The next day, Jae-hee made his way to the gym in the forward section of Deck 2.

“So this is it…” he muttered, scanning the interior. “The gym… a place I’d only heard of in legend…!”

Deck 2 was just as shabby as Deck 1, but the gym was a different story. The equipment was old, but it was clean and well-organized, clearly the result of diligent maintenance. Most importantly, it was spacious.

A row of treadmills stood before a series of windows that looked out over the churning sea.

He’d heard that the upper decks had floor-to-ceiling windows with panoramic views, and while these were just small portholes, who could complain about working out with an ocean view?

Jae-hee watched the other prisoners, all engrossed in their workouts, and clenched his fists.

“If I start pumping iron here… can I get totally ripped, too?!”

“Not a chance.”

A voice cut through his excitement, shattering his motivation.

“You think muscles just pop up from pumping iron? Of course not. And besides, what good are those puffed-up muscles anyway?”

“...?”

Jae-hee turned, puzzled, to find a middle-aged man of average build standing there in a loose-fitting tank top.

“What’s important isn’t those balloon muscles…”

The man gestured toward the hulking prisoners around them, then pointed to his own arms and legs.

“It’s this. Dense. Muscle.”

“Dense muscle? What’s that?”

“Also called… Functional. Dense. Muscle!”

FLEX!

The man tensed, and his entire body rippled as small, pebble-like muscles popped into sharp definition.

Jae-hee let out an impressed “Ooooh~” at the surprising sight.

Then, with one of those arms, the man effortlessly lifted the heaviest dumbbell from the rack.

“Whoa!”

He didn’t look particularly muscular, but with that arm—a bundle of small, gravelly muscles—he lifted the heavy weight as if it were cotton candy, then set it back down just as easily.

“That’s amazing! You’re crazy strong!”

A natural-born master of reactions, Jae-hee clapped, his eyes sparkling.

Pleased with the response, the middle-aged man let out a hearty laugh and introduced himself.

“I am Callsign Jung Kwan Jang. I’ve been the resident king of this gym for ten years now.”

“Hello, Mr. Jung Kwan Jang! I’m Callsign Boy!”

“A pleasure to meet you, Boy. From the looks of it, you’ve come here to build a body fit for practical usage.”

“Yes! That’s right!” Jae-hee nodded eagerly.

Jung Kwan Jang pointed a thumb at his own chest. “If you take me as your master, I will bestow upon you the teachings you need…”

“Ah, sorry. Can’t do that,” Jae-hee refused instantly. “I already have a master.”

“I-is that so? Still, to reject me so bluntly…”

Sluuump.

Cut off without a sliver of hope, Jung Kwan Jang’s shoulders slumped.

Jae-hee quickly added, “I can’t take you as a master, but maybe you could still help me out? I’m a total gym newbie, so I could really use some advice.”

“Ahem. Well, as long as we work out in the same gym, we are comrades fighting for the common goal of health. How could I, Jung Kwan Jang, ignore the request of a gym newbie?”

His spirits revived, Jung Kwan Jang glanced around cautiously.

“However, a one-sided relationship where I just give you help for free wouldn’t be healthy, would it? So, if you’ll just pay a small tuition fee, I will help you with all my heart and soul.”

“Huh? A tuition fee…?” A flicker of suspicion crossed Jae-hee’s eyes.

Jung Kwan Jang waved his hands frantically. “N-nothing major! They sell protein shakes at the supply shop just up ahead.”

“Ah, the legendary item I’ve only heard rumors about!”

“Buy me one pack, and I’ll help you with your workout for the day. How about it?” Jung Kwan Jang added, even more urgently, “But for today, it’s on the house!”

“Awesome!”

Jae-hee was, as always, a sucker for the word “free.”

And so, on his first day at the gym, his first lesson with Jung Kwan Jang began. 

Jung Kwan Jang looked him up and down and asked, “What part of your physique do you wish to upgrade?”

“I want to work on…”

Jae-hee looked down at his own body. He’d put on a little weight from eating well lately, but his frame was still slender, almost fragile-looking.

After a moment of thought, he declared, “My stamina, of course!”

“Stamina!”

“Yeah. Honestly, whenever I use my ability, I can’t last long before I’m totally wiped out!”

“Huh… I see.”

“It’s so bad that one of my master’s nicknames for me is ‘premature.’”

“W-wot?”

Jung Kwan Jang’s face contorted in agony, as if Jae-hee’s words had struck a very old, very deep wound.

He bent forward at the waist and cried out. “You… you suffer from the same affliction as I?!”

“Huh! You too, sir?!”

Jae-hee had been talking purely about his ability’s duration, but Jung Kwan Jang had taken it in a completely different way.

Sniff, sob…

After wiping away a few mysterious tears, Jung Kwan Jang’s gaze toward Jae-hee grew considerably warmer.

“A long, long time ago, I too was the victim of such a terrible misunderstanding. I started working out to overcome it.”

“Such a tragic past…!”

“Indeed… What a long and arduous time of humiliation it was…”

Jung Kwan Jang’s eyes grew moist again as he reminisced.

Jae-hee asked, without any malice, “So, have you overcome it now?”

Jung Kwan Jang just coughed, turned his head away, and muttered, “That particular problem is related to true stamina, yes, but it’s mostly psychogenic—that is, it comes from the mind. In fact, many health problems are rooted in the mind.”

“The mind…!”

“Yes, the mind. As you are a gym newbie just starting out, allow me to impart to you a certain mindset for life.”

Jae-hee’s round eyes widened at Jung Kwan Jang’s next words.

“It is this… ‘What is greater than completion is the effort to achieve it.’”

“...!”

“What is greater than a magnificent, muscular body is the blood, sweat, and tears you pour in every day to build it—that effort itself.”

Jung Kwan Jang nodded with a solemn expression.

“Our will and effort to increase our stamina… this process! It is what will allow us to overcome being premature… ahem. In any case, it can be greater than the result itself!”

“Ooooh! I see!”

It seemed Jung Kwan Jang’s deep wound had not, in fact, healed.

Still, Jae-hee decided to let it slide. He was already swayed by the man’s rhetoric.

The process is greater than the result!

That is the way of the gym!

“Let us strive together to overcome our shared weakness!”

“Sir…!”

“Boy!”

Moved, the two men dove into a passionate embrace.

The other gym-goers watched the scene unfold and clicked their tongues.

And so, though they had reached a minor understanding, their mutual misconception had only deepened as Jung Kwan Jang and Jae-hee stood before a piece of equipment.

“Now, let us begin today’s workout! I will take full responsibility for building your stamina!”

“Ah, I’d also like to put on some muscle overall.”

“Of course, the muscle will come. That follows… naturally.”

After once again showing off his pebble-like dense muscles, Jung Kwan Jang led Jae-hee deeper into the gym.

“We’ll start with the best exercise for stamina.”

“The best exercise for stamina! What is it?!”

“It is…” Jung Kwan Jang chuckled and patted a treadmill. “What else? We start by killing the cardio.”

As he stepped onto the treadmill next to Jung Kwan Jang, Jae-hee had no idea.

He couldn’t have imagined, not even in his wildest dreams, that he would not be leaving the gym on his own two feet.

***

“Guh?!”

When Jae-hee opened his eyes, he saw an unfamiliar ceiling.

“Wh-where… am I…?”

“Ah. You’re awake.”

A voice came from his side. He turned to see the Doctor filling out a medical chart.

Only then did Jae-hee realize he was lying in a bed in the clinic.

After checking his condition, the Doctor finished writing on the chart. “You passed out at the gym and got carried here, or so I’m told.”

“What? Me? No way…”

Confused, Jae-hee tried to sit up, but immediately screamed and rolled around on the bed.

“Yaaaargh! My thighs!”

He cried out and reached with his arms, only for muscle pain to shoot through them as well.

“Yaaaargh! My arms!”

The shout strained his abdomen.

“Yaaaargh! My abs!”

“…What are you doing?” The Doctor broke out into a cold sweat, watching him writhe in a chain reaction of agony.

After hearing how Jae-hee had ended up in this state, she shook her head.

“It was your first day at the gym? How hard did you possibly push yourself?”

It was a common mistake among beginners. Unaware of their own limits, they would overdo it and suffer the backlash.

It was even worse for Jae-hee, an Awakened. He had pushed himself based on his uninhibited physical abilities, forgetting that with his Null Cuffs suppressing ninety-nine percent of his power, he was no different from an ordinary person.

And so, after several hours of cardio and basic strength training on his very first day, Jae-hee was now a half-corpse. It was a miracle he hadn’t been seriously injured.

The Doctor finished her diagnosis and connected an IV drip to his arm.

“There’s nothing seriously wrong, but you should stay here for the day. You need to rest.”

“Yessum…”

“By the way, one night here is ten thousand Credits.”

“Say whaaaa?!”

First his body, now his wallet—no, his heart—began to ache. Tears streamed down Jae-hee’s face.

But the pain racking his overexerted body was so excruciating that he couldn’t bring himself to say he wanted to be discharged.

Sob, sob… “From now on, I’ll live within my means…”

“The kids who say that are the ones who never learn their limits.”

The Doctor smirked. “Well, not knowing your limits means you dream big. It’s not all bad.”

“Doctor sis…!”

“Besides, if you keep pushing yourself too hard and coming back, I make money. It’s a win-win.”

“Waaah…”

The hospital room he was admitted to wasn’t very large. It was, after all, a facility attached to a simple clinic, not a professional hospital, and there weren’t many patients.

There were two wards, one for men and one for women, each with eight beds. Jae-hee was all alone in the men’s ward, where the beds were crammed together.

As he shakily got up to go to the bathroom, Jae-hee spotted a familiar face in the adjacent women’s ward.

“Oh, Iljimae sis!”

It was Iljimae, the A-Rank prisoner who had served as his stepping stone before being plunged into the sea at the end of their last mission.

She, too, was lying alone in a bed in the women’s ward.

“How are you feeling?”

“Hyeh?”

Startled by the greeting, Iljimae whipped her head around, then pointed a finger at herself.

“A-are you… talking to me…?”

“Yep! No one else is here, right?” Jae-hee said with an easy smile. “Hello!”

“Uh, um, ah…”

Iljimae’s eyes darted around, unsure of what to do. Then, she gave him an awkward little wave.

“Aheehee, hi…?”

She murmured in a voice thick with emotion. “This… is the first time anyone in this prison has greeted me first…!”

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