In the gym’s ring, the man sparring with Du Chengfeng was called Qin Mo. This man wasn’t just talented, he was also very hardworking. Word was he’d just won a match, with a decent record to show for it.
The gym had no shortage of boxers. When Du Chengfeng first opened this gym, it was purely for his own hobby, but he never forced everyone to become his sparring partners.
The gym’s principle was simple, and blunt: whoever had the skill got to be a professional boxer, and whoever didn’t shouldn’t take up the resources.
Someone unwilling to become a professional boxer wasn’t a good sparring partner, but if everyone became a boxer, who would spar with whom?
So there was an unspoken rule among them: all the boxers could serve as each other’s sparring partners.
Today, Qin Mo ended up as Du Chengfeng’s sparring partner. As for why Qin Mo was picked, it was because he’d just finished a match and still had that fierce edge on him, making him the best sparring partner for the moment.
Watching the two of them trading blow after solid blow in the ring, Su Yue felt her whole body ache just from watching. She couldn’t understand why men liked this kind of sport.
Did they like getting hit, or did they like hitting people?
After Du Chengfeng took another punch, her heart skipped a beat again. This was their big boss, did Qin Mo not want to keep working here anymore?
In fact, Du Chengfeng could have dodged Qin Mo’s ferocious punches with technique several times over, but he chose not to. To become an excellent boxer, the first requirement was a strong tolerance for taking hits.
In this gym, no sparring partner dared go all out against him, except Qin Mo, who held nothing back. Du Chengfeng felt that this kind of attitude was the real form of respect toward him.
Only when pushed to the brink could a person unleash more of their potential, and before long he’d be competing overseas, he hoped to break through his own limits there.
Everyone carried some kind of dream of national glory in their heart, and he was no different. Losing to a fellow countryman wasn’t shameful, but losing abroad would bring shame even to his ancestors.
But Su Yue knew none of this, all she saw was Du Chengfeng losing to Qin Mo, and that the latter wasn’t the type to hold back at all. And so, while she was lost in these anxious thoughts, her boss took a few more punches.
Suddenly, Qin Mo landed a brutal kick right on Du Chengfeng’s shoulder, and the latter fell sideways, landing right in front of Su Yue. Qin Mo didn’t stop there, he followed with a punch whistling through the air, aimed at Du Chengfeng’s head.
If that landed on his head, even if it didn’t kill him, it would knock him senseless. A white towel flew into the ring and landed right on Du Chengfeng’s face. The entire gym fell silent.
It was Su Yue’s towel…
The faint fragrance lingering in Du Chengfeng’s nose left his mind blank for a moment.
What was going on?
Where had this towel on his face come from?
Everyone instinctively looked at Su Yue, was throwing a towel the sign of surrender?
At this point Du Chengfeng pulled the towel off his face and, following everyone else’s gaze, looked at Su Yue too, as if asking what throwing the towel was supposed to mean.
“On TV, when someone surrenders, they throw the towel into the ring.” Su Yue’s expression turned a little awkward. Had she been watching fake TV shows?
Qin Mo climbed down from the ring and walked over to pat Su Yue on the shoulder, was he really that unreliable-looking?
This was his boss, after all, was his character really that questionable?
He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he felt like those few pats on Su Yue’s shoulder made her whole body flinch. Was he really that scary?
After coming back from a match outside, he’d found the gym’s cleaner had turned into Brother Du’s life assistant. He hadn’t thought much of it though, people climb upward and water flows downward, that’s just how life goes.
Whether or not Su Yue made this blunder, that punch of his was never actually going to land, unless he didn’t want to live anymore.
Su Yue looked up at Qin Mo and saw him watching her with a teasing expression.
Su Yue: this was so awkward, wasn’t it!
Her mind had gone completely blank just now, she’d only thought about not letting Du Chengfeng get hurt, her body moving faster than her brain, which was how she’d made such a wrong call.
She yanked the towel back in a fluster, her whole face red enough to drip blood. All she wanted now was to escape this place, it was too embarrassing.
And that’s exactly what she did. Like a little rabbit, she vanished from everyone’s sight in a flash.
Only then did Du Chengfeng realize that what Su Yue had just done was out of concern for him. Even though it turned into a farce, her intentions had been good.
There was such a thing as throwing in the towel, but with a condition: the boxer had lost the ability to fight back, but the referee hadn’t stopped the match, so the coach would throw the towel to signal surrender.
Favorability +5
“Hahaha…” Watching Su Yue flee in embarrassment, everyone couldn’t help bursting into laughter. Aside from the tedious daily training, having Su Yue around as comic relief once in a while wasn’t bad at all.
“Chengfeng, Little Yue is drawing one salary but doing the work of both a life assistant and a coach, shouldn’t you pay her more?” Zhao Cheng teased, looking at Du Chengfeng. Su Yue kept refreshing his impression of her every single day.
At first he’d thought she was a dull, boring cleaner. Who knew that ever since she became Du Chengfeng’s life assistant, she seemed different every single day, you never knew what she’d be like tomorrow.
“Yeah, you should pay her more. The way she threw that towel just now, so fast and so precise, none of us here could’ve done that, hahaha…” Qin Mo said, unable to hold back his own laughter as he spoke.
Everyone knew that in this gym’s ring, no matter who was sparring, nobody ever went all out for real, except Su Yue didn’t know that, and that’s exactly why this whole thing had turned funny.
“Yeah, she should get more pay!” Du Chengfeng chimed in with the teasing too.
“Hahaha…”
Everyone burst into another round of laughter. It went without saying this would be a running joke for days to come, though none of them meant it with mockery or contempt.
It was just that with nothing but training every day, having a bit of fun once in a while helped ease the monotony. They were all normal people, nobody wanted to live like an ascetic monk, but everyone needed something to hope for too.
“The girl’s thin-skinned, don’t tease her anymore. Still, Qin Mo, you hit pretty hard just now, if you hadn’t gone so hard, she wouldn’t have misunderstood.” Zhao Cheng, noticing the bruise forming at the corner of Du Chengfeng’s mouth, clicked his tongue. Look at that, a handsome face ruined by one punch, and the owner of said face couldn’t care less, what a waste of good looks!
To be honest, sometimes he couldn’t understand his good friend, good-looking without even realizing it, and yet he liked treating his looks like dirt. If he didn’t want it, he could just give it to him!
He touched his own handsome face, well… he wasn’t bad-looking either.
It was just that whenever he stood next to Du Chengfeng, women’s eyes instinctively drifted toward the other man. Was it because of all that solid muscle on him?
He patted his own little belly, that was his only small flaw, though he personally thought a bit of a belly on a man was actually sexy.
He had no idea when he’d ever meet a woman who shared his taste, someone who wouldn’t mind his little belly, then he wouldn’t have to keep working on his figure for the next few decades.