Sparring Terms

"……Hey. ……Hey, you!"

The sound of someone calling her snapped Harin's eyes open.

The Gym Director's round, broad face was peering down at her, etched with worry.

"You can't sleep here. Why didn't you go home?"

Harin bolted upright. Sleeping on a cold mat with no blanket had left her limbs stiff and aching.

"Yesterday…… some man came right at closing time, worked out, and left—and I missed the last bus, so……"

As she mumbled half-asleep, the Director slapped his smooth, shiny forehead and let out a long sigh.

"Aigoo, it slipped my mind. I never told you about Boss Yoon."

"Boss…… Yoon?"

Harin echoed the name blankly, then furrowed her brow.

Wasn't he far too young to be called 'Boss'?

"When Boss Yoon comes, just toss him the key to the gym and head home early. He usually trains late, see. I completely forgot to mention it." The Director apologized over and over, telling her to take the rest of the day off and come back tomorrow.

"……Okay."

Harin nodded and murmured her reply.

With that, she left the gym, dragging her heavy body onto the village shuttle bus.

Things had been anything but smooth from her very first day on the job.

Maybe I shouldn't have taken this in the first place.

A flicker of regret washed over her, but fortunately, after that day, the man called Boss Yoon didn't show his face for several days.

Thanks to that, Harin's part-time life was remarkably peaceful. She'd correct the stances of beginner members here and there, knock out the physically demanding cleaning, and by nightfall she was sleeping like a log.

She actually liked the simple, mindless tasks—work she could do without thinking.

"The renewal forms from members who haven't shown up in over a year are all jumbled up with the new applications. Harin, could you cross-check them against the attendance roster and sort them alphabetically?"

Harin was matching the application forms one by one against the Excel attendance sheet on the computer when, at some point, her hand stopped.

An application with no phone number, no address, nothing—just three syllables of a name scrawled in a loose, flowing hand.

Yoon Lee-gang.

He was the only Yoon on the list. Anyone could see it was Boss Yoon's form.

Staring at that enigmatic piece of paper, Harin felt her heart quicken for no reason at all. The name stirred something familiar, somewhere in the back of her mind. But nothing surfaced. All she had was an inexplicable, growing curiosity—who on earth was this person?

And exactly one week later, Boss Yoon—that is, Yoon Lee-gang—showed up right on schedule, thrusting his handsome face through the door.

Eight in the evening. The bald employee had clocked out, the members had all gone home. Harin was sorting handouts for the elementary class in the quiet gym when the door chimed open with a soft jingle.

She glanced toward the entrance and there he stood, dressed in a black sleeveless shirt.

"Hey, Chainsmoker."

He greeted her with perfect ease, as if he'd known all along she hadn't left yet.

"……Welcome."

She'd considered just ignoring him, but he was still a customer, and he seemed close with the Director—so she settled for a politely measured greeting.

While Lee-gang loosened up with jump rope, Harin finished organizing the handouts and rose from her desk.

She was picking up a rag to start cleaning, just stepping out from behind the desk, when—

"Chainsmoker."

He called her over while winding a hand wrap around his fingers.

Harin shot him a sideways glance, and Lee-gang, leaning crookedly against the desk, asked:

"You got the Director to cover for you, didn't you."

Harin squinted at him, wondering what on earth he meant.

"How was I supposed to know you don't have a car? You said you slept over."

A faint, irritating smirk tugged at his mouth as he snorted and kept his eyes on the hand wrap. That attitude of his was getting on her nerves.

Harin rolled her eyes.

Oh. So that's what this is about.

"If you missed the last bus, you could've just said so."

He held out his wrapped hand across the desk as he spoke. His hand was well-knuckled and neatly proportioned.

Harin gave him a look that plainly said and what do you want me to do about it?, and Lee-gang wordlessly gestured at his own hand. Apparently he wanted her to finish securing the end of the wrap.

"If you'd told me, I'd have driven you home. Why didn't you say anything?"

"I'm fine, thank you."

Not wanting to trade another word with him, Harin brushed him off lightly and headed toward the showers to grab the mop bucket.

Lee-gang watched her back in silence for a moment, then tossed out, almost carelessly:

"You were an athlete, weren't you."

Her footsteps stopped dead. Her heart plunged. When she turned around, a gleam of wariness had sharpened in her eyes.

How much does he know, that he keeps cornering people like this? The decent thing to do was pretend not to know—and he clearly had no interest in decency.

Harin, who had found him inexplicably grating ever since their first meeting—this man who acted so comfortable with her, like they'd known each other for years—threw a single line at him.

"We're not exactly close enough to chat all cozy like this, are we?"

"What?"

"Do you even know me?"

The crooked amusement drained from Lee-gang's face, smooth and slow.

"……No."

The answer came late, and his voice was flat and blunt.

He paused, thinking for a beat, then stepped toward Harin, unhurried.

"Then I'll just have to get to know you, starting now."

"Ha……"

Harin let out a short sigh and turned her body fully toward the showers.

"I'm not particularly interested in getting to know you."

And the moment she moved to go inside, a low murmur from behind her caught her feet like a hook.

"Man, really. What a prickly one."

When Harin glanced back with a scowl, Lee-gang spoke as though he'd been waiting for exactly that reaction.

"Spar with me. One round."

"……"

"If you win, I'll stop bothering you. For good."

He'd been idly adjusting his hand wraps, but now he looked straight at her. For all his playful demeanor, there was something half-serious in his eyes.

"Why do you keep doing this?"

What was it with him—claiming he'd seen her some several times, calling her however he pleased, making these insolent requests? She couldn't fathom it.

As Harin glared up at him, eyes laced with irritation, he answered.

"Training alone is boring, that's all."

Lee-gang flicked a glance toward the shelf as if to say go grab the spare gloves, then locked eyes with her directly.

But when she didn't budge an inch, he narrowed his eyes into a sly, lopsided grin.

"Ohh. Scared, are we?"

At that taunt, everything she'd been swallowing down surged up in a single instant.

Harin set down the rag, strode to the shelf, and jammed her hands into a pair of gloves that were lying in a heap.

"This one time. Only."

A thousand fires were boiling inside her, but her voice came out ice-cold.

"Keep pestering me after this, and I'm telling the Director."

Lee-gang climbed onto the sparring ring first, as if he'd been waiting for exactly this.

Under the fluorescent lights, their two shadows faced each other across the canvas.

"Headgear's optional, don't you think?"

He nodded toward the helmets lined up neatly outside the ring.

Disrespect has a limit. Who do you think you're dealing with?

A sting of humiliation rose in her chest as Harin slowly raised both fists. She steadied her breathing, short and measured, and gathered herself.

He took his stance too, and the gym sank into stillness.

No round bell would sound. The moment either of them threw the first punch, the match would begin.

"Hah."

Exhaling a short breath, Harin reached out first.

The moment punches started flying, the air turned hot in a heartbeat.

Lee-gang twisted his upper body lightly to slip the jab, and her uppercut dissolved past him into empty air.

As he evaded her attacks with unnatural ease, Harin took a step closer instead of retreating.

As if refusing to give him even an inch to escape, she kept her guard tight and bored into his body line.

Every time her gloves cracked against his forearms, a short, dull thud slammed through the silent gym.

Double jab, body hook, jab again. She shifted her rhythm, keeping up the close-range pressure without pause.

Each time the tip of her glove grazed his ribs, the muscles in his arms contracted hard.

She poured out her attack without yielding a single step. Lee-gang was being driven toward the corner, his guard sinking under her decisive strikes—and in that opening, her uppercut clipped the edge of his chest.

His body rocked slightly backward, touching the ring ropes.

Their eyes met, breaths tangling rough and close between them. It was her win.

There was no round bell, so Harin read the room and backed away.

"Not bad."

Lee-gang gave a low laugh, his eyes flashing as if seeing her anew.

Sweat was starting to bead on Harin's forehead as she tracked him. Whether it was from the heat, or a cold sweat, she couldn't tell.

Some part of her knew instinctively that she was no match for him. She could feel it purely from experience—the fact that he wasn't using even half of what he had.

The knowledge that she, a former athlete, was now the one being patronized, prodded at her pride. The buried hunger to win had begun, slowly, to seethe.