The first session of the new preparation lasted forty minutes and looked like nothing Vael had ever done in a gym.
Raza called it movement improvisation, which was not a term he used with any warmth — he said it the way you said a necessary medicine that tasted bad. The principle was simple. Vael moved around the mat and Raza called combinations, and Vael's job was to execute each combination from whatever position he happened to be in rather than setting up correctly first.
No stance reset. No footwork preparation. Just the combination, from wherever his weight was, however inconvenient the geometry.
It felt terrible.
"Again," Raza said.
Vael threw the jab-cross from a position where his weight was on the wrong foot. The jab had no reach. The cross had no rotation. They arrived like suggestions rather than punches.
"Again."
"The stance is wrong," Vael said.
"I know," Raza said. "Again."
"The power is completely gone if the stance is—"
"The power isn't the point," Raza said. "Again."
Vael threw it again. Wrong foot, wrong weight, wrong everything.
"Again."
They did this for forty minutes.
By the end of it Vael's brain felt like it had been running in a language it didn't speak — the specific exhaustion of being competent at something and being asked to do it badly on purpose. Raza had him throwing every combination he knew from positions that made each one awkward, inconvenient, or actively wrong.
At the end Raza sat on the edge of the desk.
"What did that feel like," he said.
"Awful," Vael said.
"Good."
"That's not an explanation."
"No," Raza said. "It's a confirmation." He picked up the notebook. "Reyes surveys in round one. He watches how you move, where your weight goes, what your stance does before a combination, what your guard does after one. He reads those things and builds from them." He paused. "If you throw combinations from wrong positions, from inconvenient geometry, from stances that don't telegraph what's coming next — he can't read them. Not because they're fast. Because they're illegible."
Vael looked at his hands.
"Illegible punches don't land," he said.
"Correct," Raza said. "That's the problem we're solving over ten weeks. Right now the punches are illegible and ineffective. By fight night they need to be illegible and dangerous." He opened the notebook. "Which means we rebuild the chain — floor, hip, torso, shoulder, hand — so it generates real power from positions that don't look like they should generate real power."
Vael stared at him.
"You want to rebuild the chain," he said.
"Not destroy it," Raza said. "Extend it. The current chain works from correct positions. We add the ability to generate power from incorrect ones." He wrote something. "It's the hardest thing I've asked you to do."
"You said that about Pattern E."
"Pattern E was the hardest thing I'd asked you to do at that point," Raza said. "This is harder."
Vael sat on the bench.
He thought about nine fights of Dominic Reyes building geometric cages one exchange at a time. He thought about round one being the most important round he'd ever fought. He thought about making himself unreadable to someone whose entire game was reading.
"How long until it stops feeling awful," he said.
Raza considered this.
"Six weeks," he said.
"And the other four weeks."
"The other four weeks it feels natural," Raza said. "Which is the point."
He stood up, which was the signal that the session was transitioning — something was ending and something else was starting. He went to the board and wrote one line under Make yourself unreadable.
Week 1-3: Wrong positions, real intent.
He underlined it.
"The intent matters," Raza said, not turning around. "The position is wrong but the intention behind the punch is completely genuine. If you throw it like a practice drill Reyes will read the lack of intent and build from that instead." He turned. "Every wrong-position punch you throw in this preparation needs to mean it. Understood?"
"Yes," Vael said.
"Good." Raza looked at the door. "The others arrive in ten minutes. Your morning session is done. This afternoon — bag work with Jin-ho, standard preparation, nothing unusual. What we're doing in the mornings doesn't exist for anyone else in this gym until I decide otherwise."
Vael looked at him.
"Jin-ho is going to notice," he said.
"Jin-ho notices everything," Raza said. "But if he arrives after we've started he'll spend the first few minutes observing before he forms conclusions. Those few minutes are worth something."
"You said that on Thursday."
"It was true on Thursday," Raza said. "It's still true."
Jin-ho arrived at seven fifty-two.
He came through the door, dropped his bag, looked at Vael on the bench, looked at Raza at the desk, looked at the mat where the session had obviously just finished — the scuff marks in the specific pattern of someone who had been moving without a fixed direction for forty minutes.
He looked at the mat for about three seconds.
Then he started wrapping his hands without saying anything.
Faris arrived at eight-fifteen, Bagas at eight-twenty. The gym settled into its morning rhythm — each of them in their own preparation, the four-track structure Tan's offer had produced. Raza moved between them with the focused efficiency of a man managing four different problems simultaneously and finding it no more complicated than managing one, because thirty years of this had made the management invisible.
Faris was on teep defense. Raza had him in specific footwork drills that addressed the three-and-a-half-week problem directly — not building the defense from scratch, finding what Faris already had and sharpening it.
Bagas was doing his wrestling transitions with added submission defense layered in — the Singapore grappling circuit apparently required it, and Raza had sourced a grappling coach named Siti who arrived on Tuesdays and Thursdays and was, by general consensus, absolutely terrifying in a gi.
Jin-ho was running Eclipse variations with the hip adjustment incorporated, each repetition slightly different from the last as he explored the new geometry the two centimeters had opened up.
Vael was on the bag doing what looked like standard work but was actually the wrong-position drilling continued in a different format — the same intent, the same deliberate inconvenience, just less visible without Raza standing beside him calling combinations.
At ten Jin-ho drifted over.
He stood a few feet from the bag and watched for a moment. Not saying anything. Just watching with the comprehensive attention that was simply how Jin-ho existed in a gym.
Vael threw a cross from a position where his left foot was slightly too far forward, the stance open when it shouldn't be.
Jin-ho's eyes went to the foot.
Back to the punch.
"Your stance," he said.
"I know," Vael said.
"It's wrong."
"I know."
Jin-ho was quiet for a moment.
"It's been wrong since I got here," he said. "Consistently wrong. Different ways wrong, but wrong in every exchange." He paused. "That's not accidental."
Vael looked at him.
"No," he said.
Jin-ho looked at the mat scuff marks from the morning session. Back at Vael.
"Reyes," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," Vael said.
Jin-ho folded his arms. Looked at the bag. Something was happening in his face — the processing, the specific calculation of someone assembling a picture from limited information and arriving at a conclusion.
"He reads stances," Jin-ho said.
"He reads everything in round one," Vael said. "Uses it to build the geometry in round two."
Jin-ho was quiet for a long moment.
"So you're making the geometry unreadable," he said.
"Trying to."
"By being wrong deliberately."
"Yes."
Jin-ho unfolded his arms.
"That's going to take a long time," he said.
"Six weeks until it stops feeling awful," Vael said. "Raza's estimate."
"That's optimistic," Jin-ho said.
"Thank you," Vael said. "Very helpful."
Jin-ho almost — almost — smiled.
"If the stance is always wrong," he said, "Reyes reads that instead. The consistent wrongness becomes its own pattern."
Vael stopped.
He hadn't thought about that.
"The wrongness needs to vary," he said.
"Yes," Jin-ho said. "Wrong in different ways. Different enough that there's no pattern to the wrongness." He paused. "Which means you need to know every possible wrong position and rotate through them without a sequence."
Vael looked at the bag.
Jin-ho looked at the bag.
"I'm going to tell Raza," Jin-ho said.
"He might already know," Vael said.
"Then he'll tell me he already knows," Jin-ho said. He walked toward the desk. Stopped. Turned back. "The punches from the wrong positions. Are they landing?"
"No," Vael said. "No power."
"The power comes from the chain," Jin-ho said. "The chain works from specific positions. Different positions need different chain mechanics." He paused. "That's the harder problem."
"I know," Vael said.
"Raza's working on it?"
"Starting next week apparently."
Jin-ho looked at the desk where Raza was now watching them both with the expression of a man who had been listening to the entire conversation and was making notes.
"He definitely already knew," Jin-ho said.
He went to the desk.
The conversation between Jin-ho and Raza lasted six minutes.
Vael couldn't hear all of it — the bag work was ongoing, the gym's ambient noise doing its thing — but he caught fragments. Jin-ho making the point about varied wrongness. Raza responding with something short. Jin-ho asking something. Raza writing. Jin-ho asking something else. Raza writing more. Jin-ho nodding once — not the comprehensive nod, the specific nod of someone who has received information and knows exactly what to do with it.
Jin-ho came back.
"He knew," he said.
"I figured," Vael said.
"He said the varied wrongness was week three," Jin-ho said. "He was building toward it."
"Also figured."
"He also said—" Jin-ho paused, "—that having you figure it out in week one means we move the timeline forward."
Vael looked at him.
"We," he said.
"I'm helping," Jin-ho said. "With the varied-wrongness drilling. I've been watching your tells for four months. I know what readable looks like on you better than anyone except Raza." He said it without particular warmth or sentiment — just the flat delivery of a useful fact. "Raza agreed."
Vael looked at the desk.
Raza was writing in the notebook. He didn't look up.
"Of course he agreed," Vael said.
"He said—" Jin-ho paused again, and this time there was something in the pause that was almost, almost amusement. "He said it would save him approximately forty minutes of drilling per session."
"That's very Raza," Vael said.
"Yes," Jin-ho said. He picked up his water bottle. "After lunch. You and me on the mat. Bring everything wrong."
He went back to his own work.
The afternoon session was the most uncomfortable sparring Vael had done since the first session with Jin-ho four months ago.
The principle was simple. Vael tried to be unreadable. Jin-ho tried to read him. Every time Jin-ho read something — predicted a combination, anticipated a direction, identified a pattern — he stopped and named it.
He stopped a lot.
"Right jab loading," he said, thirty seconds in. "Your left heel lifts before the right jab. Every time."
Vael hadn't known that.
"Right heel," he said.
"Left," Jin-ho said. "Left heel lifts, right jab comes. Without exception."
They reset.
Two minutes later: "You telegraph the overhand. Your chin drops one centimeter before you throw it."
"One centimeter," Vael said.
"One," Jin-ho said. "Reyes will see it in round one. He'll have the counter built by round two."
Reset.
Ninety seconds: "The body shot setup. You look at the body before you go to the body. Not long — a fraction of a second. But you look."
"I look at the body before I hit the body," Vael said.
"Yes," Jin-ho said.
"That's—"
"Very readable," Jin-ho said. "Yes."
By the end of the session Vael had a list of seven tells he hadn't known he had. Jin-ho had named each one with the specific precision of someone who had been looking at him for four months and had been waiting for the correct context in which to say what he'd seen.
Raza sat at the desk the whole time, writing.
When the session ended he looked at the list.
"Seven tells in one session," he said.
"Yes," Jin-ho said.
"Vael," Raza said. "Did you know about any of these."
"No," Vael said.
"Good," Raza said.
"How is that good," Vael said.
"Because the ones you don't know about are the ones Reyes will find first," Raza said. "Better Jin-ho finds them now." He looked at the list. "Seven tells. Week one." He wrote something in the notebook. "This is going to be a longer preparation than I thought."
"Ten weeks," Vael said.
"Ten weeks," Raza agreed. He closed the notebook. "Which is exactly enough time if we don't waste any of it." He stood up. "Tomorrow. Seven AM. Bring everything wrong."
He picked up his jacket.
At the door he stopped.
"Jin-ho," he said.
Jin-ho looked up.
"The left heel," Raza said. "I noticed it six weeks ago. I was waiting for the right moment to address it."
Jin-ho looked at him.
"You could have told him six weeks ago," Jin-ho said.
"I could have," Raza said. "But then you wouldn't have found it yourself today, and finding it yourself means you understand why it matters." He paused. "There's a difference between being told your tells and discovering them."
He left.
Jin-ho looked at the door.
"He definitely already knew everything," he said.
"Always," Vael said.
"That's either very reassuring," Jin-ho said, "or slightly alarming."
"Both," Vael said. "Both is more accurate."
Jin-ho almost smiled. Two seconds. Gone.
He picked up his bag.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Seven forty-eight."
He left.
Faris was the last one out. He stopped at the door and looked at Vael.
"Seven tells," he said.
"You were listening," Vael said.
"Hard not to," Faris said. He shrugged. "Jin-ho finds tells. That's what he does." He paused. "How many does he think Reyes has."
Vael thought about nine fights. About watching Dominic Reyes for three hours and forty minutes and finding two things that might be weaknesses.
"Maybe two," he said.
Faris looked at him.
"That's a bad ratio," he said.
"Yes," Vael said.
Faris nodded. The compressed nod of a man confirming a difficult situation was as difficult as advertised. Then he left.
Vael sat alone in the gym.
The timer ticked through its empty round.
Seven tells he hadn't known about. The left heel before the jab. The chin drop before the overhand. Looking at the body before hitting the body. Four others he was already trying to remember clearly enough to work on.
He picked up his phone.
Seven tells, he texted Mei Lin.
She replied in under a minute. Jin-ho found them?
In one session, he wrote.
How many did you know about before today?
Zero, he wrote.
A pause. He could feel her thinking through the screen.
How many does Reyes have? she wrote.
Maybe two, he wrote. That I could find.
Another pause. Longer.
So he can read you better than you can read him, she wrote.
At the moment, he wrote.
Ten weeks, she wrote.
Ten weeks, he wrote.
Good, she wrote. Then, after a two second gap: The heel thing. I noticed that too.
Vael stared at his phone.
You noticed the left heel, he wrote.
Weeks ago, she wrote. I thought it was deliberate.
He put the phone in his pocket.
Sat in the empty gym for a moment longer.
Then he started laughing — quietly, genuinely, the specific laugh of a man discovering that the people closest to him had been sitting on information he didn't know he needed.
The mechanical timer ticked.
The bags hung still.
Weeks ago.
Ten weeks to make himself unreadable to someone who built fights from other people's tells.
He had, apparently, a lot of tells.
The work had a very specific shape now.
He went home.