Chapter 49: Pain“How is he?”

  She closed the door behind her. Sakura dispyed no anger as she crossed the room but over the st couple of year I’d learhat Sakura only shared her emotions when it suited her. Her footsteps remained effortlessly silent as she walked; even at the age of fourteen I uood that there was something very different, very enigmatic about this woman. What I felt for her was something impossible to put in words; not love, precisely . . . awe, maybe, with all the passion ahat word suggests.

  I was afraid of Sakura, but it wasn’t out of fear that I so desperately wao please her.

  “He’s on his way to the hospital,” she said. “Tyrone’s parents are very angry.”

  I nodded. I didn’t apologize, for the simple reason that I wasn’t sorry for what I had done. I wouldn’t insult her by lying.

  “How did it happen?”

  The other students must have already given their at of what happened. I saw no reason to either exaggerate or diminish my responsibility. “We were sparring. The longer we fought the more intensely he came at me. I saw it in his eyes--he wao win, he wao hit me . . . he wao hurt me. He escated the flid tried an advaeique.” I tried unsuccessfully to keep the disdain from my voibsp; “That’s when I fihe fight.”

  “You shattered both his elbow and his jaw,” Sakura said. “He’s sixteen and he may never have full use of that arm again. He was our top tour fighter and he may never return to the martial arts again.”

  Her voice remai and unreadable; she gave no hint of how she expected me to respond. Uo think of anything to say, I simply shrugged.

  “Do you not feel any remorse for what you did?”

  I sidered that for a sed. “No.”

  Sakura cocked her head to one side and watched me curiously. “Did you feel anything, then?”

  I hesitated before answering. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  I shrugged again. “Yeah. No. I felt . . . happy? Yeah, maybe just a bit. I mean, he’s aled prick, right? And so full of himself. But he couldn’t even bring himself to go full out, you know? It was just sad, yeah, real sad watg him work up his ce.” My voice grew stronger as I pyed the fight back through my mind. “I mean, how pathetic is that? He desperately wao win but couldn’t bring himself to really try? To try and hurt me? When he finally came at me, I saw it ing from miles away. . . .” The surprise in his face when I reversed the attack, the shock, the pain that flooded his eyes and escaped his throat in a howl as I snapped his arm . . . yeah, I e. But only briefly.

  She watched me for another moment and then nodded.

  “Are you angry?” I couldn’t hide the tremor in my voice.

  “A little,” she said. She opened a small wooden box on her desk and pulled out a bottle and some cotton swabs. She took my hand and started to tend to my knuckles, which I’d split against the sharp edge of my oppo’s jaw.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not for having hurt the boy but for having disappointed Sakura.

  “Don’t be.” She shook her head. “I’m not angry at you.”

  “Then why?”

  She hesitated. “Because you won’t be able to remain a student of this school any longer.”

  My breath caught in my throat. “But--”

  She waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Even if you ’t stay here, I have somewhere else you stay. It was almost time for you to leave anyway. Another few months and you would have asked of your own choice.” Even as she said it, I realized that she spoke the truth. I had been building myself up towards askio leave. “You’ve been talking about trying to find your mother; settling scores with your old gang; even going back to school.”

  “I like it here,” I stated.

  “And now it’s time to leave,” she said. “I’ll help you with your step. You might be able to help me as well, actually.”

  “I--”

  “Do you know why I took you in?” Sakura asked, distrag me from my fear and hurt at the thought of leaving Sakura.

  I shook my head.

  “That first afternoowo years ago. You dropped yourself into a fight you could not win. My students found you and hurt you. As I recall, Tyrone was the first oo hit you. During that beating you never gave up. You didn’t cry out and you didn’t beg for them to stop. And in your eyes: suger, such hatred and desire. You wao hurt them babsp; And you have, haven’t you? Over the years. Every single one of those students you’ve had your revenge on, one way or another, whether they know it or not.”

  “But--,” I started to protest, and then shut my mouth. Apparently, I wasn’t half as clever as I thought I’d been.

  “And Tyrone was the st one.”

  He was, although I hadn’t set out to hurt him today.

  “I promised to make you strong and now you are,” she said.

  “You have nothing more to teach me?”

  She ughed. “I have more to teach you than you possibly imagine. And I will tio teach you, when the opportunity exists, for as long as we both live, though no longer from this school. You uood from the beginning that I did not treat you like the other students; that when they left their lessons exhausted and made their ways home that you had merely pleted your warm-up. They train to learn disciplio stay fit, for fidence or to impress their friends and family.

  “Why do you train?”

  The answer should have been an easy one. For nearly three years now I had trained with this woman; nearly every single day had started with the aches of the previous night and ended with newfound bruises. To undergo such pain and suffering--though truth be told I’d hought of it as such--there had to be a clear reason. Yet I couldn’t think of one.

  “To make you happy,” I replied, the first answer I could settle upon.

  A hint of a smile touched her lips, but she shook her head. “No,” she said. “Though I’m fttered. That’s not why. The reason you have trained so hard these st few years, the reason I took you in, is because you have a gift. Some people believe that we’re all blessed with a single gift--with a skill--with a natural talent for ohing in life. One of the greatest tragedies of humaence is that so few of us ever discover what we are truly skilled at, or even worse . . . to know your tale be uo practice it.

  “One g you and I saw yift and uood your potential.”

  Her words filled me with pride. “Martial arts?”

  “Oh my, no,” Sakura said, and shook her head, that suggestion of a smile growing slightly. “No. Yift is pain: the acceptance of it, the giving of it. You have an instinct for pain, an intuitive uanding of how best to hurt other people.” She held me gently oher side of my head and kissed me softly on my forehead.

  “You’re very special,” Sakura told me, her voice as soft as spider’s silk. “And you’re mine.”

  Author's Notes:

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