Levi didn’t budge.
“It’s fine.
Load it up.
You spot me from behind.”
At his bodyweight under eighty kilos, benching his own bodyweight on day two looked straight-up reckless to Michael.
“Fine, man, whatever,” Michael said, throwing his hands up.
“I got you.
Won’t let the bar crush your skinny ass.”
To Michael, who’d been grinding for nearly a year, this was textbook newbie ego.
Guy wanted to prove something yesterday.
They each grabbed a ten-kilo plate and racked them.
Michael stepped in behind the bench, hands hovering, ready to bail Levi out the second things went sideways.
Something felt off.
Michael squinted.
Levi’s chest and shoulders looked a little thicker than they had ten minutes ago.
Definition was already showing through the shirt.
Must be the pump playing tricks, he told himself.
Levi unracked, touched the bar to his chest, and drove it up.
Slow.
Controlled.
Still had gas left in the tank.
“Holy fuck…” Michael breathed as Levi locked it out clean.
“Bro.
You’ve been training what, less than a week?”
“Yeah,” Levi said, sitting up with a grin.
He flexed his front delts in the mirror, turning side to side like he was checking out a new car.
“Maybe I’m just built different.”
Michael stared, trying to make it make sense.
Asians were often strong for their size in the lighter weight classes.
Neural recruitment or some shit.
Had to be that.
He left the bench and headed to the squat rack to test his legs.
Back at 0.9 Strength his bench had topped out around fifty to sixty kilos.
Now at 1.0 he was moving bodyweight.
Squats had jumped from sixty-five kilos straight up to ninety-five.
Michael still couldn’t figure it out.
Levi had been sucking wind after fifty kilos earlier.
Now he was sucking wind after eighty.
Was this kid sandbagging on purpose just to fuck with him?
“I’m grabbing water and hitting the showers,” Levi said, fist-bumping him on the way past.
“Got studying to knock out this afternoon.”
“Cool,” Michael said.
“I’m gonna stay a little longer.”
Watching this quiet kid wreck his expectations on day one lit a fresh fire under Michael.
He decided to grind out a few more sets.
Levi filled his giant one-point-five-liter bottle at the fountain, then stepped into the showers.
The gym was low-key genius if you knew how to work it—decent lighting, free charging stations, hot water, and unlimited free mineral water.
He’d checked the store price.
Same bottle ran ninety-nine cents.
Two full fills a day saved him almost two bucks.
Do that every session and the monthly membership basically paid for itself once you counted electricity and water back at the basement.
Levi was squeezing every cent these days.
Basement life had a way of teaching a guy to count pennies.
After the shower and a quick load in the public laundry machines, the sky was turning dark.
He grabbed a dozen discounted near-expiry eggs, a pack of chicken thighs, and a jar of Lao Gan Ma on the way home.
Back in the basement he pulled last night’s leftover rice from the fridge.
Still early.
Don Quixote wouldn’t be back for a while.
Levi opened the AP Macroeconomics book again.
Spirit at 1.2 changed everything.
Memory sharper, concepts clicked faster. Get faster updates on g.com.
The thick two-hundred-plus-page textbook—he’d already burned through nearly a quarter of it in just over a day.
The basement door groaned open.
Don Quixote stomped in cursing his piece-of-shit foreman and rubbing his shoulder like it owed him money.
“Bad day?” Levi closed the book.
“Shoulder flaring up again?”
“Old injury,” Don Quixote muttered, dropping onto the couch with a cigarette.
“Rains a couple days and it acts like a bitch.
You look comfortable, you little prick.
Like some Upper East Side rich boy.”
“Job’s easy,” Levi said, moving to the stove.
“Three hours, one rich lady customer, hundred and two after taxes.”
“Don’t even start with that shit,” Don Quixote snapped.
“I haul bricks and wash dishes twelve hours for the same money, and it’s because you’re prettier?
I was a good-looking bastard at seventeen too.
Nobody ever handed me cash just to stand there looking cute.”
Levi cracked eggs into the pan and glanced back.
“I seriously doubt that.
If you’d been this handsome at seventeen you would’ve caught every STD in New York and been dead by twenty.”
Don Quixote’s hand dropped to his crotch on instinct.
He thought about it for a second, then nodded.
“Yeah… you might have a point.”
“Eat,” Levi said, sliding over a big bowl of egg fried rice loaded with chicken thigh and Lao Gan Ma.
“Cost me five bucks total.
Beats takeout.”
Don Quixote grunted, rolled his bad shoulder, and dug in without another word.
After dinner Levi was surprised when Don Quixote actually washed the dishes without being asked—and even grabbed the kitchen trash on his way out to his night shift.
That was new.
When Levi first arrived the basement had been a straight-up landfill.
No sleepwalking that night.
Levi slept deep and woke up rested, though part of him had been low-key hoping for another quest to drop.
The next morning he headed back to Lyon’s pawn shop.
To his surprise, someone else was already inside, going at Lyon in a loud, heated argument.