Chapter 193: Tongen’s venue

Later that evening, Tongen sat on his couch holding a cup of wine, the warm amber glow of his television washing over the dim sitting room as some action film played out across the screen. He had the volume set low enough that the dialogue was more of a murmur than anything else, background noise to fill the quiet of the apartment rather than something he was actively following. He was halfway through his second glass and had barely touched the plate of food on the coffee table in front of him, one leg propped up on the edge of the table, posture loose and unbothered, the picture of a man with nowhere to be and nothing pressing on his mind.

His phone buzzed against the cushion beside him. He glanced at the screen, saw the name, and picked it up without a second thought.

“Yoo, Sherlock,” he said, leaning back further into the couch.

“Wassup, Tongen,” Sherlock replied from the other end.

Tongen reached forward and grabbed the remote, turning the volume down just enough to hear clearly without killing the ambiance entirely. “How may I be of help to you?” he said, lifting the wine glass to his lips and taking a slow sip, unhurried, the way a man answers a call he already knows won’t take long or require much of him.

“Well, I was wondering where to use for the fight between our students,” Sherlock said. “Still haven’t locked in a venue and I figured we should sort that out before tomorrow.”

Tongen set the glass down and leaned forward, plucking something from the plate in front of him. He chewed thoughtfully for a moment, turning it over in his head even though the answer had already been sitting there for a while. He’d had a feeling Sherlock would call about this eventually. “Erm — I thought about that actually.” He swallowed. “We can use one of the venues at my place. Got a good open space, plenty of room for what we need. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“That works,” Sherlock said simply. No deliberation, no follow-up questions. It was settled.

“Good.” Tongen settled back against the cushions again, eyes drifting back toward the screen where someone was currently being thrown through a window in slow motion. “If that’s all, I’d love to get back to my movie.”

“Yeah, that’s all. Tomorrow it is.”

“Tomorrow,” Tongen confirmed.

Sherlock ended the call. Tongen held the phone for a second, then dropped it back onto the cushion beside him. He raised the volume back up, reached for his wine, and picked up where he’d left off without another word on the matter. By the time the scene on screen had changed, the call was already mostly forgotten.

The next morning came with the kind of energy that precedes something competitive — a low current running under everything, present in the way people moved and spoke and held themselves even before anything had actually started. It wasn’t loud or obvious. It was the kind of tension that lives just beneath the surface, the sort that only shows itself in the extra alertness behind someone’s eyes or the way a conversation cuts off a little quicker than usual when someone new walks into the room.

By mid-morning, both groups had arrived at Tongen’s place and made their way toward the venue he’d set aside for the occasion. It was a wide, open space — flat ground underfoot, high ceiling overhead, the walls bare and functional, the kind of area that had clearly been used for training before. Scuff marks on the floor. Enough distance between the far walls that two people could move freely without worrying about running out of room. Nothing extravagant about it, but it didn’t need to be. It had space, and space was what mattered today.

Jelo spotted Ken the moment they stepped inside.

He wasn’t the only one. Atlas saw him at nearly the same time, and Mira was already moving before either of them said a word, cutting across the space with the easy confidence of someone who’d already decided the awkwardness of the situation wasn’t worth entertaining. Ken turned at their approach, and whatever tension might have existed in the moment dissolved quickly. The recognition on his face loosened into something genuinely warm, unhesitant, the expression of someone who was glad to see familiar faces regardless of which side of today’s exercise they happened to be standing on.

The four of them fell into conversation without much ceremony. There was light back-and-forth, a bit of laughter at something Ken said, a moment where Atlas looked like he was about to say something competitive before apparently deciding against it. Jelo stood with his hands in his pockets, relaxed on the surface but quietly aware of the space around him, of Sherlock’s students on the other side of the room going through their own quiet preparations. It was a strange thing — spending weeks training alongside someone and then lining up across from them. Not bad, exactly. Just strange. The kind of thing you didn’t fully feel until you were standing in the middle of it.

They spoke for a while longer before the atmosphere in the room changed.

Tongen moved through the space with the quiet, unhurried authority of someone entirely comfortable in their own environment — because this was his place, after all — and came to a stop near where the three of them were standing. He didn’t say anything immediately. He just looked at them, a brief, assessing sweep across all three faces, and then tilted his head toward a quieter corner of the room.

They followed without being asked twice.

He stopped, turned to face them, and let the ambient noise of the room fill the gap for a moment before he spoke. There was no long setup. No attempt to build the moment into something larger than it was.

“Remember — we’re winning this,” he said, his voice low and even, carrying the kind of weight that didn’t need volume behind it. “You know how we’re doing this. Best out of three.” A brief pause, just long enough to make the next part land cleanly. “But I want you to win all three fights.”

He didn’t deliver it like a speech. He said it the way someone states a preference they fully expect to be honored — unhurried, certain, with a quiet edge underneath that made clear this wasn’t encouragement for its own sake. He wasn’t asking them to try hard. He was telling them what the result was going to be and trusting them to make it happen. The difference mattered.

Jelo held his gaze and gave a short nod, steady and without hesitation.

Atlas looked focused in a way that sat differently on him than his usual ease — the same face, but something tightened just slightly behind the eyes, locked in.

Mira said nothing at all, but her chin lifted almost imperceptibly, that small, particular movement that anyone who knew her would recognize immediately. It meant more than a yes. It meant she’d already made up her mind before he’d finished speaking.

Tongen held the look for one more beat, then stepped back. That was all he needed from them.

Across the space, Sherlock had already positioned himself at the front of the room. Conversations between both groups tapered off naturally, attention pulling forward the way it does when someone with presence steps into the center of things.

“Alright,” Sherlock said, his voice carrying cleanly across the venue without effort. He had the composed, matter-of-fact energy of someone who had organized things like this before and saw no reason to make more of it than it was. No theatrics. No drawn-out buildup. Just the facts, delivered plainly. “So the first fight will be between Mira and Lucan.”

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