“Please stand still.”
He did and was unhooked.
“Now you are free—”
He raised his arms too far and caught his sleeve this time. To the side, everyone was holding their sides with laughter. Everyone except the man with the dark, serious face who stood patiently beside him, unhooking him as if trying to save Walter from further embarrassment.
Walter actually felt bad for the guy, but his antics kept the tormenters off him. So, in a way to make amends, he held out his hand.
“My name is Walter.” Then he tensed, ready to be thrown now that his gi was free. But the man didn’t do it, though he could have easily tossed him halfway across the room.
“My name is Bing Wen Hao.” He nodded. “Please, I wish you to teach me.” He spoke the last part in an undertone only loud enough for Walter to hear.
Walter reared back with an embarrassed laugh that wasn’t fully faked. He had no idea what this guy’s deal was. Too bad too, because Bing flashed him a smile that was camera-ready gorgeous. High cheekbones, cute dimples, and a steady gaze that suggested honesty. Walter didn’t trust it, of course. He’d learned young that actors were good at their trade. They could fake sincerity better than anyone. And so he snorted as he pretended to reel into the tree again. “Bing? Like a Bing cherry? I’m sure there’s a joke there, but I’m too drunk to think of one.”
“No matter,” Bing said with a shrug. “They have thought of many.” He glanced over at the others, who were losing interest now that Walter wasn’t falling on his ass anymore.
Poor guy. It seemed he’d been the butt of a few jokes too. Walter could relate. Now that he was standing still for a bit, he could feel the ache building in his body. He stopped himself just short of groaning. He was going to pay for today’s “workout.” In the meantime, Bing looked up at the others and spoke rapidly in Chinese.
Kong frowned but shrugged, then waved at Walter. “Bye-bye, Walter,” he said in a singsong voice. “Come back anytime.”
Jerk. It was clearly an invitation to get his ass kicked again, but he was supposed to be a drunk American, too stupid to know subtext. So he smiled and waved as the others wandered away. Before long, everyone else had left the workout area.
Kong had remained the longest, his gaze heavy on Bing, who simply stood there like a Chinese man of mystery. It was a cliché, but Bing personified it to a T. Eventually, Kong shook his head and disappeared too.
Walter waited for a few moments, then finally exhaled in relief. The head tormentor was gone.
Bing patted Walter’s arm. “Kong can be kind, but his father has disciplined most of it out of him.”
Walter dropped down on the mat. “One of those dads, eh? I have one too, but he gave up on me a long time ago. My two older brothers got most of the heat.” They also got the coveted biomedical engineering degrees, whereas all Walter had ever wanted to do was draw comics. That was him, the comic genius/disappointment.
“Kong’s father is the grand master who trained all of us, but he makes sure that Kong is the very best.”
Kong wasn’t the best person. That, obviously, was Bing, who dared be kind to the American. “Kong is old enough to be responsible for his own actions.”
Bing smiled. “In China, we can never escape our parents.”
“In America, we can run very far away from them, and sometimes, if we’re lucky, they forget about us.”
Bing smiled, and they shared a moment of connection. It was really nice, given that for the past hour, he’d had to smile through an ass-kicking. But as the seconds ticked by, Walter realized Bing seemed to be waiting with him, even though he probably had better things to do than babysit an abandoned American. Hell, given his looks, he probably had a dozen more fun things to do, with better-looking people. “If you have to leave, I’ll be fine. My agent is around here somewhere.”
“I am hoping I can convince you to teach me,” Bing responded.
Walter laughed. “Teach you what? You guys are way better than I am.”
Bing waited a moment to answer. In fact, he waited an uncomfortably long moment, his steady gaze dark on Walter. Then he squatted down beside him. “I do not believe you are any less talented than us. And you are certainly well trained, though not in our style of kung fu.”
“I’m trained in Monkey kung fu.”
“A fine discipline.”
Wow. He sounded like he meant it.
“But what you did here?” Bing continued. “That did not come from your teachers. That you figured out on your own. I wish to learn it from you.”
Walter leaned back. “I… um….” Just how much had he figured out?
Bing extended his hand. “Will you teach me?”
