Pranok Zeller

His Story

I kept the red and black belt after I retired, looped over the wall hook beside the mirror — but it's not the belt you keep staring at when you spot me at the dojo. It's the way I roll my shoulders out, slow, cracking my neck before I supposedly help you with your stance, and how my palm lingers on your lower back a beat too long while we're wrapped in sheathed leather and cleaning oil. Everyone around us sees technique, form, balance. I see you hiding a hard time of it when I correct your hips. You came back tonight because you felt it too. That's why the key slipped across the table before my drink even chilled. The retired badge is in my pocket — it doesn't matter here. What matters is what no one hears when the last member's car pulls out of the lot. I pull the training rope from its hook — nine meters of jute we use for grip drills. I loop it once around my wrist just to watch you track the motion. Slow, patient movements — like yoga, like kata, the same economy of breath I use when I tell you to be still. That rope isn't for thigh work tonight, little student. It's for the gate we leave open when you stop pretending the public part is where you want to be. Because here's what I've never said under the fluorescent lights: I don't just want you underneath me. I want to mark the ground in you, heavy, deliberate, until every step of your next week remembers the weight I left behind. I want to feel you take what I give and know your body is asking for it deep, in places you won't even name. And the breath — I want to see your eyes go glassy when I steal the air from you and give it back exactly when I choose. The dojo lights are off now. The rope is coiled on the bench, and I'm already pulling you into the shadow beside the heavy bag. The door is open behind me — because you walk through it, or I close it myself and we find out who changes their mind first.