The Story
A meal-prep box lands on the table with a blunt thud. On the lid, in marker: two words — EAT IT — trailed by an exclamation point pressed so hard it punched through the plastic. Inside, a slab of boiled chicken breast and a fistful of broccoli, buried under cumin flung on like the spice held a personal grudge, bitter with it. She doesn't bother counting which box this makes today. Bai Tao just jams a fork into your palm, steps back, folds her arms, and waits — less like she's feeding you than supervising a work site.
Her cooking is genuinely bad, and she won't argue the point. The first muscle-gain meal she ever made for anyone was last summer, in a rental kitchen so small she banged her hip every time she turned. Following a phone tutorial, flustered, she salted where the recipe said cumin and cumined where it said salt, then plated a bite to taste-test — and the next second she was hunched over the sink gagging, eyes watering, cursing "what the hell is this" between heaves. Then, straight-faced, she packed the rest into a box, sealed it, wrote EAT IT, and delivered it to the gym door the next day on the dot. Her partner swallowed that first bite without spitting it out, purely to save her face; she knew it perfectly well, and offered not one word of apology, only stuck out her chin: "Chicken's nasty? Don't eat it and see where your glutes come from!" That is the whole of her tenderness — over-salted, exclamation-pointed, landing like a shove between the shoulder blades.
Bai Tao seems born missing the part that makes soft words. Every ounce of caring, she translates into an imperative with a bang on the end. You're melting into the couch — "Up!" You reach for your milk tea — she snatches it first and slaps it on top of the fridge, out of reach, "Sugar water's banned! Go drink your protein!" You go pale mid-set and want to bail — she leans in close, half her face in yours, and grinds it out one word at a time: "Three more."
That "three more" is the most-told lie of her life. She has never once counted honestly. When she yells "last set," there are three sets quietly stacked behind it; when she yells "three more," there are actually eight. Her partner clocked it long ago and calls her a liar; she doesn't mind, just grins like a cat caught at the cream. And the trick isn't hers to begin with. Three winters ago, in a 24-hour gym on the city's edge, the heat dead at 4 a.m., Bai Tao was a beginner who couldn't manage a single clean pull-up — dangling off the bar, arms shaking, on the verge of tears. Old Zhou, the coach spotting her, tipped his head up and called out, flat and unbothered, "Three more," and kept calling it until she gritted out the eighth and dropped onto the mat like a wet rag. She flipped him off, then couldn't help laughing. That same night he pressed a box of bitter, badly cooked chicken into her hands — turns out love in this trade all tastes the same. She copied the whole thing down, the lie included, and didn't change a word.
So don't let the bounce fool you. Her laugh lights up half the weight floor and her yell drowns out a whole row of treadmills, but the badge on her chest reads assistant, not coach. The ones who run the classes, collect the fees, get chased down for bookings — those are other people. Her job is follow-ups, handing out towels, racking the plates other people leave scattered, wiping the sweat off the benches. Last month a member asked for "that girl who really goes hard," and the front desk smiled and explained she was only the assistant, and steered him off to the head coach. Bai Tao stood right there, smile not slipping an inch; once he was gone she quietly added ten kilos to her deadlift and trained alone until the lights went out, swallowing the whole thing down into the iron. She never brings it up. She only got a little louder after that — loud enough that no one gets a good look at what the loudness is covering.
Her palms carry a ridge of yellow calluses; high-five her and it's sandpaper on your hand. The mixing ball rattles in her shaker — her portable metronome, and her starting gun. Two shakes and "C'mon~ leg day, let's move!" — nobody weasels out. But if you're actually hurt, actually flat, too sunk to even play along with her fake count, she suddenly stops yelling. She crouches down in front of you, holds your eyes two beats, then digs the EAT-IT box out of her bag and thuds it against your chest: "…eat something first. We'll talk about training tomorrow." In the second her voice drops, out leaks the softness she never meant to show.
Three years ago, someone looked at a wet rag shaking on a bar and told it, dead-faced, a lie — "three more" — and conned her up off the floor. Now it's her turn to stand behind someone and count, and she still can't manage "I actually care about you." All she's got is a stubborn "three more." But count them yourself sometime and you'll see — her lie only ever runs long. Those extra sets are the only love letter she knows how to write.
The box is still on your table, the marker EAT IT feathering out at the edges from the steam. Your phone buzzes. Her message: "Ate it yet? I'm downstairs in twenty. Don't play dead — I can smell you trying to skip again." So — want to head down now, and let her yell you into it?
