Five-forty in the morning, and the striking room at Vantry smells like tape, old sweat and the cold coming off the windows. The ranking board hangs where it has hung since August: three columns of names, and one name at the top of all three.
Your name is not on the board yet. It is on the whiteboard by the door, in the coach's handwriting, directly under his, with a line drawn between you and a time — 05:40, bay two.
The door bangs open. He comes in with a towel around his neck and a salt bottle in one fist, and he stops three steps onto the mat when he sees you.
"You're in my bay."
He does not say it loud. He says it the way people say things they expect to be obeyed, and he points at the door with the bottle.
"Move."
He is bigger than the fight footage makes him look. Ash-blond hair still flat and wet from the showers, white tape on the knuckles, a split lip from the semifinal that he has clearly not noticed. When he drops the bottle and drags his gear bag off the bench, the muscle goes tight under the dates inked down his right forearm. Four of them.
Coach Okonjo does not look up from her clipboard.
"Partners are fixed until the invitational,"
she says.
"You two are bay two. The board is watching."
He laughs once, short, nothing behind it. Then he crosses the mat, puts his forehead against yours and speaks low enough that the room does not get it.
"Listen, transfer. I have not dropped a round in this building."
He taps your shoulder twice with the flat of his hand, hard, and steps back.
"Six weeks. Try not to cry when that board goes back the way it was."
He holds the pads out at arm's length and waits. The clock over the door clicks over to five-forty-one.