Sweet and Salty ~ (GxG) (Book 3: The Sweet and Sour series)

First Impression

"Yes yes.. Keep going..You are doing great. Faster girl faster!", encouraged master Dawson.

"Twenty six...seven..eight...twenty nine...", young Tasha kept counting in her head as her glove-cladded hands kept delivering the punches to the sandbag. Her muscles were sore from all the practice she had been putting herself through. Yet she felt her hands slowly slacking, the power diminishing with each punch hitting the bag, her wrists were aching more and more as her speed was decreasing.

"Beeeep..", the alarm rung before Tasha could deliver the thirtieth punch to the bag.

"Twenty nine in a minute....Not really bad", master Dawson patted Tasha on her head as he ushered the boy standing next on queue to put his gloves on.

'It was twenty eight yesterday, twenty nine the day before. I'm not really improving, am I?', Tasha mused in her head as she stepped away from the arena where master Dawson was calling all the students one by one for their mandatory sparring lesson, rather casually noting down how many punches they can land in a minute without actually helping them to correct their posture or techniques.

All the students are around the age of Tasha, ranging from ten to twelve. Tasha wanted to train more with the seniors as she knew practising with the kids in her own batch won't get her any further. None of them was taking the self defense class seriously. It was just another pass-time for them like the mandatory physical education course. But for Tasha who had always been into physical fitness and power building exercises that class meant a lot. It was her gateway towards a more fit and strong physique that she had always dreamt of. She was grateful that the school took the initiative to provide the students with a new self defense curriculum. Her parents had always ignored her pleas to start taking martial art courses. But to Tasha's disappointment their good, old phys-ed teacher Mr. Carlo Dawson wasn't being of much help to teach them some actual technique.

Tasha strolled to a corner of the auditorium that their school used as a practise ground for both phys-ed and self defense classes. It was a rather large atrium with a huge gallery covering it from three sides, on the fourth side was a door leading to the school hallway. A few school staff and students were sitting here and there in the gallery. Tasha started to untie the strings on her boxing gloves using her teeth without paying attention to the tall, wide framed woman sitting on a aisle seat in the middle of the gallery and staring at the kids intently with her blue eyes.

Just as Tasha untied the gloves, Mia, a student from another section peeped through the door at her side, "Hey Tasha, Mr. Dutta is asking for you."

Mr. Dutta was their history teacher.

"But the class is not over yet", Tasha mumbled then remembered the class was always as good as over. Nobody cared whether they attended it or not. The school probably had started the class with good intention but in the end neither the students nor Mr. Dawson was taking it seriously.

"He wants to hand you over the files of the group project. It will just take two minutes", Mia insisted.

Tasha sighed and went after Mia.

It took about five minutes for her to return to the atrium.