My shoulders. My back. The backs of my thighs. My forearms when my blocks were wrong. Each strike left a burning line of pain that flared quickly and faded slowly, building on the previous strikes until my entire body felt like it was on fire.
“Stop,” the master commanded.
I froze, breathing hard, my body trembling with exhaustion and pain.
“Show me,” he said.
“Master?”
“Show me what you were taught. This other form you cannot forget.”
My face burned with shame. The other boys were watching now, all pretense of practicing their own forms abandoned. Even the delicate boy had turned to look at me.
I had no choice.
I took the stance Uncle Takeo had taught me and began hiskata,our family’skata. Left foot forward, ball of foot pivot, rising block, counterstrike. The movements came easily, naturally, my body remembering even as my mind screamed at me to stop. I completed the form and stood there, exposed, waiting, resisting the urge to guard against the blow that would surely come.
The master walked around me slowly, his expression thoughtful. “A peasantkata.” His voice was not cruel, merely matter-of-fact. “Effective in its own way, perhaps, for simple combat, but it is crude and unrefined, without proper mechanics or energy flow.”
Each word was like a blade. Takeo had been trying to help me. He’d given me what he could—what he’d been taught—and it was being dismissed as worthless.
“You will forget this,” the master said. “Every movement, every principle. You will empty yourself of this knowledge so that you may be filled with something true, something pure.” He paused. “Do you understand?”
I nodded, not trusting my voice.
“Then begin again. Forget what you were. Learn what you must become.”
I took the stance and began the form again.
I tried to push Takeo’s voice out of my head and ignore the muscle memory screaming at me to move differently. And when I failed, the reed found me again.
We continued until the sun was high overhead. My legs shook, and sweat soaked my training clothes, salt stinging where the reed had broken skin. Slowly—so slowly—my body began to forget what Takeo had taught and began to accept this new pattern. The movements grew fractionally less wrong with each repetition.
Still, the other boys’ hostility became more open as the morning wore on.
The tall boy “accidentally” stepped too close during one transition, forcing me to stumble back. The stocky boy’s foot shot out as I moved past him, causing me to trip—not obviously enough for the master to see, only enough to make me fall.
Crack.
When I rose, the stocky boy was already back in position, face blank, as if nothing had happened.
The nervous boy seemed torn between sympathy and self-preservation. He glanced at me occasionally, his expression almost apologetic, though he never helped, never warned me when one of the others was about to trip me or bump me during a difficult transition.
Only the delicate boy seemed truly indifferent. He practiced his forms with the same serene perfection, never acknowledging my existence at all.
Finally, the master clapped his hands once. “Stop. Midday meal.”
I nearly collapsed with relief.
I hadn’t thought it possible, but the afternoon was worse. The master took us to a different part of the grounds where obstacles had been laid out in a long, winding course. There were walls to climb, ropes to swing from, logs to balance on, ditches to leap, even a mud pit to crawl through.
“Begin,” the master said.
The tall boy went first, attacking the course with zeal. He was fast but not graceful, using brute strength where technique might have better served. He finished, breathing hard, and stood aside. His training clothes were soaked with sweat, and mud streaked his legs.
The delicate boy went next. He flowed like a dancer, finding elegant solutions to each obstacle, making it look easy, though I could see the strain on his face by the end.
The stocky boy struggled with the rope swing, his weight working against him, but his strength carried him through the climbing sections with ease.
