The park didn't belong to anyone.
It sat between two housing blocks and a row of closed shops, a rectangle of tired grass and cracked concrete that never quite emptied and never quite filled. Even in winter, people drifted through it—dog walkers cutting corners, smokers pausing with their backs to the wind, kids killing time without anything specific to do.
Joe noticed it because it was cold.
Not the sharp, clean cold he was used to in climate-controlled halls, but the kind that settled into joints and stayed there. The ground was hard, the air damp, breath visible in short bursts. He stood at the edge of the park with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched slightly, watching a man wrap his knuckles with tape.
The man sat on a low concrete wall, elbows on his knees, working methodically. No gloves. No bag. Just tape, layered tight around the hands until the skin beneath dulled and flattened. Another man stood nearby, bouncing lightly on his feet, hood pulled low, shadowboxing without rhythm.
Joe watched longer than he intended.
The movements were inefficient. Too much tension. Too much wasted motion. The bouncing wasn't measured, the strikes thrown into empty air without reference points. There was no court, no lines, no structure. The whole thing looked improvised, bordering on careless.
Boxing, Joe thought distantly. He'd seen enough of it to recognize the outline.
He turned to leave, then paused.
The man with the taped hands stood and tested his wrists, rolling them slowly. The other laughed at something Joe couldn't hear and threw a lazy punch at the air, shoulders loose, feet sliding on the cold concrete.
They weren't training for anyone.
That, more than the movements, caught Joe's attention.
He started walking the park most mornings after that.
At first, it was incidental. A way to fill time without committing to anything. He walked loops, hands deep in his jacket pockets, breath steady. He didn't stop. Didn't stare. Just passed through and registered what was there.
The boxers came irregularly. Sometimes one. Sometimes three. Sometimes none.
When they were there, they trained without ceremony. No music. No instruction. They hit pads held too low or too high, laughed when something went wrong, reset without discussion. Their knuckles were always taped. Their breath always loud.
Joe stayed distant. He told himself it was curiosity, nothing more. The same way he'd once watched tennis players warm up between matches, cataloguing habits without interest.
Still, his eyes kept returning.
The cold sharpened everything. Sounds carried. The dull thud of fist against forearm. The scrape of shoes. The occasional sharp exhale when someone took a shot they hadn't fully expected.
Joe's own body responded without invitation.
When a punch came wide, his shoulders shifted. When someone stepped in too deep, his weight adjusted. Reflexes mapped trajectories automatically, calculating space that meant nothing to him now.
He dismissed the sensation as leftover habit. Muscle memory misfiring without a task.
On the fourth morning, one of them noticed him.
"Cold to be standing around," the man said, voice rough but not unfriendly.
Joe stopped a few steps away. "I'm walking."
The man nodded, as if that explained everything. He glanced at Joe's shoes—clean trainers, still carrying the faint outline of indoor use.
"You train something?" he asked.
Joe hesitated. Not because the answer was complicated, but because it no longer fit cleanly.
"Badminton," he said finally.
The man blinked once, then grinned. "That fast one, yeah?"
Joe didn't respond.
"Want a go?" the man said, gesturing vaguely to the empty space between them.
Joe almost laughed. "No."
The man shrugged. "Suit yourself."
Joe kept walking.
He told himself it was crude. Boxing relied on absorbing damage, not avoiding it. It rewarded tolerance for impact rather than precision. The absence of structure meant inefficiency—energy wasted on bravado, pain mistaken for progress.
That's what he believed.
It sat comfortably, until it didn't.
A week later, he stopped again.
The man with the taped hands—same one as before—was shadowboxing alone. His movements were tighter today. Still rough, still unrefined, but purposeful. He stepped forward and back in short bursts, fists rising and falling, breath syncing imperfectly with motion.
Joe stood at the edge of the concrete, arms folded.
"You watch a lot," the man said without turning.
Joe didn't deny it. "You hit wrong."
The man laughed, quick and sharp. "Probably."
Joe watched another combination, eyes narrowing slightly. "You're overcommitting."
"Yeah?"
"You'd be punished for that."
The man finally turned, studying Joe with open interest. "By who?"
Joe shrugged. "Anyone paying attention."
Silence settled briefly between them, broken only by breath fogging the air.
"You want to show me?" the man asked.
Joe considered it. The question didn't feel like a challenge. More like curiosity, unguarded and unthreatened.
"Not really," Joe said.
"Fair enough."
The man stepped closer anyway, hands raised loosely, elbows wide. "Just move, then. No hitting."
Joe exhaled, slow. "Fine."
They stood facing each other, no formal distance, no agreed boundary. The ground beneath them was uneven, patches of frost still clinging to shaded concrete.
The man shifted his weight and threw a light, exploratory punch.
Joe stepped aside without thought.
The punch passed through empty space. The man adjusted, threw another, slightly faster.
Joe slipped again. No effort. No urgency. His feet moved before his mind engaged, angles chosen instinctively. The rhythm felt familiar, even if the context didn't.
The man laughed, genuine and pleased. "You're quick."
Joe said nothing.
A third punch came, wider, less controlled. Joe ducked under it, pivoting on the ball of his foot, ending up behind the man's shoulder.
They stopped.
"Again," the man said.
Joe shook his head. "That's enough."
"You didn't hit me," the man said, still smiling.
"I wasn't trying to."
"Yeah, but you could've."
Joe paused, considering that. "Probably."
The man nodded, satisfied. "See? Not that crude."
Joe felt a flicker of something then—irritation, maybe. Or the need to correct.
"You're open the whole time," Joe said. "You don't reset. You'd get picked apart."
"Maybe," the man agreed easily. "But you didn't."
Joe didn't answer. He picked up his jacket and turned away, the exchange already filed away as confirmation.
Boxing was inefficient. His reflexes translated cleanly. The encounter proved it.
Or so he thought.
Over the next days, the memory replayed without permission. Not the punches, but the laughter. The lack of tension. The way the man hadn't flinched when he missed, hadn't apologized or adjusted posture to save face.
Joe returned to the park more often.
Sometimes he stayed longer. Sometimes he drifted closer. He never joined in again, but he watched more intently now, attention sharpening.
The boxers trained through discomfort. Cold numbed their hands. Missed punches stung wrists and elbows. When something hurt, they shook it off and continued, grinning through clenched teeth.
Pain didn't interrupt the session.
Joe found that strange.
In his world, discomfort was addressed immediately. Ice. Compression. Adjustment. Pain was data—something to be managed, minimized, corrected before it compromised performance.
Here, it was simply present.
One afternoon, a punch landed awkwardly against a forearm. The impact made a dull, unpleasant sound. The man who took it hissed through his teeth, then laughed, loud and unguarded.
"That woke me up," he said.
The other man laughed too, wiping his nose with the back of his taped hand.
Joe felt something tighten in his chest.
He didn't know why.
The laughter didn't signal dominance or relief. It wasn't bravado. It didn't ask for recognition.
It existed entirely within the moment.
Joe turned away, unsettled.
Behind him, another punch missed cleanly, cutting through cold air. The boxer laughed again, brighter this time, and Joe kept walking, disturbed not by the violence, but by the enjoyment threaded through it.