Cruel Games

Chapter 1

It was late at night in a crowed gym and there was this girl in green top and black leggings working out at the chest machine. The monotonic hammering sound of the metal surfaces clashing was adding rhythm to her thoughts. Internationl students...bam..."as you can see I am also not blonde and tall"... bam... they will be each different country... bam... she needed to be pleasant and funny... bam... it shouldn't be that difficult... bamm..."we have a busy week ahead"...bam... "full of exciting stuff to do together"...bam... "now tell me something about yourselves"...bamm... oh, crap she should have started by introducing herself, right... bamm... damn! It is way too heavy... bammm... and there was 10 more to go, right? She took a deep breath and exhaled noisily. Her face was all red, she wiped it with her wrist band and waved her dripping wet top to feel some refreshment, the air in the fitness hall was heavy and dense with everyone's effort, despite the good ventilation. Leyla stood up from the chest machine and walked towards her water bottle, forgotten at one of the rowing machines. She passed closely in front of the mirror and straightened her back posture, other than that she estimated her looks as good. There was a guy in front of her making bicep curls right in front of the mirror – his back posture was not right, she noticed, although he would have rather expected her to notice his bulky powerful arms. Leyla was thin and not excessively tall with too well formed arms for a woman, with (fortunately to her femininity) relatively narrow shoulders, hidden nicely with her long black wavy hair when loose. This was not too often.

She drank water and headed back to the chest machine, the bicep curl guy in front of the mirror followed her with his look, but she did not notice, as her thoughts were already concentrated fully in the second set of chest press. 1..bam...2 ... bamm... 10 bamm, there it was, almost ready with the work out, let's see if she had strength enough left to hold a plank for two minutes. Now she certainly had time to rehearse her tomorrow's speech, well no need, international students are just like any other students, they will be confused, she will make them feel comfortable, they will most likely have simple questions, she will be able to answer them all, she only needed to relax and take it easy, already thinking about it now was an overkill, yeah but what else to think about... Leyla took a look at her reflection in the mirror – beautiful plank – one straight line from head to toes, not even a minute has passed, was she crazy to set the timer for two darn minutes? A little more, "you are a machine and machines never give up"! Last time she did 1,5 minutes, so she was definitely ready. Once it is over she would feel so good... Her top was quivering with the amplitude of her abs contractions in the effort to sustain this demanding posture a while longer, only 30 sec left... damn are they slow, those last 30s, the first were way faster, "just don't collapse"! Think about the joy after sustaining it so long. The hell the joy, it was so painful already, 20s, no way! Her arms were now trembling too, "just don't collapse, it is almost over"...

She collapsed at 1:51 and had bad consciousness, although everyone else in the gym, was overwhelmed with her strength and endurance, despite admiring her other ad-hoc assets on an ad-hoc basis.

Leyla never considered herself beautiful or in any way worth it, although her environment was continuously stimulating her good self-esteem. She grew up in country where people's opinion is the greatest virtue and peoples well being is the absolute goal. Mediocre performance was stimulated supreme performance was acknowledged, yet not exaggerated to not put mediocre performance in the shades as it needed to be the focus. Getting the majority at mid-level would make a group of individuals stronger together then alone and this is basically all you need to have a well functioning society. Yet for Leyla there were too many facts and ideas from bad functioning societies influencing her growth and forming as a person. She was forced by her bossy grandmother to not be proud of anything else than being Hungarian. Her Spanish father wanted her always to strive to be the best in class to shine bright and intensive and show off being better the rest. She ended up not being proud of anything, putting impossible goals in front of herself and eventally feeling very ashamed every time when she was better than the rest.