Kaneko
She started with sitting.
Who in all the hells needs lessons in sitting?
I knew how to sit. I’d been doing it my entire life.
But apparently, I’d been doing it wrong.
“Your back,” Hana said. “Straight, Kaneko-san, as if a string pulls you up from the crown of your head.”
I sat the way I always had, the way I had sat on boats and docks my entire life.
“Kaneko-san. Please, your posture.”
I didn’t move. Some stubborn part of me—the part that was still a fisherman’s son, still a free man in my own mind, if not my body—refused to comply. Why should I sit differently? What did it matter how my spine curved or where my shoulders rested? I wasnotgoing to become what they wanted me to become. I wouldnotcooperate in my own transformation.
Hana waited. Patient and silent.
The silence stretched.
Finally, I shifted—not into proper posture, just enough to show I had heard her.
“Now your shoulders,” she said quietly. “Relaxed, but not slouched.”
I slouched more deliberately.
She sighed.
“Your hands. Rest them gently on your thighs.”
I pressed them flat against my legs, fingers splayed, a posture no refined person would ever use.
Hana circled to stand in front of me and then kneeled so we were at eye level. Her expression was not angry, not even disappointed. It was just . . . understanding.
“You resist,” she said.
“I am sitting.”
“You are sitting incorrectly on purpose.” She tilted her head slightly. “Because if you learn these things, if you do them well, it means accepting what you have become—what you now are.”
The words hit harder than I expected. My throat tightened.
“I can’t becomethis,” I said, my voice rough. “I’m not . . . I refuse to become some painted doll for—foryou peopleto—”
“Youpeople?” Something flashed in Hana’s eyes, and her serene mask cracked, revealing anger and something far deeper. “I did not take you captive, Kaneko-san, and I do not hold your leash, no more than I tookmyselfto be a slave.”
The words were a slap, a harder crack across my face than anything I had felt from thebokkenof Takeo or Yoshi.
I stared at her.
She stared back.
“We each must learn to accept our fate,” she continued, her voice tight. Her hands clenched in her lap—the first time I had seen her struggle with her composure. When her head dipped, and her gaze fell to her hands, my heart lurched.
“I certainly did,” she whispered.
For a moment, she seemed to shrink, to shrivel before my eyes. She looked so young, no longer my graceful teacher, but someone who had been broken and reshaped, just as they intended to do to me.
