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“Knee-high” and “intimidating” aren't often used together, but the bar before Chihiro is both. Shortness doesn't run in the Fujisaki bloodline. She got her height from her mother's side. Yet another trait that makes the Ultimate Programmer wish she could rewrite her genetic code.
“This is the easy beam,” Akane Owari proclaims. Easy for her to say, she broods. The Ultimate Gymnast puts the “upper” in “upperclassman.” For her, the bar is only shin-high. She could walk into it and not even notice.
Chihiro inspects the triangular legs, the red padding. “Do you … want me to lift this?”
“Nope!”
With a gnarly grin, she hops onto the beam. Chihiro waits for the next part. She keeps waiting.
“That! Do that!”
“... Just jump on that thing?"
Akane slams fist into palm. “Like ya mean it!”
Deadlifts, bench presses, bicep curls. Chihiro's idea of strength training. Mondo Owada and Sakura Ogami probably share it, but she didn't want to impose. When Akane asked to be her coach, Chihiro was too relieved to infer a gymnast's idea of strength training.
She sighs and gets with the program. Wasting a day will make it easier to ask her own friends.
The first jump falls short. Of course it does. Chihiro isn't Super Mario or Simone Biles. She doesn't want to be. She wants to be strong.
“Awesome! Go again,” Akane shouts. And Chihiro does. “I know you can tuck those legs in!” And Chihiro tries. “More than that!” She can't. Her feet barely approach the bar.
Akane approaches from the other side, and Chihiro braces to get chewed out or worse. A huge hand reaches down, growing in the shorter girl's perception.
“Tuckin’ your head in might help. Like you want your knees to touch your chin.”
Calloused fingers tilt her head downward, but Chihiro looks up. Akane smiles - not friendly, not even reassuring, but fierce. She's confident.
In what? In who?
A mighty slap on the back rocks the girl back into focus. She can't mount the beam, but she thinks she's closer to touching it.
Senpai shouts something about unleashing her inner bunny. Chihiro doesn't want one. Bunnies live in terror. They're weak. Still, she bounds, again and again for several minutes, falling short each time, until …
“Great!” Akane says.
“What's so great?! I haven't done one!”
“Well, duh. That's strength training.”
“How is this strength training?” Chihiro's panting and sweating and close to crying. She's too worked up to hold back. “We're doing nothing and I'm not even doing that right!”
The statement rattles in Akane's brain. Chihiro pictures a software logo bouncing off borders in a screensaver. “Guess that means you're doin’ somethin’.”
Then something sparks within the would-be coach, some connection made. “Oh yeah! You've been jumping at the beam, but not jumping into the bar. Try that!”
It's a nightmare order. She complies and sees it all happen before it happens: leaping forward with legs and chin insufficiently tucked, colliding with the bar, falling back onto the mat. The impact knocks her breath out.
“You okay?”
It'll never be okay. Too weak to argue back, even after briefly snapping, she did something with full knowledge that she'd fail. The darkness behind her eyelids is better than facing the reality where she let this happen.
“Oh, man, are you unconscious? Here, grab onto my boobs!”
Chihiro's eyes immediately pop open. Even as instinct helps fight the steel grip on her wrists, the overriding thought is that Akane Owari has the biggest breasts she's ever seen. Sakura's are probably larger, but they're more like pecs with her physique. These look like they'd feel …
Her arms break free. Doesn't change that this girl is sitting right on top of her. “I'm awake!” she squeaks.
“Great,” Akane says, her apparent favorite word, as she lifts off. Chihiro darts her eyes at Akane's legs to avoid the view above.
The other girl walks off to the gym's supply closet. “I got one last surprise for ya.” Oh God, what now?
She dares to watch as Akane returns, carrying …
“Another beam?”
It's smaller, too.
“The real easy beam. My gut told me that you'd do better this way, and my coach told me to listen to my gut.”
It's shin-high. Without needing to be told, she tries it.
The landing is clumsy. The positioning causes Chihiro to push off at a rough trajectory. She falls on her butt. But for an instant, her feet were on the bar.
“Wow, in our first lesson, too! Keep that up and you could compete someday. Great work, Chihiro.”
She'll think a lot about Akane's words, and the grin that accompanied them. And her body, which can't be helped. But not just those parts. Chihiro thinks of the muscular legs that briefly wrapped around her, as hard and sculpted as Grecian statues, their enviable bulk built over thousands of those bar hops.
That girl is strong in every sense. That girl is the woman she wants to be.
And maybe the woman she wants to be with.