Tanaka didn't answer right away. He looked at the boy filling his doorway, at the way his weight sat forward on the balls of his feet, ready to spring. The students backed toward the walls without being told.
"Outside," Tanaka said. "My floor is new."
Ryo turned and walked out. The sun hit his shoulders. Tanaka followed, stepping onto the dirt street in bare feet. He rolled his shoulders loose. The gi sleeves fluttered.
The street emptied. Word moved fast in villages. Faces appeared in windows, behind shutters.
Ryo set his stance. Hands up. Classic boxing guard. Left foot forward, right cocked. His shoulders stretched wide, muscle sliding under skin that had browned in the sun. He looked like a young man who had been carved from hardwood and left out in the weather.
Tanaka stood sideways, hands open, one forward, one at his hip. He looked small next to Ryo. Lighter. Older.
Ryo moved first.
A jab snapped out. Fast. Heavy. Air cracked. Tanaka didn't block it. He shifted his head six inches and let the fist pass. Ryo's cross followed immediately, a straight line from his back foot to Tanaka's jaw.
Tanaka stepped inside. Not back. Inside. His shoulder brushed Ryo's chest and his elbow whipped up, catching Ryo on the cheekbone.
It wasn't a hard hit. Not compared to a dinosaur. But it landed where Ryo wasn't protected. His guard was built for fists, not for the sharp point of a bone driven from below.
Ryo stepped back. He touched his cheek. Blood. Just a scratch.
"Again," Tanaka said.
Ryo threw a combination. Jab-jab-hook. Tanaka moved like water around a rock. He wasn't faster than Ryo. He just used angles that didn't exist in boxing. When Ryo threw the hook, Tanaka's knee came up and drove into Ryo's ribs.
Ryo grunted. The impact was clean. A piston strike from a leg that had thrown ten thousand kicks. He tried to clinch, to grab Tanaka and use his strength.
Tanaka's palm heel struck his chin. Then a short elbow clipped his temple as he stumbled. Then a foot—Ryo saw it too late, Tanaka curling his toes back, striking with the knuckled ball of the foot—drove into his thigh.
Ryo's leg went numb. He dropped to a knee.
He got up. His lungs pulled hard. He threw a straight right with everything behind it. Enough to break a tree.
Tanaka parried the wrist with one hand and his other hand, shaped into a spear, jabbed three fingers into Ryo's solar plexus.
Ryo gasped. His diaphragm locked. He fell forward, hands on the dirt, coughing.
He saw Tanaka's feet. Bare. Calloused. The knuckles of the toes were white from gripping the earth.
"Get up," Tanaka said.
Ryo did. His body was a furnace. His ribs ached. His leg tingled. He'd fought dinosaurs that hurt less.
He charged. No more boxing. Just raw Hanma instinct. He swung a wild hook.
Tanaka ducked and swept his standing leg while driving an elbow into Ryo's spine. Ryo hit the dirt hard. Dust clouded around him.
He lay there, gasping. The sky was blue. Two birds flew over. He watched them, wondering how they learned to use the wind.
He'd come in with fists. Tanaka had met him with knees, elbows, feet, palms, fingers. A whole body made of striking surfaces. Ryo had two weapons. This man had turned himself into a hundred.
He got up. His legs shook. He walked to Tanaka and bowed. Deep. From the waist.
"Teach me," Ryo said.
Tanaka looked at him. At the blood on his lip. At the fire in his eyes that hadn't dimmed. "No."
Ryo didn't argue. He straightened up. "I'll be here tomorrow."
"You won't get a different answer."
"Then I'll ask again."
Ryo walked away. His limp faded after a few steps.
He showed up the next morning. Tanaka was teaching kata to the students. Ryo sat on the steps outside and watched. He didn't speak. When class ended, he stood up.
"Teach me," he said.
"No," Tanaka said.
Ryo nodded and left. But he came back. Again. And again. He stopped asking after a while and just started sparring. Tanaka never agreed to teach him, but he never turned down a fight either.
The first time lasted twelve seconds. Ryo tried to box and ended up on his back.
Then twenty. Then a minute. He started checking kicks with his shins. It hurt. He didn't care. He threw knees in the clinch. Ugly. Effective.
Tanaka swept him less often. Ryo's base widened. He stopped standing like a boxer and started distributing his weight like someone who expected attacks from below.
One morning, Ryo landed a kick. Low and heavy. Tanaka blocked it, but his foot slid back an inch in the dirt.
Tanaka's eyebrow rose. He didn't say anything.
Weeks blurred. Ryo used elbows now. He watched Tanaka demonstrate to the class, then tried it in their sparring. He left himself open and got dumped on his head. Then he kept his other hand up. Then he chained them after missed punches.
The villagers stopped hiding. They watched from the windows. The kids stopped crying when Ryo walked by. They still didn't get close, but they watched.
Another morning. Ryo took a sweep and rolled through it, coming up with a knee that stopped an inch from Tanaka's ribs. He didn't throw it. He held it there, breathing hard, waiting.
Tanaka looked down at the knee. Then at Ryo's face. The boy was thirteen. He looked like a man. He fought like a storm. But he was learning to be a knife instead of a hammer.
"You're stubborn," Tanaka said.
"Yeah," Ryo said.
"And you're getting better."
"Not good enough."
Tanaka laughed. It was a short sound, dry, but real. "No. Not good enough. But better."
He stepped back and straightened his gi. "Tomorrow morning. Don't be late. I hate waiting."
Ryo stared at him. "You're saying yes?"
"I'm saying you're too annoying to say no to anymore." Tanaka turned and walked back into the dojo. "Bring rice. Lots of it. You eat like a bear."
Ryo stood in the street for a long moment. Then he turned and walked toward the tree line. His heart hammered. Not from a fight. From something else.
The forest was dark when he reached it. He didn't make a fire. He didn't need one. He found a clearing and started moving.
He threw a kick. Then another. Then a knee from the clinch position, driving his hip forward, imagining Tanaka's body in front of him. He practiced the elbow that had dropped him so many times. The angle. The way the hip turned into it. He threw it a hundred times. Then a hundred more.
He used his foot knuckles, curling his toes back, striking a tree trunk until the bark peeled and his skin split. He didn't stop. He practiced the sweep that had dumped him on his back. Low. Fast. Taking the leg.
All night. No rest. The moon crossed the sky. He was sweating, bleeding, smiling.
Tomorrow morning.