Chapter 45: Anger“Don’t worry, child. I’ll take care of you.”

  The woman gathered me in her arms. She was only a few timetres taller tha seemed much rger, more powerful than any school cillor or parent. Tears of e and frustration dribbled down my cheek and staihe front of her blouse as she held me close. I trembled and she smoothed down my hair and made hushing sounds. “It’ll be okay,” she said, but I was too young and too weak, too angry to listen.

  “My name is Sakura,” she said, croug slightly to look me eye-to-eye. “I’m a teacher.”

  Her ‘students’ clustered not far behind with faces revealing varying degrees of anger, guilt and surprise. For the st fifteen mihey’d been first tauntihen pushing me around, and finally they’d settled oing the living shit out of me.

  “So tell me,” she asked, after I’d told her my name, “why oh did you try and steal from a martial arts school?”

  In stumbling, half-choked words I expined about the gang, the initiation challenge and how impressed I thought they’d be if I returned with some kind of on or a big wad of cash. Somehow it never occurred to me that I could actually get caught; and if I did, well, I could take care of myself. I thought I was tough. I was eleven years old and an idiot.

  “But you weren’t strong enough, were you?” Sakura asked, wiping at a spot of blood at the er of my mouth.

  I shook my head angrily.

  “You didn’t give up,” she added. “I watched you fight back.”

  I gred at her.

  She ughed, an airy sound free of mockery. She caught a tear running down my cheek. “These tears, they aren’t of pain, are they? They aren’t of embarrassment.”

  I shook my head.

  “They’re of anger.” She leaned closer and spoke so softly only I could hear. “You’re very angry, aren’t you? You’d like to strike back at them--at all of them,” she said and somehow I uood she was referring to people beyond the walls of this small room. “If only you were strong enough.”

  There was o answer; she uood.

  “Would you like me to train you?” Sakura asked.

  I nodded.

  Author's Notes:

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