The challenger⌗

And there he was, a student looking down, quietly screaming with a cry. “Why can’t I do it? I am so weak. I commit the same mistakes, over and over again. I know them. I know them too well! And yet! I can’t. I can’t leave this endless loop of misery.”

The master looked back, with serious expression. Suddenly, he burst into a loud laugh. Just as fast as that laugh came in, it went away and was replaced by an even more serious face. He could see his eyes casting a shadow.

As he noticed that, he also saw the hands of the master going to his waist. Before he understood what was happening, he heard a loud BANG.

He felt his ear ringing, and his heart pumping blood, rushing through his body as fast as ever, as if looking for an exit that thankfully isn’t there.

The master was holding a smoking Beretta. “If I had trembled just slightly, your story would have ended now,” he said with anger. No, it wasn’t anger, his seriousness and wrinkles went so deep that it looked like anger. His smile was turned down and you could feel a deep black shadow covering his face.

“Ya ain’t got no time to doubt or to think about any of that. If there’s something you want to do, do it now or as soon as possible. God won’t give you more pages than he let you have.”

The student felt every word vibrating his body, still in shock. “Give all your will, thoughts, body, mind, heart, pain and love into staying sharp. If you don’t keep sharp, you will never be able to hit hard and fast, and you’ll never surpass me.”

His serious, somber shadow turned into a defying, vigorous smile. “You know what’s right and wrong. Pray to keep that judgment, because that’s where your strength lies, which can only shine through sharpness.”

The student noticed he couldn’t find his previous thoughts, they were vanished. What was he even thinking before?

“Trust in your peers, those who’ve walked near you, pay attention to them more than to the rest of the world. Their truth will turn into realizations burned into your judgment. If you keep what I said close, you are ready, right now.”

In the place of his thoughts only remained his fixated, lit eyes.