Vincent Lee's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Vincent's knuckles ached from the morning's training. He flexed his fingers and watched the skin stretch white across the bones. The dummies had taught him stance and speed, but real fighting meant knowing distance and timing. He needed to measure strikes, count out the moves. He pulled a length of measuring tape from his coat pocket and stretched it against the wall. Six feet. The perfect range for a roundhouse kick. He marked the distance with a piece of chalk, then stepped back and threw the kick. His boot stopped exactly at the line. Again. And again. Each repetition carved the distance into muscle memory. This was how Bruce Lee had started—obsessing over inches and angles until his body knew them without thinking. The sun climbed higher and sweat soaked through his orange shirt. Vincent's legs shook. His lungs burned. He stumbled away from the wall and found a small pool tucked behind a section of collapsed fence. The tiles were cracked and moss grew thick along the edges, but water still filled the bottom. He knelt and splashed his face, then dunked his whole head under. The cold shocked his system awake. He came up gasping and sat on the edge, letting his boots dangle in the water. The voices stayed quiet when he trained like this. The missing faces stayed buried. He had measured his kicks today, mapped out his range, learned to trust his body's knowledge of space. Tomorrow he would measure his punches. Master one piece at a time until every move became automatic. That was the only way forward.