Chapter 18: 18: Exercising Again

By the time we arrived at the park, the weird mood between us was fortunately gone, and Noitte was looking excited once again. 

Our house was actually closest to the back side of the park, so we rarely saw the sign or the fence or anything else at the front of the space. Instead we were greeted by the familiar feeling and sound of the sidewalk we were walking on being replaced by a dirt path, the sight of the duck pond being obscured by three or four wooden gazebos lined up behind it, and the smell of the park’s trash waiting for pickup.

Well, it was hardly scenic, but I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed this crappy place.

While I was feeling nostalgic, Noitte was practically buzzing with excitement. She picked up her pace and made a beeline towards the pond. Back when we were both doing track, we would always set our stuff at the same place to do our stretches in the morning, and I’d guess that was exactly what she was hoping to do now. 

Sure enough, she immediately made her way to the second pavilion on the left and quickly sat down on the bench. We didn’t really have anything to leave here this time around, all we’d really brought were phones and water bottles, both of which we’d be taking with us on the trail, but I guess it was just the principle of the thing. 

I looked around the part of the park I could see as I made my way over. As expected of a Saturday morning before 10 AM, there were only a few people around. A group of guys were hanging out by the benches and laughing among themselves, a couple was being lovey-dovey as they fed the ducks, a scattered handful of people were jogging at different points along the track, and a few families were sitting out by the tables as they prepared to use the barbecue pits.

Even after five years of not coming to the park, nothing had changed… I wasn’t sure whether to find that reassuring or depressing.

“Alrighty then, Conor. What’s the plan?” Noitte asked as I made my way to our old bench.

I thought for a moment as I sat on the opposite side of the bench to her, only for her to slide over towards me until our shoulders were practically touching. I understood that this was the result of her own feelings and Corruption’s effects, and it’s not like I wasn’t attracted to her or didn’t want her to be intimate with me, but having her get so close to me so frequently was still going to take some getting used to. 

“Conor? You good?” she asked, apparently concerned with my silence.

I quickly organized my thoughts before replying.

“Er, yeah, sorry about that, just thinking… Well, I haven’t really done much for a while now, so we should probably start slow.”

“Right!”

“So how about we just start with a slow jog and see how things go from there?”

“Okay! Works for me! The track is about a half mile, I think, so we can-”

“Er, actually, Noitte, would you mind if we went down the forest path?” 

Noitte froze at my interruption, an expression of confusion written on her face.

“Eh? Why the forest path?”

“More shade and less people?” I replied, trying to sound as convincing as possible.

“I mean,  yeah, that makes sense, I guess... Wait! You’re gonna have to deal with a lot of people starting Monday anyway, right Conor? Maybe this would be a good opportunity to ease into it?”

Noitte’s face brightened as she spoke, apparently feeling good about her idea. Even so…

“No.”

“What? Why not?”

“Because there’s a big difference between standing in front of someone while you’re ringing up their groceries and having them watch you run?”

Even if I didn’t plan to stay in front of people for long at Richard’s, I felt like I could at least survive it since it was just saying a few words and making sure people paid. As for having a bunch of people watching me make a fool of myself while I awkwardly try to get back in shape? Hell no.

Noitte’s face dropped a little as she thought about what I’d said.

“I… still don’t think they’ll care that much about how you run, but… that’s fair… Still! I think we should go somewhere with more people before Monday, you know? Like, get a practice run for the number of people you’ll have to deal with or something!”

The look of concern on her face made it difficult for me to say no to her, that said, I definitely wasn’t going to change my mind about the track today, so I decided to answer noncommittally for now.

“Maybe we can go somewhere later on, but for now I want to just focus on jogging.”

Noitte nodded her head, her face looking unconvinced but apparently willing to let the topic go for now. She leaned further into me, resting her head against my shoulder as she moved on to the next order of business. 

“So, you want to start now, or wait a little bit, or what?”

I would definitely be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying relaxing here with her, but I figured it would probably be a mistake to spend too long sitting here like this rather than doing what I came here for… just a few minutes couldn’t hurt, right?

“We just got here, so how about a short break before we start stretching?” I asked.

Noitte’s eyes lit up briefly in an all too familiar way before she started expositing.

“Oh, did you know they actually say you shouldn’t do those stretches before you run now?”

I couldn’t help but be caught off guard by her sudden statement. 

“What? That’s ridiculous, we always did exercise before running, right?” 

“Yeah, but there were some new studies that came out a couple years ago saying that a lot of the stretches coach Chaco had us do could actually increase the chance of injury when you run.”

It seemed like they changed advice for health and fitness every year or two, but it kind of annoyed me to hear someone claim that I’d been doing something I cared about wrong all this time… not that being annoyed would stop me from taking it seriously, mind you. 

As I thought, Noitte seemed to transition into ramble mode.

“Nowadays they have us doing dynamic stretches before we run, like lunges and stuff. Apparently the range of motion and the increased blood flow are supposed to warm you up without overly stressing muscles before a workout, so it’s better for you and reduces the chance of injury. A couple of years ago a bunch of the girls on the track team pulled muscles when we were getting ready for the district meet and-”

I continued listening to Noitte as she recounted anecdotal evidence of the hazards of stretching while I leaned back and relaxed a little.

It was all a very familiar feeling. The cool morning air, the shimmering water of the duck pond, the feeling of my track clothes, my ears buzzing as Noitte continued to talk way longer than she needed to. 

“Conor?”

Now that I think about it, last time I was here was just after I dropped out of school…

“Hello?”

It was supposed to be the last time I ever came here with Noitte…

“”CONOR!””

Noitte and Fig’s voices rang out and snapped me back to attention.

“Er, sorry about that, Noitte.”

Noitte’s face was a mixture of concern and slight annoyance that I’d zoned out while she was talking. 

“You alright? You looked a little… out of it.”

“Actually, you looked super out of it.” added Fig.

Probably because I was, in fact, out of it, but I’m not going to say that, of course.

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“Yeah, no, just… tired.” I replied.

Noitte smiled slightly as she seemed to think of something.

“Still not used to waking up before noon, huh?”

I shrugged my shoulders at her jab, and stood up without answering, pushing her slightly as I did.

Noitte, for her part, jumped up from the bench excitedly, her sports bra unfortunately eliminating the usual show that followed her moving quickly.

“Ready to start, Conor?”

As excited as she seemed, I felt like it would probably be some sort of crime to say “no” here, even if I wanted to.

“Alright, what’s first?”

Noitte paused for a moment as she seemed to think through her usual warm-up.

“Well… how about we start with side lunges?”

It worried me a little to hear the uncertainty in her voice, but I also hadn’t done any exercise at all in an embarrassing amount of time, so I felt like I should just go with her suggestion.

I nodded my head and set my feet apart as I prepared to begin, only to have Noitte look at me with a look of slight concern.

“Er, Conor? Your feet are way too far apart, you’re gonna pull something like that.”

What, really? I’m pretty sure this is what I always did?

I brought my legs in to about where Noitte’s seemed to be and looked back at her.

Apparently satisfied with my form, Noitte smiled and nodded once before continuing on.

“Alrighty then, I’ll count!”

At her “One” I leaned to my right at the same time she did, only to be met once again with her concerned face and a voice that almost sounded hesitant to criticize me.

“Er, you’re not supposed to let your knee bend like that, Conor.”

Somehow, I felt like this was going to take a while.

And it did! 

Whatever fantasy I had gone in with about easy stretches and having time to ogle Noitte in her track uniform while she stretched were dead and gone as the reality of the situation mercilessly hit me. 

For one thing: I forgot how to do literally everything. I mean, sure, I still remembered the basics of what a lunge looked like, but every stretch I did required Noitte to correct me at least once. As it turns out, a vague memory is less than useless if you don’t want to pull something. 

Second: I had mistaken “Not fat” with “In shape”. I always prided myself on staying in shape despite being a NEET, but that particular bit of hubris had since been shattered. I had controlled my eating to not gain weight, but my actual fitness was… well I had no fitness.

Every stretch we did hammered home how much less flexible I was, and every concerning *POP* from a place I didn’t know could pop made me wonder how I was even still functioning. 

Fig’s inappropriately cheerful voice rang out from beside me.

“Actually, Conor, your eating habits weren’t even that good! Lucky for you, even before it’s active, mana can convert excess calories into energy! So as your mana developed, it managed to keep pace with your laziness and eating! Pretty cool, right?”

For my own sake, I decided to ignore her exposition as I continued doing high knees. I also decided to ignore the popping sounds. 

Finally after an excruciatingly informative fifteen minutes of actual stretching and much longer of correcting and redoing stretches, Noitte seemed ready to give her warm-up seal of approval.

“Whew!” she sighed, sitting back down on the bench next to me. “That took a lot longer than expected… er, not in a mean way or anything! I know it’s been a while and all, so… a-anyway! You still want to go jogging or maybe we should call it a day with the stretches for now?”

Her question was probably made with good intentions and concern at my obvious struggle getting through all the stretches, but I still felt my left eye twitch a little at her question.

Like hell I was going to do all that just to go back home! I came here to jog, darn it! Now I’m warmed up and ready to go, of course I’m jogging!

Fig’s voice rang out in my head. 

“And don’t forget it’s a great chance to corrupt her!” she reminded, sounding a little annoyed.

That too!

Noitte, for her part, seemed to understand my intentions based on my probably funny looking facial expression, and jumped back up. 

“Well, if we’re gonna go down the forest path we should get to it! If we take too long it’ll get hot and the walk home is gonna suck!”

With that, she grabbed her phone and water, tucked them away, then began making her way down the path leading to the wooded area, occasionally turning back to check where I was.

I followed right behind her, still feeling slightly sore, but oddly accomplished as I half looked forward to the jog and half looked forward to finally having some alone time with Noitte.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author's Note: Guess who has two thumbs and lost his entire computer along with his dozen pre-written chapters and his will to live:

This guy!

Yeah, sorry about the two weeks of nothing, but losing 25k words to someone else's mistake was a huge demotivator and not having a laptop made it kind of hard to even try rewriting things.

That said, I got a new laptop today and I plan to make it everyone else's problem! So hopefully I can get back into the swing of things and start being somewhat consistent again. 

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