On Monday of week six, Raza stopped handing out new problems.
"Nothing new from today," he said, rapping the whiteboard with a knuckle. "Four weeks. Everything you've built gets tested, and whatever breaks, we fix."
"What if nothing breaks?" Vael said.
"Then you're not testing hard enough." Raza didn't look up from the notebook. "Jin-ho. You're Reyes."
Jin-ho stopped mid-combination at the far end of the mat. "I'm what?"
"Reyes. Patient, builds from whatever he's given. You've watched the broadcast."
"Twice."
"Then you know how he moves."
"Slowly," Jin-ho said. "He moves slowly."
"Then move slowly."
Round one was the funniest thing Vael had seen in the gym in weeks. Jin-ho circled at what he obviously believed was Reyes's pace, jab placed carefully, shoulders loose, trying very hard to look like he had all the time in the world. Every few seconds his weight tipped forward, wanting to go, and every time he hauled it back by the collar.
"You look like you're late for something," Raza called.
"I'm being patient."
"Reyes isn't slow. He's unbothered. Do that."
"I'm not unbothered," Jin-ho said, and slipped a jab Vael hadn't finished throwing.
"Pretend."
"I don't pretend well."
"I've noticed."
On the far bag, Faris's rhythm hitched once and carried on.
The test itself was less funny and more useful. Vael ran the guard variation, full compression, partial, redirect, no order, and fed Jin-ho the weight shift before the lateral step, sometimes with the step and sometimes without. Jin-ho measured it the way Reyes would, patiently, and in round two he built a counter for the step and loaded it.
The step didn't come.
Jin-ho's counter went through the space where Vael had been and kept going. He said something short in Korean that didn't need translating, and reset.
"That one's yours," Raza told Vael. "Write it down."
Round three went worse. Vael was tired, and Jin-ho stopped dead in the middle of the mat and pointed at the floor.
"Left foot. It went back."
"Two centimeters?"
"Three. You're tired."
Raza was already writing. "Then we drill it tired. Tomorrow, after conditioning, not before."
"I hate that plan," Vael said.
"Good," Raza said. "Again."
On Tuesday Raza put him through forty minutes of conditioning that Vael would have paid good money to skip, then stood him at the window to read Jin-ho across the gym with his left foot forward and his lungs on fire.
"Read," Raza said.
"I'm trying to breathe."
"Do both."
At the far end Jin-ho shadowboxed slowly and sped up without warning. Vael called it late. His left foot crept back a centimeter, and Jin-ho, without looking over, said, "Foot," as if reporting the weather.
It took twenty minutes and one very ugly sip of water before the foot stayed where it was put.
Sunday started at five. Mei Lin was already at the table when Vael left, laptop open, tea going cold.
"Tell Bagas good luck," she said, without looking up.
"He'll nod."
"He always nods. Half the time I'm not sure what I've agreed to."
Raza stayed in KL. He'd declined on Friday with a single word and gone back to his notebook, which left four of them on the early flight: Vael, Faris, Bagas, and Siti, who had been talking since the check-in queue and showed no sign of needing air.
"—so I told the committee, it's no-gi, why are we arguing about rash guard sleeves, and they said tradition, and I said whose tradition—Faris, window or aisle?"
"Window," Faris said.
"One," Siti said.
"One what?" Vael said.
"Words. Raza told me. Forty a day." She buckled her seatbelt without slowing down. "I'm keeping score."
Faris turned to the window and stayed there.
Bagas sat in the middle, nodding along to Siti with six weeks of practice behind it.
The venue was a community sports hall on the west side of the island. Folding chairs for maybe four hundred, two mats under a sponsor's banner someone had hung slightly crooked, a first-aid table with a thermos on it. A kid in a rash guard three sizes too big was doing cartwheels at the back until his mother caught him by the belt.
After the arenas it felt like walking into someone's living room. Vael liked it immediately.
Bagas sat against the wall taping his fingers, one joint at a time, with the same care Raza gave to wraps, and ate half a banana between hands. Siti crouched in front of him and said four sentences in Malay, one finger raised for each. Bagas nodded at all of them.
Wahyu was one of the two competitors Bagas had said he knew: lean, loose in the shoulders, with the easy grin of someone who already knew how his afternoon would go. He crossed the mat to shake hands before the referee asked him to.
"Still not talking?" he said in Indonesian, loud enough for the first few rows.
Bagas nodded.
Wahyu laughed, clapped him on the shoulder, and went back to his corner looking pleased with himself.
Siti watched that grin cross the mat with her head tilted and an expression Vael couldn't read.
Ten minutes, points, heel hooks legal in this division, which was why she'd spent six weeks on little else.
Wahyu sat to the mat in the first ten seconds, exactly the way Siti had said he would, and planted both feet on Bagas's hips like a man pulling up a chair. Bagas didn't dive in after him. He stood over him and let him work, and the leg fight began.
It wasn't pretty. Wahyu hunted for an ankle, Bagas peeled his foot away, Wahyu hunted again. The mat squeaked. Both men breathed through their noses in short hard pulls. Siti knelt at the edge of the mat and talked Bagas through it in a flat, low voice, no volume at all, which Vael found more frightening than shouting.
Four minutes in, Bagas stopped pulling his foot away.
Vael thought he'd made a mistake. So did Wahyu, who grabbed the heel with both hands, threw his hips under Bagas's leg, and swung into the entanglement like he'd done it ten thousand times. His forearm locked under the heel. His body began to turn.
Bagas's face did nothing. He might have been waiting for a bus.
Faris, who hadn't moved in four minutes, stood up. "Siti."
"Sit down."
"Knee."
"Three," Siti said, not turning around. "Sit. Watch his hips."
Faris sat, slowly, the way a man sits when he plans to stand again.
On the mat the pressure went on. Vael watched Bagas's knee start to angle and felt his own ache in sympathy. Wahyu cranked.
Then Bagas rolled.
Not away from the twist but with it, the same direction Wahyu was turning, all his weight following the torque until the lock had nothing left to bite. His heel slid free. Wahyu had turned himself all the way around to finish the hook, and the only thing he'd finished was showing Bagas his back.
Bagas was on him before the grin had left his face. One hook in, then the second. Right arm under the chin, left hand behind the head. Wahyu got a hand to the forearm and pulled, and Bagas's elbow simply closed.
Wahyu tapped twice on the mat. The referee's hand came down at six minutes forty.
Faris stood up again, and this time nobody told him to sit.
Applause from four hundred folding chairs, and one very loud mother. Bagas stood, bowed to the referee, and offered Wahyu a hand up. Wahyu rubbed his throat, looked at the hand, looked at Bagas, and started laughing. He said something fast in Indonesian, and Siti, on her feet now, grinned.
They ate at a hawker centre two streets from the hall. Faris held two fingers up to the chicken rice stall owner, who frowned at the lack of detail until Siti said, "Plates. He means plates," and the man shrugged and got to work.
Vael waited until Bagas was halfway through his plate.
"How did you know he'd go for the leg?"
Bagas chewed, swallowed, and considered it. "I nodded."
Siti pointed her spoon at him, delighted. "You know what Wahyu said on the mat? 'Six years.' Six years of asking that man questions and hearing yes. 'Still not talking?' Nod. 'You okay with this?' Nod. 'Same as last time?' Nod." She waved the spoon. "It isn't yes. It isn't anything. That's why it works."
Bagas nodded.
Faris stopped chewing. He looked at Bagas, then at his own plate, as if replaying every morning Bagas had nodded at him.
Vael set down his spoon. "Raza has spent six weeks building me what you just did in four minutes."
"Raza builds it on purpose," Siti said. "Bagas just never talks." She glanced across the table. "Some people do it on a budget."
Faris raised one eyebrow and spent nothing.
On the flight home Siti ran out of words somewhere over Johor and fell asleep with her mouth slightly open. Faris was already gone. Bagas stared at the seat in front of him, perfectly content.
Vael texted Mei Lin. Bagas won. Choke, six forty. The nod was involved.
I need a full report on the nod, she wrote back.
Tonight. Slowly.
I'll make tea, she wrote. You're explaining all of it.
Raza's message came in a minute later, no greeting. Result?
Won, Vael wrote. Choke.
Eat something.
Already did.
Eat again.
Vael put the phone away and asked the attendant for a second packet of peanuts.