Dai-Tai's face glowed with excitement when she spotted the man in the red and yellow painted playground. All her troubles faded away as she took a few steps closer to watch him take over the park. She stood with the amazed children and their parents by the black fence. There were a few passersby that stopped to observe him there and then, but they eventually walked away to mind their own businesses.
The man was facing back to them, so all Dai-Tai could see was he was wearing a loose, white t-shirt, grey sweatpants, and sneakers. The sunlight reflected his semi-wet, short, black hair as he warmed up his body by stretching for several seconds. When he jumped up to grasp the metallic pull-up bar, his toned forearms tightened from the pressure. Swinging his body slowly, the man soared upward and flipped his body into a 360 degree angle. As he came back down, he swung smoothly to the next bar. The children and parents started to clap their hands. Dai-Tai remained still and quiet from the sheer awesomeness. She didn't move her head or turn her body; she was afraid she was going to miss his next move.
After the man tackled the pull-up bars with his gymnastic reflexes, he leaped across the black fence and disappeared into the streets.
Confused by the sudden leave, Dai-Tai tried to see where the man had disappeared to. The children chattered to each other with disappointment while some parents were relieved to finally drag them out of the park.
"This is so lame," a ten year old boy complained. "Where did he go?"
"He probably went to take a dump," a younger boy replied with a snicker. His friend giggled along with him. "Let's go. The other park has the sprinkler on."
Soon, all the children left leaving Dai-Tai alone in the park. Since the park was empty now, she finally had a chance to 'practice'. Stepping on top of a black bench, she surveyed the playground for a certain obstacle she could practice on. Turning left, she spotted another bench that was a few feet away.
Aha! She thought. I bet I can jump over there.
Taking a deep breath, Dai-Tai leaped high, and her feet landed on the other bench. She realized her book bag dragged her down, so she took it off. She grinned to herself; it was a piece of cake. For the next minutes, Dai-Tai practiced jumping from bench to bench. Getting a little braver, she decided to run up to the benches instead.
Stepping a few feet away from the benches, Dai-Tai gathered all her speed and charged toward the nearest bench. Her sneakers hit the edge of it, and her body was hoisted on top of the seat. She focused on the other bench before her, and when the moment was right, she ran across the seat. Leaping forward like a cougar, Dai-Tai reached beyond her destination.
Gravity pulled Dai-Tai down, and her tiny body crashed against the floor. The rubber ground absorbed most of her impact and saved her from severe injuries. If only it had absorbed the tremendous pain that clawed her skin. Wincing from the throbbing pain, Dai-Tai felt as if tiny pieces of glass were cutting deep into her tissues. She could feel the warm blood breaking out of her bruises as her palms and knees lay flat on the ground. Weakly, Dai-Tai tried to push herself up. As she lifted her head, a hand held out to her.
"Need a hand?"
Dai-Tai nearly lost her breath. It was the parkour man that held his hand out to her. The pain had vanished for seconds, and she felt she was saved by a heavenly being. The ecstatic emotion soon drained out of the girl's face when she recognized his face.
Those cool dark eyes. That small, blond-dyed goatee on his chin. The pain seeped back into her senses as Dai-Tai realized that the face belonged to the man whom she had saw on her last day with Chenglei. The man that smoked cigarettes.
He grinned at the girl and withdrew his hand. "You seemed so happy to see me at first, but now it seems you saw a ghost."
Dai-Tai remained staring hard at him. "I remember you…" she began faintly still hurt from the fall. "You were… you were talking with Xun last time."
"Ah," the man replied. He took the water bottle which he had just bought and cooled his skin with it. The sun's heat was starting to invade his sweating body. "Are you sure you don't want my help?" he asked as his calm gaze lingered on her legs.
As Dai-Tai followed his gaze, she grew pale as she peered horrifyingly at her knees. Blood was welling up into pools on both of them which numbed all her senses. The crimson warm liquid was so warm that she couldn't feel it dripping to her ankles. Panicking, the girl didn't know what to do. Her lower lip began to tremble.
The man bent down and placed a bandage on her knee. Dai-Tai looked tearfully at him. She felt ashamed of her crying in front of him, and she felt especially stupid for being weak.
"You're afraid of blood that easily?" he asked. After he placed the last bandage on her left knee, he stood up.
Wiping a tear off her cheek, Dai-Tai didn't reply to his question.
"Well," he began, "think of them as battle scars."
Dai-Tai casted a shaking glance at him. "Battle… scars?" she croaked.
"Yes, battle scars. These are the scars that remain after your hardship," the man replied. "Now you can go around showing them off to your friends," he added sarcastically. He won a slight smile from Dai-Tai.
My battle scars… Dai-Tai thought. "I was trying to run and jump to the other bench but—"
"I know," he interrupted. "I saw you trying to practice when I returned to the park with water. If you want to practice parkour, you have to take the easy steps first and master them until you know them by heart…" As he talked, he led Dai-Tai to the bench where her purple book bag was, and she sat down beside him.
Dai-Tai felt as if she was a puppy being scolded by its owner. While she listened to his advice, she realized that her pain was slowly subsiding as she rested on the seat. "About Chenglei… and Xun…" she hesitated to say, "do you know where they moved to?"
The man took out a pack of cigarettes and lit one with a match. It seemed he was pondering as the cigarette butt puffed out smoke. Dai-Tai fought back against the ghastly fumes entering her nostrils. He finally said, "They are away—beyond this place."
"So they moved far away?"
"Whatever you think."
The two sat together in silence. The man gazed distantly passed the park. His dark eyes seemed to ignore the children that were flooding the playground. Dai-Tai realized that his eyes were rounder than usual—rounder than an average Chinese person. His face was long and lean; his jawline was well defined. The tiny black hairs that grew along the edges of his face exposed the small blond-dyed goatee. The man's facial features gave him a serious cool look—a type of expression that would classify him as apathetic. It seemed he had not laughed for years. Dai-Tai's eyes lingered on his hairy arms which one of them held the water bottle. She wondered how they got so hairy.
"Planning to run away from home?" he asked.
Dai-Tai followed his gaze to her book bag. She had almost forgot that she was running away from home, but did she really still want to? "I don't know, mister…."
"Call me Itzal."
Dai-Tai glanced at him curiously. "Itzal…?" It sounded foreign on her tongue. It was a very unusual name that she had never heard of.
Itzal nodded without looking at her. He remained thinking in his own little world.
"My name is Dai-Tai, but you can call me…" the girl swallowed hard when she remembered Vicky. Although the pain in her knees was gone, some part of her chest hurt. "Dai."
Itzal finally turned to face the girl. "Dai-Tai," he thought out loud. "What an interesting name."
Dai-Tai grinned at him, and he returned the same.
"Anyway, it would be quite stupid if you ran away," Itzal remarked flatly. "Your parents are the ones that provide you food and a roof over your head." A cell phone buzzed in his sweatpants's pocket, and he pulled it out. "Now go home and be a good girl. I have to answer this call."
The girl stood up immediately. While she grabbed her book bag, Itzal said one more thing to her, "If you want to learn, come back tomorrow at the same time. You have potential."
Potential? Dai-Tai watched the man as he answered the phone. She turned around and headed out of the park. I have potential, she thought. Whatever that meant, Dai-Tai headed home with a different attitude. Though, this type of attitude made her feel proud for she had two battle scars.
~~~
It was past six o'clock pm; Dai-Tai's mother got home later than usual. Before she arrived home, her daughter cleverly changed into long pants to hide the evidence of her battle scars. Dai-Tai didn't want her mother to know that she had been out to the park and was originally planning to run away. Since she befriended Itzal, it seemed that she had forgiven her mother. However, her mother didn't seem to forgive her.
The middle-aged woman remained stiff and silent. She had said not one word to Dai-Tai while they were eating dinner; a cooked meal that was not put into any effort. The salt was not fully mixed in the steamed bok choy, and the cuts of boiled chicken were missing their taste. The girl sat in awkward silence as she chewed the chicken slowly in her mouth. She wanted to pass dinner but did not want to anger her mother again.
"You're not going to see Vicky anymore," her mother finally spoke.
Dai-Tai nodded her head understandingly. It was all that her mother said for the rest of the evening.
~~~
On the following morning, Dai-Tai was glad that her mother had forgotten about the key. She walked happily to Columbus Park, and as she reached the entrance of the park, she spotted Itzal waiting for her. The girl quickened her walking speed and felt a smile stretch across her face.
Itzal slipped his hands out of his pants' pocket. He was wearing a sleeveless shirt which revealed his tanned, toned, muscled arms. His muscles were not bulky like those of weight trainers but seemed they were the result of his intensive parkour training. He grinned as the girl approached him.
"Before I teach you the basics, you need to do conditioning," he said.
"Conditioning?"
Itzal nodded. "It's to make your body stronger, so you can handle the basic parkour stunts." He went over thoroughly about sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, and stretches. Dai-Tai meanwhile didn't understand half of the things he said but tried to follow what he was saying. "I'm going to first teach you how to do push-ups, okay?"
Dai-Tai nodded.
Itzal leveled his body on the ground to demonstrate the push-ups. Dai-Tai counted five push-ups in her head as she watched his triceps contract back to the lifts. He stood back up after he was done. He made the whole process seemed easy that Dai-Tai was eager to show him that she could do it too.
While Dai-Tai placed her palms flat on the ground and raised her body, Itzal told her, "Your butt is supposed to be lowered." Embarrassed, the girl quickly lowered her butt and felt the muscles in her arms begin to tense. Pushing herself down, she winced as she felt the ache erupting out of her triceps.
"Good," he said, "don't give up now."
Lowering her body a little more, Dai-Tai felt her arms shake aggressively. She heeded Itzal's words and lowered herself to the best of her ability. Just when she was about to complete the push-up with a final lift, Itzal exclaimed, "You have to lower yourself more! And keep your elbows close to you!"
Dai-Tai collapsed on the ground. "I give up!" she whined rubbing her sore arms. "It looked so easy when you did it, but when I do it, it's so hard!"
Itzal laughed lightly. "Of course," he replied. "But I've been doing them for years which is different. Practice makes perfect."
Practice makes perfect. The girl grimaced at those words; he was beginning to remind her of her first grade teacher.
"It's not easy, but don't give up. If you do a few push-ups every day, you'll get used to it. Sooner or later, you'll be able to do more than ten."
The thought of doing push-ups every day didn't appeal to Dai-Tai. "What if I'll still never be able to do one?" she asked skeptically.
Itzal gave the girl an amusing glance. "Then you're either doing it wrong or not working hard enough."
Dai-Tai sighed which made him chuckle more. If I really want to be strong, thought the girl, then I should just suck it up. She allowed the stubbornness drain away and replaced it with a determined outlook. Once conditioning was over, Itzal would teach her the basic parkour stunts. The excited thought motivated Dai-Tai to do her best.
Next, Itzal taught her how to do sit-ups which Dai-Tai found them to be easier than the push-ups. He then taught her other exercises that would improve her flexibility.
After an hour, the girl felt her body sweating from not only the workout but the blazing August sun. She took a break and drank water from the fountain. As the water cooled her dry lips, her body was rejuvenated. Dai-Tai felt much better now, but she still felt sticky in her clothes. Although her whole body was tired and achy, she could feel the muscles that were once hidden in her body.
Itzal also took a long drink from his water bottle. Turning the cap back on his bottle, he looked at Dai-Tai approvingly. "You did well today," he said which made the girl beam. "This is it for today. We'll meet back tomorrow, and if I'm not here, practice by yourself. Don't slack off, all right?"
"All right."
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