With all that free time—no family obligations, no domestic servitude, no constant low-level trauma—Phei had thrown himself into training with the intensity of a man possessed.
Because he was, kind of. Possessed by ambition. By hunger. By the desperate need to become strong enough that no one could ever make him feel weak again.
Kieran, the personal trainer, had given up trying to slow him down after day three.
"You're going to hurt yourself," the man had warned, watching Phei add another plate to the bar.
"Watch me," Phei had replied.
And Kieran had watched. With increasingly wide eyes. As Phei pushed past every limit that should have existed for a seventeen-year-old who'd been malnourished and neglected when he first arrived.
By the end of the week, he could bench press twenty kilograms each side in five sets of forty reps each.
Forty reps. Five times! Forty Kilos, altogether!
