“Hey, you lost, man.” Seth blinked, snapping his attention away from a pair of blue belts. A guy was walking toward the edge of the mats. He was tall, maybe twenty-two, with a lean, heavily muscled build of an athlete who counted his macros religiously. He wore a crisp white gi patched with sponsor logos.
His belt was purple, heavily frayed at the ends, a stylistic choice Seth knew to show how much time he’d spent on the mats. This was Cameron. He was sweating, but it was a clean sweat. He smelled faintly of sandalwood soap. “Delivery,” Seth said. His voice was gravelly quiet. He hoisted the greasy paper bag slightly.
“Name’s on the receipt. Just need to drop it.” Cameron wiped his forehead with the sleeve of his gi. He looked Seth up and down, his eyes snagging on the cheap soaked windbreaker, the mud-caked boots, the slumped posture. Seth knew what he looked like. He looked defeated. He looked like the invisible underclass that brought these people their calories.
“Desk girl’s in the back,” Cameron said, his tone clipped. “Don’t drip that grease on the floor. I just had the epoxy redone.” Seth didn’t care about the attitude. He just wanted his delivery fee. He took a step toward the desk, but the floor was slick from a spilled water bottle. His boot caught the edge of the puddle, and he slipped.
It wasn’t a hard fall. Seth’s balance was instinctual. He caught himself, his weight dropping low, his right foot stepping out to stabilize. But his right foot stepped onto the sacred blue mat. A muddy, wet boot print stamped perfectly onto the pristine tatami. The gym went quiet. It wasn’t a sudden cinematic silence, but a gradual cessation of squeaking mats and heavy breathing.
A few pairs of grapplers stopped rolling, sitting up on their knees to look. Cameron stopped wiping his face. His jaw tightened. He looked at the mud on the mat, then up at Seth. The annoyance in the kid’s eyes mutated into a sharp predatory irritation. “Are you kidding me?” Cameron’s voice echoed off the high ceilings. “Step off the mat, now.”
Seth pulled his foot back immediately. “My bad,” he muttered. He wasn’t scared. He was just exhausted. He didn’t want the hassle. “Floor was slick. I’m off.” “You dragged street garbage onto the training area,” Cameron said, stepping closer to the edge, his bare toes curling against the edge of the blue foam. “Do you have any idea how unhygienic that is? We get staph infections from less.”