Beside me, Larisa shifts in her sleep, murmuring something about Billie Eilish.
And despite myself—despite the math, the risk, the warning bells?—
I smile.
The next morning,the cold bites sharp as I walk to Hara Karate Academy. The sign above the door hasn’t changed:Discipline. Respect. Control.
Inside, the air is warm, smelling of cedar polish and old mats. A class is breaking up—bare feet padding off the floor, low voices, the soft thud of bags being zipped.
Sensei Hara is sweeping when he looks up. “Irina-san,” he says. “Boston did not keep you.”
“Not permanently,” I say. “It lets me visit.”
He studies me for a moment. Not my face. My posture.
“Are you training?” he asks.
“Sometimes,” I say. “There’s a makeshift dojo on campus. A multipurpose room. It works.”
He nods once. Accepts that.
“You are tense,” he says. “Your weight is too high.”
I adjust immediately—feet grounding, knees softening, weight settling. The floor feels solid again.
“Better,” he nods, gestures toward the mat. “Gi.”
“I wasn’t planning to?—”
“You came,” he says mildly. “That is planning.”
I pull my gi from my bag and change quickly, the fabric familiar against my skin. When I step onto the mat, it feels like alignment, not memory.
“Begin,” he says.
Just a short sequence. Block. Step. Turn. Nothing fast. Nothing impressive. Enough to draw a clean line through the noise.
“Stop,” Sensei Hara says near the end of the kata.
I do. Breath steady. Muscles warm, not strained.
“You think too much,” he says, not unkind. “Good for engineers.” His gaze sharpens. “Bad for karate.”
The weight in my chest loosens. I almost smile.
Instead, I repeat the kata. Again. And again. And again.
“Keep training,” he says finally, already turning back to his broom. “However you can. The body remembers what the mind tries to forget.”
“Hai, Sensei.”
When I step back into the cold, my pulse feels steadier than it has all weekend.
Not peace.
Balance.
Temporary. Conditional. Earned.
