Seeing Paul's bloody nose gave me a new spur as I stood in front of him in my mighty glory, grinning like the young loon he had once met many years ago. My dark eyes twinkled as I stared at him, vigour reaching each and every spore of my body and radiating off the surface of my skin like a regal golden light. Paul too grinned from ear to ear as he awarded me with one of his rarest smiles, knowing exactly how alive and invigorated I felt in that moment and that he had succeeded mightily.
♤♤♤
"Paul!!!"
I shouted out to the older bulky as hell man, who looked like a wall to me in excitement. Today was my first workout session with my dad's friend and trainer, and I had a feeling it was going to be amazing. I was majorly impressed by his appearance and cool attitude when I met him this morning, and I wanted to impress him badly. I wanted him to think that his student's son wasn't a wimp himself, and that he was a big boy.
I excitedly ran towards the room in the corner of the gym which kept all the supplies and went to the section housing boxing supplies. I quickly wrapped both of my hands in a bandage and covered them with those heavy boxing gloves I had seen my dad wearing on several occasions. Although, the heavy weight of the gloves nearly weighed me down, it couldn't bring down my enthusiasm by even so much as a notch.
Dragging myself back with little difficulty, I managed to make my way over to the boxing ring, the part of gym that excited me the most. I always wanted to be one of those big beefy guys who rain bruises on the punching bag with so much recklessness and ruthlessness. I wanted to emulate them and become one of them, and patience had never been one of my virtues. So, I wanted to become an expert in just one day.
I called out to Paul again, who seemed to have forgotten that I too came for a lesson today.
"Paul!! Come over here. Teach me how to box, please."
When Paul and my dad finally looked over to where I was situated, looking at them with the biggest grin on my face, thinking I was ready for a challenge, my dad guffawed while Paul let out a full smile. It was the first time I saw him smile today, and it made him look so much younger and immature. I bet that his smile will still be his best feature even after a decade or so. But once I recovered from that, my forehead pulled into a frown as bemusion clouded my young mind. Why had they laughed at me?
"Why are you laughing? Come teach me too!!"
Hearing that only made them laugh harder which confused me more. Paul eventually cut through the two thick boundaries of the ring made of ropes oh so elegantly, and stepped inside the boxing ring. He took off my gloves and before I could so much as let out a cry of protest, he shushed me up with a single sentence.
"Life is a game that depends on timing, son. Wait for your time to box, it will definitely come."
He then led me out of the ring and told me to run on the treadmill, that too on a low speed. I was highly disappointed. This was not what I had come here to do. Then, why was I being treated like a kid and not allowed to do all those things my father did? I was twelve years old now, and I had the right to learn boxing.
Yet, I completed all that he told me to do all the same because my dad had taught me before coming here that I should believe in him no matter what. I was not surprised when the next day came, and I was asked to repeat the same routine. It was hectic, it was boring, it became hard for me to do the same thing everyday, but because dad had forbidden me to ask anything, I controlled my urges to be inquisitive.
Days turned to months, and I was still warming up my body. He used to add different exercises every week, the next one more difficult than the previous one, but he hadn't even introduced me to the sport I wanted to know about. It seemed as if the more I trained with him, the more my passion for boxing fizzled. I couldn't find that spark inside me anymore which was prevalent on my first day here. Now the gym looked like a four-walled, normal looking prison, with shackles on me so tight that I couldn't escape.
♤♤♤
He had eventually shown me the art of boxing, and all the other forms of fighting along with it. I had then realized that the wait was only to make me stronger in mind and body, because neither could my body handle getting punched around by such a string man at that age without any prior training, nor would my mind know where and how to use my powers effectively, and I would grow up to become an excessively aggressive man.
As I looked up to meet his eyes, I knew that he knew what I had been reminiscing about. He looked at me with a small, knowing smile and said that one sentence, which I had now heard umpteen times, but it still gave me goosebumps, because it was the whole essence of life, of my life.
He said,
"Life is a game that depends on timing, son. Wait for your time to strike, for it will definitely come."
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YOU ARE READING
The Fire Unleashed ✔
Action*CAN BE READ AS A STANDALONE* Tiger King, owner of King Hotels & Co., the largest chain of hotels all over the world, is not an easy man. He is as difficult to decipher as they come. Underneath this neat facade of a businessman, lies the dirty, shre...
