Chapter 60: Chapter 55: No, You Are a Racist

The moment Li Wei walked through the door, a shirtless coach with a roaring black bear tattooed on his chest was leaning against the counter.

He glanced at Li Wei and gave him a polite nod.

"Is there anything I can help you with?"

"I’m a football Quarterback," Li Wei introduced himself. "My coach told me to learn how to box. He said it would help me get a better feel for my throws."

"From a nearby school? Is Miller your coach?" The coach thought for a moment before instantly recalling Miller’s name. "He came from a football background too. After retiring, he even competed in boxing for a while... No wonder he sent you here."

"Seventy USD a month. You can use the equipment on your own. We open at 10 a.m. and close at 6 p.m.," he said. "Private lessons are 100 USD per session. Is that acceptable?"

"If I sign up for your private lessons, you’re not going to push drugs on me, are you?" Li Wei asked. "I was at a gym before, and the guy at the front desk immediately tried to sell me on his recommended steroid package."

"You high schoolers are juicing enough as it is," the coach chuckled, taking the 70 USD from Li Wei. "I’d be afraid if I recommended anything, you’d end up killing yourself with it."

After paying, Li Wei changed his clothes and grabbed a pair of the gym’s communal gloves.

"If I were you, I’d buy my own pair of gloves," the coach said dryly. "Otherwise, in just ten minutes, your hands will feel like they’ve been soaking in a sewer for a week."

Li Wei paused. The coach had a point.

Although the gloves were another investment, for the sake of his Knight Fighting Art, he still spent an extra 60 USD on the cheapest 14oz pair and some wrist wraps. While he was at it, he also dropped 100 USD on a private lesson.

"Alright, first, go run around the gym for fifteen minutes," the coach said. "You absolutely have to get your body warmed up."

"No," Li Wei wasn’t about to fall for that trap. ’Let’s just start training. I already warmed up before I got here.’

’Are you kidding me? A 60-minute private lesson costs 100 USD. Running for 15 minutes would be a waste of 25 USD.’

’He’d have to be crazy to spend 25 USD just to run.’

Rebuffed by Li Wei, the coach could only walk over with a helpless sigh and begin to wrap his hands, tightly binding his wrists, palms, and the webbing between his thumb and forefinger layer after layer.

He pointed to a leather heavy bag in front of them and said:

"Go ahead and hit it. Let me see what you’ve got."

Li Wei stepped forward. Recalling the push-off and hip-rotation technique Coach Miller had taught him, he tried to execute the move, driving his fist into the heavy bag.

BAM!!

A muffled thunderclap exploded through the gym.

The large 14oz gloves couldn’t conceal Li Wei’s terrifying power. To the astonishment of several nearby boxers hitting speed bags, the heavy bag was sent flying violently backward, its chains letting out a cringe-inducing shriek.

"Holy shit..." The coach’s eye twitched. ’That much power?’

"But there’s still a problem. Your power transfer isn’t quite right; it’s too superficial. Do this: turn your toes inward, and when you generate force, push off the balls of your feet. The power should travel from your toes up to your calf..."

For the next hour, the boxing coach, Lao Mo, was like a different person. He took a stick and held it horizontally behind Li Wei’s lower back, correcting his hip rotation angle again and again.

"Push off! Rotate your hips! Imagine you’re hitting a spot beyond your line of sight! Drive the power through it, punch *through* the target!"

After a full hour of practice, a notification appeared in Li Wei’s vision:

[Training Progress: 1/3 complete. Defeat a powerful opponent: 0/1]

[Milestone Reward: Constitution +0.1]

"I want to spar!" Li Wei’s head snapped up. "I think I’m ready!"

"No," the coach said, shaking his head. "We don’t let students with less than a year of training spar."

"I think I’m ready," Li Wei insisted, shaking his head. "Just find me an opponent..."

After going back and forth, the coach started to get annoyed.

"There’s more to boxing than just raw strength," he said, calling over a Black student. "He’s been training for two years. If you can last three rounds with him, I’ll give you three private lessons for free."

Li Wei’s eyes lit up. "You’re the one who said it!"

...

Half an hour later, Li Wei glanced at the [Defeat a powerful opponent: 1/1] notification on his panel and walked out of the gym, humming a little tune.

The coach had a point—raw strength alone isn’t enough to win.

But, unfortunately for his opponent, by the third round Li Wei wasn’t even pretending to hold back anymore. The mobility granted by his high agility and constitution allowed him to easily beat the Black student—who was a full size bigger and had two years of experience—into a cowering mess.

"Coach, if you look down on Black people, if you’re a racist, you can just say so! You don’t have to find some boxing expert, tell me he’s only been training for an hour, and then cook up an excuse to have him beat me up! You’re telling me this footwork comes from just one hour of training?!"

"Alex, that’s not..."

"No, you *are* a racist! I’m going on Yelp and leaving you a bad review! I’ll let everyone know the coach at this gym deliberately targets Black people! Black lives matter!"

By the time Li Wei left the gym, the Black student he’d beaten was still arguing with the coach about racism.

[You have defeated an experienced and powerful opponent. Constitution +0.1]

...

「The next day.」

’Something’s not right,’ Li Wei thought, looking at his locker in confusion. ’Am I being set up again?’

A huge, ugly slogan had been spray-painted in red across Li Wei’s personal locker:

"YELLOW-SKINNED MONKEY, GO HOME! QUARTERBACK IS FOR REAL MEN, NOT SOME CHINK WITH A SMALL DICK!"

He took out a wet wipe to try and clean it off, but when he realized it wouldn’t budge, he just sighed and started thinking of another solution.

But just as he turned around, he heard heavy footsteps approaching from behind.

Five defensive players from the backup squad—all of them over 6’2"—surrounded Li Wei in a semi-circle. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"Look, man, this isn’t personal," the one in the lead said. "You’re the team’s hero. We don’t want to give you a hard time."

"Just quit the team, dude," another one said. "Either you agree to quit, or you go to Coach Miller and tell him the pressure of being the starter is too much and you want to go back to the bench."

Li Wei glanced from side to side and sighed internally.

’Here we go with the classic locker room bullying scene,’ he thought. It was painfully obvious that Craig, the Black Quarterback he had replaced, had sent them.

Seeing that none of them were armed, Li Wei was just considering how he should teach them a lesson when the locker room door was thrown open again. A frantic voice burst in:

"Stop! Don’t hurt him!"

Craig limped in. His knee was swollen to twice the size of the other one, and he gritted his teeth against the piercing pain with every step.

"Craig, what are you doing here?" the leader of the group asked in surprise. "Jasmine—"

"Don’t talk to me about her!" Craig’s voice was even louder. He slowly walked into the space between them. "You guys can go."

The defensive players left with strange looks on their faces, closing the door behind them.

"Sorry, man. This wasn’t my idea," Craig said, his face full of guilt. "My girlfriend, Jasmine, did this on her own. She snuck in this morning when no one was around."

Li Wei was inclined to believe him. Craig had a good reputation on the team and had never been involved in any kind of trouble.

For a Black guy, his grades were even pretty good. And according to Daphne and the others, he and his girlfriend were both Catholic and planned on waiting until marriage to have sex.

A Black Quarterback who was also a devout, chaste Catholic—the combination of those three things was so bizarre that Li Wei had a strong impression of him.

"To get revenge for you?" Li Wei raised an eyebrow. "She’s upset that I took your spot?"