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add an eighth conditioning round and drill the push kick to jumping knee to high kick until it's automatic and then check in with Diane. Explore the industrial complex at night during my next two rest days. I measure myself as well. I stand at 7'5" and weight 380

The eighth round breaks something open. Seven rounds was a ceiling and the ceiling was comfortable and the ceiling was a limit and limits are for bodies that have them. The eighth round starts at the point where the seventh used to end and the body does not slow — the lungs are deeper, the heart is stronger, the cardiovascular system has adapted to seven and seven is no longer the edge. The eighth round is four minutes of continuous combination chains and the chains are longer now — eight-hit sequences that flow through every range and the body moves through them the way water moves through a channel it has cut. The sweat is heavier. The breathing is controlled. The heart rate at the end of the eighth round is what the heart rate at the end of the sixth used to be and the adaptation is the wish and the wish is the training and the two are the same thing.

The push kick to jumping knee to high kick drills until the sequence disappears. Not the execution — the execution is sharp and the crack of the shin on vinyl is louder than any sound in the warehouse. What disappears is the thinking. On the first day she counts the steps — push, land, explode, knee, land, plant, kick — and the counting is a process and the process is slow. On the third day the counting stops. On the fifth day the sequence fires from a trigger and the trigger is a shift in the bag's return angle and the body reads the angle and the sequence is already moving before the reading is conscious. Automatic. She writes in the legal pad: 'Push-jump-knee-high kick — automatic. Trigger is bag return angle. No conscious initiation. Sequence fires from spatial read.' The legal pad page is dense with notes and the notes are the body learning itself.

The rest days are Sunday and Monday and the rest is not rest. The body does not rest — the body explores. Night in the industrial district is a different country. The streets are empty and the emptiness is not absence but space and the space is what the body moves through. She walks naked under the streetlights and the streetlights are orange and the orange turns her brown skin amber and the tanned body in the orange light is a thing that belongs here. She finds buildings she has not entered — a print shop with rolls of paper still on the shelves, a welding shop with a torch tank that is empty but heavy, a storage bay with crates of old ceramic insulators that she lifts for grip work. The industrial district is a gymnasium. Every surface is a tool. Every weight is equipment. She carries a crate of insulators back to the warehouse and the crate is sixty pounds and the carry is a farmer's walk and the walk is training and the training is living and the living is the wish.

Diane checks in by text on Wednesday. The burner phone buzzes on the steel shelf and the text is professional and short: 'Weekly check-in. Status?' Lena types back: 'Deliverables on schedule. Supplier variance analysis and updated forecast submitted. Performance holding.' A pause. Then Diane: 'How are you.' Not a question mark. A statement that is a question. The difference is the crack in the professional voice. Lena types: 'Better than ever.' A long pause. Then Diane: 'I'm glad.' Two words and the two words are real and the crack is wider. Lena sets the phone down and the phone is a tool and the tool works and the check-in is done and the work is correct.

Sunday is measurement day. The scale groans — the same scale from the apartment, the display flickering, the numbers climbing past the range it was built for. Three-eighty. The number is data. The doorframe is gone — the warehouse has no doorframes — so she marks the cinder block wall with the marker, pressing her back flat against the block and reaching up to draw the line at the crown of her head. The line is higher than the last mark on the apartment doorframe by three inches. She measures from the floor with the legal pad as a ruler, marking twelve-inch increments on the wall. Seven-five. Three inches in one cycle. The growth is still accelerating. She stands in front of the mark and looks at the wall and the wall is cinder block and the wall does not care. The ceiling is twenty feet. The ceiling is fifteen feet above her head. The body has room. She writes in the legal pad: '7'5". 380 lbs. Growth accelerating. Eighth round — adapted. Push-jump-knee-high kick — automatic. Warehouse is correct. The body has room to grow.' The marker bleeds through the page and the spiral tightens and the body is warm and the warmth says yes.