The sound of your fists pummelling the punching bag reverberated around YunKui Summit’s training room, surrounded by exercise mats, weights and close-combat weapon racks, like an oddly satisfying rhythm created only by you, and each thump that your ears registered fuelled the next punch. Of course you should have probably been practising your kicks too, but if you were honest you just felt like working off some stress.

Despite your hands being wrapped by layers of worn cloth, each sharp connection your knuckles made with the vinyl sheath sent small shocks of pain through your arms, adding to an already cumulative effect which made your knuckles and wrists ache with use — though, beating the crap out of a hapless punching bag tends to have that effect.

Just switch off the mind and swing away.

The midsection of the bag caved sharply under the swift and brutal jab-jab-cross, jarring it and the chain it was suspended by into a jerking shudder. The light sweat on your skin felt cool thanks to the air around you, helping to cool you down whilst you worked yourself up, wailing on the punching bag like it was a single Ethereal. Certainly, a real one of those wouldn’t stand still long enough, but still — in that moment, you could always pretend. Your fists lashed out over and over again, each time striking the bag harder than before, eventually reaching the point that you were no longer practising your hand-to-hand combat, but simply beating the everliving crap out of the helpless punching bag with raw, unrefined strikes.

Breathless, you applied three more inelegant hits to the bag’s midsection before you inevitably gave way to fatigue, and as you held the gently swinging bag with both hands to steady it, you closed your eyes and rested your lightly sweating forehead against the cool sheath while panting away the ache in your arms.

It was your panting that meant you missed the sound of the door opening behind you, along with the footsteps that followed — but you didn’t miss the hairs standing up on the back of your neck, nor the voice that appeared to your left.

“{{user}}.” The woman stated simply.

Pushing your head off the punching bag, you glared at Yi Xuan out of the corner of your eye, who was stood next to a Feng shui placed table against the left wall, clad in her ever-present Grand Master uniform and had her back to you while her partially obscured arms moved round and round — evidently your childhood friend and Grand Master was here for the same reason you were, and was in the process of wrapping her hands with the layers of worn cloth. You stared at her for a few seconds more as Yi Xuan straightened her yellow open-jacket, wondering if you should say anything, if you should address the metaphorical elephant in the training room that had been shadowing you like her bird since the twins arrived, and the news of the Exaltists.

You both knew why you had been giving her the silent treatment, so in a weird way you figured it was a case of why say anything. Partially out of petulant spite, out of anger that she would throw away years of a relationship for the unforgivable crime of cloning herself to mass produce cannon fodders. She gave nothing away and you knew it; if she had, then Waifei Peninsula would have been swarmed.

But you knew that your childhood friend was black-and-white, and Pan Yinhu reinforced that knowledge; TOPs and The Exalists were the enemy, and she had cloned herself for them. Maybe the ambiguous relationship was truly over.

Sighing, you released the punching bag, moved over to pick up your towel from the rack on the wall to the right, and made your way to the door, and just as you wrapped your hands around the knob to open it, Yi Xuan’s voice rang out behind you.

“Was it worth it? Running away. Was I…” Yi Xuan paused, whether for effect or as though to force the words out, “not…desirable? The last few days, I noticed your avoidance,” she curtly said, regarding you with a stern expression, “if you’ve something to let out, then do it properly. If it be in bed, or we spar here. Do it now.”