Chapter 1
Misha hadn’t shown his face at the gym all week—he’d been knocked flat by strep throat. A fragile throat had been his kryptonite since childhood. The slightest trigger—a cold juice or a scoop of ice cream—and boom, a spiking fever and a nasty cough. He would reliably drop off the grid for a solid three weeks, dragging in doctors and getting pumped full of antibiotics. You’d never guess it looking at him; he looked like a brick wall, a total athlete, yet he had this glass throat.
This time around, with a suspected case of Covid, he planned to milk it for at least a month and blow off his college classes without a single shred of guilt. But then the unexpected threw a wrench in his plans: a new girl joined their Muay Thai gym.
And man, what a girl. His buddy, Victor, spent the entire training session glued to his phone, texting non-stop. Sporting neon-red dreadlocks that looked like they were sculpted out of plaster, she was a total badass who didn’t crack a single smile, her gaze fixed entirely on something deep inside herself. She wiped the floor with everyone, one by one. Rumor had it she was local but used to live up in the northern capital, doing underground MMA fights. Misha couldn’t even focus on his Netflix anymore.
“So what’s her deal? What’s she like?” he kept blasting Victor on WhatsApp.
“Total smoke show. Would smash,” Vic fired back, keeping it brief.
“Man, snap a pic or grab a video or something!”
Vic tried to slide his camera on just as she paired up with Anatoly, but the coach caught the amateur paparazzi red-handed, slapped the back of his head, and confiscated the phone on the spot.
Their gym was run like a boot camp—Anatoly was an absolute tyrant with the guys, but the second a girl walked through the door, she got the royal treatment and all the rules went out the window. The guys were living for the sheer chaos of it all, obsessively talking about her flawless spinning heel kick when she planted her sneaker right into the coach’s jaw. Anatoly just laughed his head off, proudly showing off his split lip, shaking her hand, and shouting, “Now that’s a girl! What a total firecracker!”
Misha was a nervous wreck for the rest of the day. In the evening, Victor came back—he was a high school sophomore who lived just across the hall.
“So, how’d it go?” Misha croaked through his raw throat, cracking his front door open.
“See for yourself,” Vic said, flashing a shiny shiner under his left eye. “How am I supposed to show my face at school with this? She clocked me with this savage, feral look on her face—I didn’t even have time to get my guard up. Anatoly was cracking up the whole damn time.”
“Who else did she spar with?”
“After that, Anatoly took her on himself, kept calling the rest of us pussies,” Vic spat. “Total buzzkill for the guys.”
Misha frowned. “Alright, man, I don’t want to give you my bug,” he said, wanting nothing more than to be alone with his racing thoughts.
“Her name is Masha!” Vic managed to yell just before the door clicked shut.
Masha. Misha spent the entire evening rolling the name over his tongue. Later that night, a new user joined their private Facebook group—clearly a girl, with Princess Mononoke as her profile pic. Her account was locked down tight, with kanji characters instead of a name. His fingers were itching to send a friend request. To his surprise, she accepted. Her feed was packed with aesthetic images, music, anime clips, quotes, and training videos—but she was nowhere to be found. Not a single photo of herself.
Man, what a beautiful name, he thought. He could already picture how perfect it would sound when the coach called them out: “Masha, match with Misha.” Masha, Misha’s match. It was a flawless fit. He crunched down on a Strepsils lozenge and ran to rinse his throat. He needed to get his act together and be in tip-top shape by Thursday. Skipping college was a given—the gym came first. When his mom got home from work, she was baffled. Instead of lying around playing the dying swan and begging for syrniki with condensed milk, her son was gargling for the tenth time and doing push-ups.
When he finally made it to the sports complex, the familiar locker room felt completely alien. It took him a second to realize what had changed. Everything was off: gear wasn’t tossed in messy piles anymore; it was neatly folded, and the sneakers were lined up in perfect rows. Even the smell—instead of the usual suffocating stench of sweat, it smelled like a high-end perfume boutique. Shivering slightly, Misha changed, meticulously folded his clothes, and dashed into the gym. Warm-ups were already in full swing. Anatoly gave him a sharp nod to acknowledge he was there, followed by a glare that clearly said he was ten minutes late. Misha rushed to join the line of guys running and jumping, his eyes darting everywhere, but those neon-red locks were nowhere to be seen.
There actually was a girl in the lineup, clearly a newbie who had wandered in off some promotional billboard. Except, it wasn’t her. This girl was short, with long blonde hair and a doll-like face. She wouldn’t last a week—nobody survived Anatoly for long. Misha himself had broken down and cried over the coach’s antics at times, and he’d been with him for five solid years. But girls… they were a whole different story. Still, Anatoly treated them differently. Misha smirked later on, watching how comically and with what sheer, desperate ferocity this new girl was hammering the heavy bag. Her cheeks were literally jiggling with every punch she threw. And then, he heard the phrase he’d been playing on a loop in his head all night, so loud it made his temples throb—except the name was terribly, brutally wrong.
“Misha, match with Maria!”
Maria. Not the badass with the red dreadlocks. What a sick joke. Why the hell did he even drag his sick self out of bed for this? She looked up at him from under her brow. Her eyes were glazed with a film of tears, and she sniffled, wiping her nose with her boxing glove. Her cheeks were flushed red, and she was dripping with sweat. Misha looked over at Anatoly in utter disbelief and despair. He was met with a loaded look that clearly translated to: Take it easy on her, she’s a girl. Anatoly often paired Misha up with the rookies because, for some reason, he considered him a proper gentleman. Had Victor made the whole damn thing up just to mess with him? What a total scumbag.
