Breath in, breath out

Like she’s been doing for the past weeks, Yuliya sighed. To be more specific, her brother made her sighed. “That’s right, now you have to do it for fifty minutes straight.” But she didn’t want to do this for fifty minutes straight. At the beginning of the school semester, Boun decided to start doing sports. And the one he chose was also the only one which wasn’t full: qi gong. After enrolling and before attending the first class, he looked at a video which made him fall asleep. And that’s apparently what convinced him to actually attend this activity. “That’s great if you’re stressed and need to relax.”

“But you’re never stressed.” Yuliya answered. Her brother was the last person on earth who needed to relax. He always looked like he was half asleep. Actually, if a doctor told her he’s been sleep walking since birth, she’d believe them. From what she understood, they would breath slowly and move even slower for at least one hour straight. Boun would also manage to sleep during this entire hour although he would be standing. Truly amazing. Apparently, qi gong looked like slow kung-fu. But what was the point of practicing kung-fu without hitting other people?

“See, that’s why you need qi gong in your life, why would you want to hit people?”

“Because I’m stressed.”

“Then come with me.”

“Never.”

That’s how every Tuesday morning conversation they had would end. Boun and his sports bag would then leave, not quite defeated yet. He would then try to convince Yuliya to join her the next week.

Unfortunately for Boun’s friends, he was quite persistent. When one of them would complain about one of their class being too difficult, he would kindly invite them to join the qi gong class. His friend would then kindly tell him he was annoying and that they would rather repeat a year than practicing some retiree’s sport. “There aren’t any retiree in my class, only students.” Of course there would only be students, it was a college club. Which didn’t change the fact that some students were older than the professor. When a friend of his would hurt themselves doing a more active sport, he would say “you can’t hurt yourself in qi gong.” And this person would answer something along the lines of “I will hurt you.”

Sometimes someone would ask the forbidden question: what is qi gong? Boun was delighted when he was asked this because this meant he could demonstrate what he learned in class. “You know these old people doing sport in slow motion in parks at 8 am? That’s qi gong.” He would then spread his legs a little, bend his knees and slowly extend his arms in front of him while breathing loudly. Most people would roll their eyes at him since they’ve seen this show too many times and Boun didn’t seem to understand this wasn’t exciting to anyone. Others would chuckle and tell him they’d come next year. Why would they encourage him like that?

Boun actually never went to any park at eight in the morning. He just saw old people through the bus window when he went to college once. Since then, he couldn’t remain awake in the bus and never saw them again. He wanted to join them on the weekends but that meant waking up in the morning when there wasn’t any class which was inconceivable. One Sunday morning however he woke up to the sound of the alarm he forgot to disable the day before. It was only seven and he was so upset he almost cried. His weekend was ruined. He couldn’t go back to sleep so he decided to join the old people in the park. He wanted her sister to come too but waking her up for this would mean signing his own death warrant. And dying now meant his ghost would wear sports clothes for eternity, which was far too long. Instead, he texted her his location, just in case.

There were about ten people in the group. They welcomed him warmly, visibly pleased to see someone under the age of seventy for once. Some told him they asked their grandchildren to participate with them but they were too busy to come, even on weekends. The sadness could be heard in their voice and Boun may or may not have hold back a tear. He heard a voice say “It’s my grandson.” in Lao. And indeed it was his grandmother’s voice. He would’ve never imagined seeing her here. When he stayed at his grandmother’s place, she would eat a second diner at one in the morning every night while watching a Thai show until three o’clock. How could she get up so early after that? He spent the whole session next to her grandma and when she asked her to come next week, he couldn’t bring himself to decline. He was now destined to wake up every Sunday morning, the thought of it started to dig up wrinkles under his eyes. When he came back home, it was so early that Yuliya hadn’t woken up yet, lucky her.

After some weeks, Boun started to look forward to both sessions. The one in the park because the members loved giving him food and the one at college because it was indoors and he was easily cold. He gained quite a lot of weight which his sister would often point out: “I’ve never seen someone gaining fat by doing sports, how is it possible?” He would tell her it’s a secret and she could discover the truth by practicing qi gong with him. Yuliya would then put her earphones back and pretend she didn’t hear.

Boun was actually happy to gain so much weight. At the beginning of the semester, he wanted to donate blood for the Red Cross but the nurse told him he was too light. Boun didn’t even know a minimum weight was required to donate blood. Since then, this didn’t leave his mind and he wanted to gain some fat. But being a college student wasn’t the most prolific activity and eating is expensive. So he decided to begin practicing a sport to gain some muscles instead. Unfortunately the only available one was qi gong and judging by the one video he saw, the only muscles he would gain would be in his mind. This didn’t make any sense but he still enrolled, maybe he could convince himself he was getting bigger and that would actually make him bigger. After gaining what he thought was a right amount of weight, he went to see the nurse again. The latter told him: “Sir, I know this isn’t fair but I’ve already told you you can’t donate if you’ve had sexual intercourse with another man during these last three months. Come back later please.”