Getting Twisted from the Start Is Standard
Getting tangled from the very start was practically the law of the land.
“Tisha?”
“Kyle?”
They simply stared at each other in a daze, as if neither had remotely expected the other to be here.
It was impossible to guess why either of them would show up at a place like this at such an early hour.
“…What is it? The sun hasn’t even properly risen yet…”
“I could ask you the same thing, Tisha. What are you doing here at this hour?”
“Me? I’ve always been in the habit of waking up around now. My eyes opened, but I didn’t have anything to do, so I was out for a walk and thought maybe I’d try some exercise.”
Oh, you too? Yeah. Me too.
“Isn’t it a bit too early?”
“It is, but if I don’t climb the mountain at this hour I miss the flowers that wither the moment the sun comes up. They’re pretty important materials for shamanism, so I didn’t really have a choice.”
So she starts the morning with mountain-climbing cardio, huh.
She claimed she wasn’t close with exercise, but that level of commitment makes her sound pretty damn close to me.
“What about you, Kyle? What brings you here so early?”
“Ah, well. In my family we always wake up at this hour to train.”
“At this hour? Before the sun’s even up?”
“You can think of it as similar to you climbing the mountain. For people from my house, this is mandatory.”
“Heeh? So you’ve been specializing in physical training all along?”
“That’s right. I never wanted to, but I know the whole system inside and out.”
Tisha nodded with an “Ahh” of understanding at Kyle’s explanation.
And then an awkward silence settled between the two of them.
They weren’t distant or stiff with each other, but they weren’t especially close either.
They were friends who had traveled together from the North all the way to the Academy, yet running into each other alone in a place like this, completely unexpected, made everything feel incredibly awkward.
“Uh, um. Then go ahead and train, Tisha. I’ll finish what I was doing.”
“Th-that sounds good? Then let’s do that!”
Tisha scurried deeper inside and plopped down on a machine.
The problem was that she had never used equipment like this even once in her life.
What even are all these things…?
The hall was packed with bizarre contraptions that defied verbal description.
Some looked like you hung things on them, others like you pulled things—she couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.
She had come here to exercise, yet she had no idea how to actually do the exercise.
And just sitting there doing nothing made her hyper-aware of Kyle sitting over there.
“Hoo.”
Whether he had already forgotten about her or was deliberately pretending to forget, Kyle focused every ounce of his attention on the shoulder press, regulating his breathing.
With every rep, muscles that had been hidden away greeted the morning.
Whoa…
Even in his uniform the solid contours had been visible enough.
Now, wearing only a light T-shirt, the condition of his body was on full, unfiltered display.
His shoulders are ridiculously broad… he looks insanely solid… hwaaah…
His way of speaking was the height of manners and gentleness, yet his body was the kind of pure masculine power that would send most ordinary swordsmen packing.
To think reverse charm like this even existed—no wonder people insisted you absolutely had to go to the Academy.
“Tisha?”
“Heeh… eh? Ah, yes?”
“Aren’t you going to train?”
“Ah? Ah, ah! I-I am! Why?”
“You’ve been staring only at me for a while, so I wondered if there was something you wanted to ask.”
And that was when Tisha, without meaning to, blurted it out.
“Ah. I, um, actually… I’ve never done systematic training like you, Kyle.”
“So it’s your first time. That makes sense. Honestly, exercising like this is hard and tiring and annoying and irritating and the kind of thing you want to quit as soon as possible.”
There was a terrifying amount of sincerity packed into those words just now, wasn’t there?
Tisha found herself torn over whether she was supposed to agree or not.
“If you’re not sure, shall I help you a little?”
“I’d be grateful if you would.”
“Then…”
Thud—.
Kyle set the barbell he had been holding lightly onto the floor.
It already looked heavy, yet the sound it made hitting the ground felt twice as weighty.
Was it actually that heavy? I’m not confident about that kind of thing yet…
While Tisha was distracted by pointless worry, Kyle walked right up beside her and sat down, hip to hip.
“Hic.”
Thanks to that, Tisha was able to examine the person named Kyle in even greater detail.
Good heavens…
Up close, Kyle’s body was an even purer masterpiece.
There wasn’t a single point of wasted fat anywhere on him.
Living as a shaman, she had wandered all over and seen plenty of people.
Yet no matter how hard she searched her memory, she had never once met a man with a body this solidly built.
There had been men with similar physiques from time to time.
But unlike Kyle, those men had been obsessed with showing their muscles off.
Stripping half-naked every single day and making people frown had been a regular occurrence.
Kyle’s body is way better than those clueless guys, and he’s been completely hiding it this whole time.
That was when Tisha thought: this person doesn’t like putting himself forward.
The idea that she could be friends with someone like him made her mood soar.
She even worried for a second that he might hear the light thumping of her heart.
“Tisha?”
“…Ah, yes! Kyle.”
“Focus. Shall we begin?”
“Yes! Wh-what should I start with?! Do I have to lift something like that too?”
“Hm? No, no. Absolutely not. We have to decide the most important thing first.”
“The most important thing?”
Kyle nodded at Tisha’s question.
“Right now, is the reason you want to train weight loss? Or weight gain? Whether your goal is simply health, or whether you want to build muscle, that matters too.”
Kyle was the one person in the John Nassen barony who hated training more than anyone.
Yet the habits accumulated over all those years had soaked into him without him noticing, and the John Nassen will that flowed in his blood joined in—so without meaning to, he ended up showing a passionate side.
“Uh… e-eh?”
“Judging roughly by your condition, your weight looks just right, so it probably isn’t weight loss. And since you’ve been climbing mountains steadily, your lower-body balance is really prettily set.”
“Y-pretty?”
“Yes, yes. So I don’t think you need to start lower body from the absolute basics.”
Kyle was talking about pure training and nothing else.
Tisha, on the other hand, had completely discarded the training talk and was focusing only on the weird parts.
Their meeting, already twisted from the start, was warping further without either of them realizing it.
“Alright, one more time.”
“Uuuugh…! A-again?”
“Yes. One more.”
“Th-this isn’t what I asked you to teach me!”
“Stretching before training is mandatory. You’ll get seriously hurt otherwise.”
It was a point the John Nassen barony always hammered home.
If you dropped out of combat readiness over something stupid, there was nothing more worthless.
Training was good, but it must never interfere with battle.
In other words, you had to know how to treat your own body with care.
That was why loosening the muscles before training was even more important.
Kyle himself had grown up hearing the same lectures from his father, his mother, his older brother, and his older sisters.
By now, anything even close to those words triggered an automatic reflex.
“Is there anything you’d like to try, Tisha?”
“Ah… the thing you were doing earlier… I want to try that too.”
If it was what he had been doing just now, she meant the dumbbell shoulder press.
Kyle briefly wondered whether starting with that was really okay.
But if he stopped her, he might wound her pride, so he brought over the lightest dumbbells.
Of course, that “lightest” was strictly according to Kyle’s standards.
“Uuuugh!!”
“Ah, too heavy?”
“Y-yes. I don’t think I can even lift these with both hands…”
Hmm, her upper body really is still quite weak.
Thinking he would have to start from the absolute basics and go extremely slowly, Kyle picked out dumbbells that were truly, genuinely light this time.
“Before we start, let me check your form. Can you straighten your back?”
“L-like this?”
“A little more, a little more. Yes. Hold that. Now watch me for a second? You hold the dumbbells in both hands like this and raise them overhead. Then lower them—but the angle of your arms is critical. If they’re flared out or collapsed, absolutely not. Right angle! Ninety degrees! You keep that exact angle the whole time you move. For now, shall we just lock in the shape?”
“Uh… like this?”
“You don’t need to come down all the way. Here, like this…”
The instant Kyle’s hand touched her body, she flinched and trembled without meaning to.
Tisha rapidly blinked and quickly checked Kyle’s expression.
He, however, was completely absorbed in teaching her how to train and seemed to notice nothing.
“Remember. Keep your back and chest straight. During both the contraction and the stretch, your elbow angle stays at ninety degrees the entire time.”
“Y-yes!”
“Then shall we try? Alright, first grab the bar…”
This one was just as heavy. She wasn’t sure she could manage.
But knowing Kyle was right there watching over her step by step made her feel like maybe she could.
“Alright, slowly up. Lower it down. Keep the right angle, Tisha. Yes. Good.”
She could tell instinctively. This man was watching her with extreme care.
How overflowing with consideration he was, how thoughtful his heart—
she could feel it clearly in the incredibly careful way his hands touched her skin.
W-working out… might actually be pretty nice…?
If Kyle had overheard that, he probably would have had a seizure on the spot.
“That’s how you finish one set. You do about six of these.”
“S-six whole times?! You said one set is fifteen reps!”
“I was originally going to make it twenty and cut it down to that.”
“Even so, six sets means… that’s ninety times!”
“It’s not continuous. You break it into sets. Slowly. Then you can do it all.”
At Kyle’s words Tisha screamed Hwaaang! inside her head.
I take back saying exercise is nice! Cancel! Cancel!! This is hell from the first second!!
“Of course we’re not doing every set right this second. Adjusting to your body is important. Since we’ve already done two sets, how about just one more?”
“Ahahaha!! Th-that! I-it’s morning time, isn’t it?! We need to eat!”
“Hmm. You’re right. In that case we should do one more set before the meal even more—”
He started to say it, then suddenly the old days came flooding back in vivid detail.
Family members who would scream at him to do one more set no matter how close he was to collapsing and dying.
People who would say that if he still had the strength to talk, he could clearly manage five more sets instead of one.
“…Never mind. You’re right. Let’s go eat breakfast.”
I must be out of my mind. Coming all the way here just to do this kind of crap.
Spouting the exact words I never wanted to hear again to someone else. I’ve definitely lost it.
Thinking that, Kyle quickly racked the equipment and took Tisha’s hand.
“Eueh?”
“Let’s hurry and go eat breakfast. I’m curious what Academy meals are like.”
Please don’t tell me this place also only serves salads and chicken breast and garbage like that.
There was no way, but he still carried a tiny seed of anxiety as they stepped out of the indoor training hall.
The moment they emerged outside—
“Oh.”
They ran straight into Ian, who had been swinging his sword with full focus.
“….”
Ian looked mildly startled by the sudden appearance of Kyle and Tisha.
Then his gaze slowly drifted down to their joined hands.