin grumbled, more to himself than anything as he shuffled over towards Nick. He looked the boy up and down appraisingly, making no effort to hide an expression of vague doubt. His lips pursed together for a moment before a thought seemed to strike him, his head cocking to one side to turn his pinpoint gaze in the direction of the small bleachers running across one wall.
"Yaaa!" He bellowed, the entire classroom halting at the familiar call for attention, then turning back to their sparring when they realized Shin was addressing an individual. "You! Milo! Come." He held one hand out and gesture Milo over, palm down, looking both expectant and impatient.
MILO: It took a moment for Milo to realize that he was being addressed. He was suddenly glad that he didn't have anything to eat, because he likely would have sat, shocked that he was being told to come (rather like a dog, he thought), with his mouth hanging open full of half-chewed soft pretzel. Years at a strict boys' school had lent him, thankfully, with a dog-like tendency to obey orders he was given (from authority figures he didn't resent, at least), and he stood up, walked across the room, and stood nervously by Shin, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
"Um, sir, I'm really just here to watch, sir," he responded in a respectful but rather timid voice. He had a bad feeling about this, and he wanted to find Lillian and shoot her a why did you force me into this glare. "I don't really do... sports, you see. I just watch."
NICK: "Uh, yeah," Nick spoke up after Milo, while mentally cursing him for stealing his idea. "I thought maybe I could watch, too. I mean, I just... don't really know anything about boxing."
Of course, he knew deep down that that fact didn't matter. The possibility of the "just here to watch" thing seemed to be diminishing. Nick had a feeling that not only would "just watching" not fly with Shin, but that he had called Milo over for a specific reason.
SHIN: "Watching's good." Shin mused with an idle scratch of his stubbly chin, "You can learn from watching. But you also learn another way maybe." He turned to a beaten-up push cart with a few sets of gloves still on them, plucking up two pairs and tossing them to the respective boys. "By doing." There was just the slightest hint of wry amusement in his tone, enough to denote that this was very much on purpose, and very much inescapable.
"This is good I think. You're both new, you're friends, you both have weak arms. You learn together, same level." A loud order was barked aside to the class and the students all shifted from trading jabs to a slightly more complex one-two sequence; unfortunately with such practiced unison that Shin's direct attention seemed unnecessary. No, for this class, he was going to be a private tutor.
"Gloves on. Here, you stand. Here, you. Nick, guard up." He positioned himself alongside the two boys, lifting his hands into a basic guard stance. "Milo, you punch."
MILO: No. This was not what Milo had shown up for. He shot a nervous look to Nick, whom he wasn't sure he would call a friend. Friendly, maybe, they'd spoken a few times on the Repository, but that just made the situation more awkward. Setting garbage cans on fire, sure. Sticking his foot in his mouth, fine. But he gave up on being pummeled for no particular reason when he left school, and it wasn't really a place he wanted to go back to. However, that said, the idea of being punched by Nick was significantly better than the idea of being punched by Shin, who obviously knew what he was doing. He moved to put the gloves on, and then paused.
"Um. What should I do with my glasses?" he asked, moving to take them off. Somehow he had a feeling that his pocket would not be a good place for them, and the fact that he was practically blind without them was not much of a help. Nor did his lack of contact lenses with an up-to-date prescription, so the next time he was inevitably dragged here, he couldn't even plan ahead.
LILLIAN: She was already ready, with her gloves on, and had been working very hard not to laugh as Milo got volunteered and dragged up there. She really wasn't surprised, and she knew that the fear of being volunteered was probably one reason it had taken so long to get Milo to come along to her classes.
"You can put them in my purse," she said, punching in the air to gesture at her purse at the far end of the mat. Then she winked at Milo and blew a kiss at him.
SHIN: "Ya, Lillian! You focus." Shin cast a vaguely reprimanding look in Lil's direction, but there was really no comparison between this fond gesture and the more severe looks the boys were receiving. With the glasses safely tucked away in Lil's purse, Shin made sure a blinded Milo got back in position by grabbing his shoulder and steering him as necessary. "Here. Throw from shoulder. Full extend." He demonstrated a couple formidable jabs of his own, which he did send in Nick's direction, though carefully - or luckily - spaced to fall short of any impact. "Like this. Go."
NICK: Nick had no idea what "guard up" meant or how he was supposed to get his second glove on with his other hand already encased in one of the bulbous glove. After a bit of struggling, however, he managed it and looked up just in time to see Shin putting Milo back into position. He couldn't help saying, "whoa!" and took a few steps back when Shin threw his first punch at him. Of course, he should have been expecting that to happen, but there was still a sense of relief at not getting punched in the face by Shin, yet.
MILO: Milo didn't really want to try and hit Nick. This was awkward and uncomfortable and thanks to Lillian, he was now embarrassed. How, exactly, did one go about doing this? Milo wasn't entirely sure. He took a step forward and threw his arm forward. It wasn't a very good effort. He likely couldn't have done damage to a cardboard cut out, but actually trying seemed a little weird. He let his arm drop and gave Shin an expression as if to say, can I go sit down now? I tried.
SHIN: Whatever guilty pleasure Shin might have gleamed from Nick's flinch drained instantly away as he assessed Milo's punch. "Ayeeeeesh!" He hissed angrily through clenched teeth at the showing, his head shaking as if in disbelief at the fact that such a noodly blow could be struck in his own gym.
"This?" He barked sharply, plucking Milo's gloved hand from the air in which it hung post-punch. "This, you call a punch? Jeecha? Sue!" He bellowed across the room to the office, where his daughter was likely set to work at some various business work for the gym. "You bring these boys here to tease me, ne!? Like a joke!" He again descended into a series of muttering and head-shaking, so violent in his bluster interruption was nigh impossible. Both boys got another severe up-and-down looks before the coach's lips pursed with stolid resolution.
"Each Monday, you come early, one hour. We do private lesson, then you do class. You no pay, but maybe you work a bit, I think. Make some muscle. I'll make you throw a decent punch, or I'll die trying." His eyes narrowed skeptically, as though he were worried about which option were most likely. There was no waiting for assent, no asking for confirmation - Shin merely exhaled doubtfully through his nose as he looked at the two frazzled young men doubtfully, before setting them to ten minutes of skiprope and turning his attention to his other students.
Welcome to Kim's Gym, gentlemen.
MILO: Milo was more than glad to be able to take the gloves off, and not in the usual sense that the phrase was used. At the moment, he felt intense dislike towards Lillian and Sue for insisting he come, forgetting that he had agreed to come out of his own free will, with intentions more along the lines of "watching cute girl getting sweaty" than anything to do with boxing itself. He didn't really want to come an hour early for private lessons, or at all, for that matter, but he wasn't really certain of how to protest. "I don't want to" didn't seem like a very good excuse. He suddenly wished he had a Monday evening class, but he just nodded. At least he could jump rope better than he could punch. Not that that was saying very much.
LILLIAN: Making sure that Milo couldn't see her, Lillian held up her boxing glove the best she could in order to give Shin a 'thumbs up.' She thought it was pretty funny to see Milo trying to punch, and she didn't think it would hurt him to learn more. And besides, what says 'date night' like boxing class?