Pain is the teacher.Repetition is the god.
I used to tell myself there were two kinds of fighters: the ones who train to win… and the ones who train not to die.
Turns out, there's a third kind.
The ones who train to lose—on purpose.
The guy across from me tonight is a slab of concrete named Toko Verez. 6'4", 245 pounds of chew-spit aggression and no technique. Just pressure. Elbows. Weight. I watched him dislocate someone's jaw in a bar fight video two months ago. That guy's still drinking through a straw.
I picked him on purpose, i need someone i was sure, i would lose against.
Because I need to know if this thing inside me is real. I need to know if I can use it.
It's a dusty warehouse fight in East Chicago—no ref, no medics, just three spotlights and a ring duct-taped into the floor. The crowd's tight. Hungry. Booze and blood in the air. They paid for violence. I'm here to give it to them.
The bell rings. Toko charges.
I drop my guard.
The first hit is a sledgehammer cross to my cheekbone. The second's an uppercut that lifts me off my feet. The third? I don't feel.
Because I'm already unconscious.
Everything goes black, I drift. Float. No pain. No time.
Then—
SNAP.
Ten seconds earlier.
I'm upright again. Chest tight. Legs loose. Toko's foot is halfway through his lunge.
But I remember it all.
The hit. The blackout. The exact angle of his shoulder before he launched the cross.
This time, I duck.
His fist sails over my head, and I roll out of the way, blinking like I've been dropped into a video game I've played a hundred times before.
And just like that—it's real. The rewind isn't a fluke. It's a weapon.
But something's wrong.
My head is throbbing like someone's drilling screws into the base of my skull. My left eye twitches. I taste something sharp in the back of my throat—not blood. Something metallic.
And then—the voice.
"That's three."
Low. Calm. Clinical.
I win the fight in round two. Not because I'm better. But because I've already died once tonight.
The crowd cheers.
I don't.
Back in the locker room, I sit in front of a cracked mirror. I stare into my own eyes for fifteen minutes. One pupil is slightly dilated. The other keeps twitching.
I lift my shirt. No bruises. Not where they should be.
But my hands are trembling. Not from adrenaline.
From memory.
I throw up twice that night. Once in the sink. Once in the alley behind the building.
My head spins for hours. Like I'm still trapped in the ten seconds between life and death.
I don't sleep.
I hear the voice again around 3 a.m., whispering from somewhere inside my own thoughts:
"Do it again."
Three days later, I do.
This time, I fight a jiu-jitsu specialist. Smaller guy, wiry, slick. I let him choke me out—triangle from the bottom.
As the world goes dark, I stay calm. I wait. Trusting the rewind.
It comes.
SNAP.
Ten seconds back.
Try again.
I stuff the takedown. Pass his guard. Finish the fight in under a minute.
"That's four."
It becomes a rhythm.
A song only I can hear.
Lose. Rewind. Adjust. Win. Repeat.
Every fight is a puzzle I get to solve twice. Or three times. Or five, if needed.
But it's not just physical anymore.
After each rewind, my thoughts feel… looser. Like pages ripped from a book and put back in the wrong order.
I forget names. Forget what city I'm in. I lose time. Five hours vanish after my sixth fight. I wake up in a motel bath with my gloves still on.
Then come the echoes.
I see things that haven't happened yet.
Opponents moving before they move. Referees lifting arms before the bell rings.
Déjà vu turns into full premonitions.
In the middle of a fight, I say my opponent's next insult before he throws it.
He freezes. Looks at me like I'm a ghost.
Maybe I am.
I'm no longer scared of losing.
I'm scared of how many times I've already lost, in versions of reality no one else remembers.
What happens to the other "me"s?
The ones that get knocked out? Choked out? Killed?
Do they die somewhere?
Is that why I keep hearing the voice?
"That's five."
"That's six."
"That's seven."
One night, after a brutal loop—seven rewinds in a single fight—I collapse in the shower. My nose starts bleeding out of nowhere. I scream without making a sound.
And I see something in the corner of the room.
Not a person. A silhouette. Barely there.
Watching.
Not helping.
Just watching.
It flickers as I blink.
Gone.
I finally ask the question I've been avoiding:
Is this power mine… or borrowed?
After "That's Eight," I start leaving notes for myself. Names. Dates. Fight strategies.
I hide them in my bag, in my gloves, even inside my shoes.
Because sometimes… I forget who I am for a few minutes.
After "That's Nine," I wake up in a gym I don't remember entering, standing over a sparring partner who's bleeding from his ear.
He didn't do anything wrong.
He just said something that sounded like my father's voice, and I snapped.
I lock myself in my apartment for two days.
No fights. No phones. No mirrors.
I think about ending it. Jumping. Bleeding out.
But the question haunts me:
What if that triggers the rewind?
What if I can't even die unless something lets me?
What if I'm already past that point?
And then, as if summoned by my thoughts, the voice returns.
Only this time, it says something new.
"That's ten.""Now run."
The room goes dark.
My lights flicker.
And I realize something:
The loop isn't just a curse.
It's a countdown.