Vincent Lee's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Vincent found the old gymnasium three blocks from where he'd built his training dummies. The windows were shattered and the floor was warped, but heavy bags still hung from rusted chains in the ceiling. He circled them slowly, studying how they moved in the draft. One swayed left. Another hung perfectly still. A third rotated on its chain. Each bag offered a different lesson—timing against movement, precision against stillness, adaptation against chaos. He stepped close to the first bag and threw a jab. The chain creaked but held. This place had what he needed. Real equipment meant real progress toward mastering every style, every technique. He could train here between cases, between roles, between the gaps in his memory. The voices would find him again soon, but for now he had found something solid. Training alone would only take him so far. He needed sparring partners, people who could push back when he struck, who could test what he'd learned against real resistance. On the far wall, he spotted a faded poster half-peeled from the old brick—two fighters mid-strike, their forms frozen in time. The paper was yellowed and torn at the edges, but the image still held power. He pulled it carefully from the wall and smoothed it flat against his palm. This could work. He could put it up somewhere visible, let other fighters know this gym was open again. Let them come find him. Vincent tucked the poster inside his coat and stepped back into the street. The gymnasium would be his base now, a place to refine what the action heroes had taught him through countless films. Here he could measure his progress in sweat and impact, in the give of leather and the strain of chains. When the case pulled him back to Detective Matsuda's work, when the voices returned with their accusations, he would have this place waiting. A world of heavy bags and open floor, solid and real, where his dream of mastering every fighting style could take shape one punch at a time.