my darkness is
sinking deeper

"Weapon of choice?"

I stared at the table in front of me. I had seen it a thousand times, or tens of thousands, but the current predicament it was in made it not the thousand and one, but the first look at something completely different. It was covered with weapons, magazines and cartridges and loose bullets that would roll over the side if the delicate arrangement was disturbed even in the slightest.

I looked back up at Jungkook. He was just as emotionless as ever, with the same blank veneer veiling a layer of fire. As I looked at him, he raised a single eyebrow, waiting, but didn't repeat the question. That was his way—if you didn't catch it at first, it usually wasn't worth repeating it.

My gaze fell back to the table. Choice? I thought sardonically, but no smile reached my lips. No one has a choice out there in the field. You fight with what you have. Despite my thoughts, my eyes strayed to the lone knife on the table. It was small, not particularly sharp, one I recognized from my own kitchen. It seemed stupid to fight with it, but there was no other option. Guns made me feel too detached. Knuckledusters? Too close. There was no way I was picking up a sword. I had never seen a criminal fight with actual swords. They were too long, too hard to wield.

"Knife," I said. Was that even a question?

Jungkook nodded once, his eyes on me, and I got the message. With slow movements, I picked up the knife. It was light and familiar in my hands, but only from years of cutting up vegetables. I couldn't even imagine cutting a person with it, much less actually do it.

"Make sure you're with a weapon you can actually see yourself using," he said, as if he'd read my mind. But I didn't hesitate in my choice. Even if I wasn't comfortable with the knife yet, I would be soon. And, anyway, it wasn't like I could use any of the others.

"Good," he said softly, pushing aside the table as I took a couple of steps back, positioning myself for a fight. Bullets clattered to the floor as I got ready. Feet wide, but not too wide, not in line, but aligned with my shoulders. Body low, but not bent at the torso. Jungkook reached into his weapons belt, and pulled out a long knife—great—and slid it out smoothly, occupying the same stance as I had.

His eyes met mine, velvety and dangerous, like a panther in the night. He scanned me from head to toe, and I felt revulsion rising in me like a tide. His gaze wasn't perverse, but it was invading, like he was getting all up in my face without even stepping close to me. "Stance is important," he said, "but not more than mobility. You have to stay fast and light, cat-like, on the pads of your feet."

He lunged at me scarcely before he finished his words, blade raised, and I spun to avoid the knife. I had not been expecting it, which had delayed my reaction, and the edge caught the crest of my cheek. It didn't sting, but I knew that would come soon. I reached up to touch the cut with disbelief, disbelief that he had actually hurt me on purpose. It was shallow, and had worked to cut my confidence more than my skin.

All my thoughts about being better with a blade evaporated. Jungkook was obviously more skilled than he showed, or perhaps it was exactly what he wanted to show. That he had more up his sleeve than you would expect.

"You can't afford to be slow," he said, and my brow creased. "Your feet have to be sticky but always moving."

He pounced again, but I saw it this time, saw him move even before he did. As his knife cut through the air in front of me, I ducked, and it missed the top of my head by inches. Before his hand was even back in its original position, I had leaped, knife thrust out towards his side as fast as I could get it there. But not fast enough, because Jungkook was already three feet away, dancing just out of reach.

My grip tightened on the hilt as frustration began to build up inside me. We began circling each other at the largest radius the small room could allow us, about five feet away from each other. Jungkook's eyes seemed to be trained on my own, but now that I actually started looking at him—the way his irises darted, quick and flashing, every few seconds. The way he studied my position without seeming like he was.

He thrust out, dancing forward like a ballerina, with his arms reaching out, like he was unwinding himself from a curl. I dodged deftly, and he curled back in again, spinning lightly and regaining his feet. It reminded me of a coil winding and unwinding, a corkscrew turning and being turned back, the coil of a whip. In and out. Quick as that.

My posture grew wary, but my fury remained. There was more to this than it appeared. It was not just Jungkook I was angry at, but what he represented—the uncertainty of my future, all the secrets I still didn't know, my weakness. And all the other things I still wasn't ready to acknowledge. My meekness. My fear. My hesitation.

I watched his feet as they crossed and stepped over one another as he turned in a circle. They were slow but deliberate, and every step was the balls of his feet pressing against the hardwood floor. I bent my knees, and looked at him. His eyes, staring into my soul, staring through my soul. At the lack of a soul.

My heartbeat was quickening. I was restless, more angry than afraid, and beginning to see how these training sessions were probably a really bad idea. How could I deal with blood, with fighting and with pain, with my condition? What if I broke down in the middle of a training session with Jungkook? Or, even worse, what if I broke down in the middle of an actual fight, the way I had when the mobsters had attacked us in the street?

As far as I knew, Vernon hadn't told anyone about my anxiety. If I could guess it right, the only people who knew were Chaeyoung, Junhee, and now Vernon. But how did I know that Vernon hadn't told the other racers yet? With a jolt, I realized it was because I trusted that he wouldn't. That I still had faith in him, that I still trusted him.

"No room for doubt," Jungkook said as he interrupted my thoughts, no doubt reading the expression in my eyes. "Not because you cannot doubt yourself, but because you do not have the time to. A real knife fight is fast-paced, with narrow spaces which are reserved for breathing, not thought. A quick fight means preservation."

I continued circling, bent, shoulders hackled as I waited for a window. A crack in his perfect guard that I had a feeling I wasn't going to find anytime soon. "When in a knife fight, your mind will be nothing but an overload of thought. Absolute chaos," he continued. Even in my distracted state, I was listening keenly as the edge of the blade. "It is up to you to find your place of calm in the chaos, the eye in the storm which will keep you from toppling over the edge."

I sprang. My kitchen knife grazed the front of his t-shirt, but it did little in the way of offence, and the weak blade simply slid against the material. I cursed under my breath as Jungkook turned, just out of reach. He leaned back, too far back, and folded and raised his leg to balance it, one arm bent at his side, the other straight along the line of his leg, and in the same pose, he spun—a perfect spin, light as a feather, and effortless—and kicked out.

The kick hit me square in the abdomen, knocking the breath out of me. I barely had time to register it coming at me before it connecting, and I was sent flying across the room. The impact wasn't hard, due to the lack of space to develop acceleration, but I crashed against the wall with a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling force that punched against my entire body. I slid to the force, gasping and wide-eyed, and found that the kitchen knife was still gripped in my fist.

Useless, I seethed, but didn't let it go as I curled into myself, holding my abdomen where he had kicked me. I sat there and thought about it, replaying it over and over in my mind as I tried to wrap my head around it. And fuck, did it hurt.

A shadow fell over me, and I looked up to see Jungkook staring down at me calmly, as if he hadn't just kicked me across the room. "It's absolutely necessary to stay out of kicking range," he intoned, sounding heartless despite the blandness of his words. "There isn't much time between attacks, so your body has to move as fast as your thoughts, and be out of range before your opponent can even think of a counter-attack."

He made no move to help me up, turning and walking away as soon as he was finished speaking. I stared after him for a second, incredulous, but got up on my own—albeit with much effort. My teeth ground together as I clutched my stomach and lifted myself to my feet to face him. Blood had gathered in my mouth, though not a lot, and I spat it out on the floor.

We got into a fighting stance again, and I held my knife out and away from my body. "Once the knife is in motion, you have only a few seconds to decide your next move, sometimes even less," he said. My fear was washing away, being replaced slowly by a rage as widespread and rampant as a forest fire, inflaming every dry part of my mind it could reach out to. "The best way to learn this experience, but you have a quicker route towards it—perception."

His eyes were on mine again, and this time I met his gaze steadily, filling the empty space between us with anger and hate and loathing, setting fire to everything dry. "Watch your opponent," he said, and I gripped the knife tighter. "Watch their every move, watch everything around you, watch yourself. Especially yourself. It's not the weapon that kills, it's the one wielding it."

Even before he had finished speaking, I attacked. It was crude, a move made more out of lack of control than the clean, precise lines of a good knife fighter. Jungkook parried, and I swiveled, hacking outwards and inwards and in all directions possible, and he dodged every single one of them, away, towards, there but not quite.

My rage grew with every strike and every block, and when I brought the blade downwards, straight towards him, my mind was filled with white-hot fury. Jungkook caught it on his knife's hilt, the most difficult movement possible while fighting with a knife, and pushed me back. I staggered, and he slashed at my occupied hand. His blade cleaved a thin line of blood down my palm, and I dropped my knife. Defanging the snake.

I held my hand, trembling, not even trying to stem the blood flow from my palm as it stained my skin and clothes. He looked back at me, and slid his knife back into its sheath.

"A weapon is not just an object," he said quietly, his gaze meeting mine. "It's an emotion. A promise."

I swallowed thickly, defiant, as he drew himself upright. He hadn't even broken a sweat. There was no change in his expression, not anger, not smugness, nothing at all. Just a vacant expression. A blank canvas that would never be painted.

"Class dismissed," he said, and walked out as I continued to stand there, staring at the knife I'd dropped on the floor.