THE FIREMAN'S REVENGE: under the embers (II)

The alarm went off at 5:00 in the morning, and for the first time in years, Adrian didn't turn it off to keep sleeping. Every muscle in his body protested the training from the previous day, but there was something different about him this morning. A purpose.

With stiff movements, he got out of bed and headed to the bathroom. He avoided looking in the mirror, as he always did. In the kitchen, he found Marta, his roommate, who looked at him in surprise.

"Adrian? What are you doing awake at this hour?"

"I'm going for a run," he replied, while preparing a smoothie with the ingredients Jairo had indicated: protein powder, banana, oats, and milk.

Marta watched him with curiosity as he poured the contents into a thermos.

"Since when do you make smoothies? And... since when do you run?"

"Since today," he simply replied with a smile.

The cold morning air hit his face when he left the building. Jairo had sent him a message with precise instructions: 5 kilometers before classes, every day. No excuses. No pauses.

The first two hundred meters were tolerable. The next five hundred were hell. At two kilometers, Adrian was vomiting in a trash can, with sweat soaking his loose-fitting t-shirt. But he kept going. Because every step, every painful breath of cold air, took him a little further away from being invisible.

***

The first month was torture. Waking up at dawn to run, classes at the university, and then four hours of intense training with Jairo at the small gym on the outskirts. The diet was strict: proteins, vegetables, complex carbohydrates. No sugar, no alcohol, nothing that could sabotage the transformation.

"Twenty more! And don't make me repeat it!" Jairo shouted while Adrian struggled to lift weights that seemed stuck to the ground.

"I... I can't do more..." he panted, with his arms trembling.

Jairo approached and leaned in until his face was centimeters from Adrian's. His breath always smelled of mint, and his eyes had that predatory glint that Adrian already knew too well.

"Do you remember our agreement, university boy? If you don't comply, you pay. If you comply... " he left the sentence in the air, sliding a hand over Adrian's sweaty pubis to the edge of his training shorts.

With a moan of pain and determination, Adrian lifted the weights again. One, two, three... each repetition was torture, but the alternative was worse. Or maybe better, depending on how you looked at it. Because Adrian had discovered something disturbing: he began to yearn for the punishment as much as the reward.

At the tenth repetition, his arms gave out. The weights fell with a crash, and Jairo shook his head, clearly disappointed.

"It seems you haven't learned the lesson yet."

***

The locker room was empty. It was late, and all the other users of Jairo's small gym had left hours ago. Only Adrian and Jai...