Ryu – 10 years and 11 months
A year is a lot of punches.
Also a lot of bolts, deliveries, stairs, and nights where my legs hurt so much I swear someone replaced my bones with sand.
But I'm still here.
Still walking straight.
So I go back to the shop.
The streets feel smaller than they did a year ago.
Not because they shrank. Because I know where everything cracks now. Which corners smell like trouble, which windows actually have eyes behind them, which alleys are shortcuts and which are traps.
I take the longer, safer path anyway.
No sense getting stabbed on the way to ask for more ways to get punched.
The old shop looks exactly the same.
Faded sign. Heavy door. That weird stillness around it, like the building is listening.
I stand there a second, bag on my shoulder, heart beating slow and deep.
He said, come back in a year if you're still alive and walking straight.
Well. Here I am.
I push the door open.
The bell gives its usual judgmental ring.
The air hits me the same way: metal, oil, dust, something sharp and clean underneath.
He's behind the counter again. Same scarred wood, same shelves, same battered book in his hand.
For a ridiculous moment, I wonder if he's moved at all in a year.
Then his eyes flick up.
They don't widen. Don't soften. No surprise, no "oh, you made it."
Just a quick, precise scan.
Head to feet. Posture. Shoulders. Hands. Hips. Feet.
"Door still likes drama," I say.
"You're heavier," he says.
"Hello to you too," I answer.
He closes the book, marks the page with that same bit of wire.
"You kept walking," he says. "Good."
I step closer.
"New bolts?" he asks. "Or something else?"
"Haim's are still alive," I say. "I'm here for the other thing."
He studies my face.
"You remember instructions well," he says. "Most kids don't."
"Most kids didn't build their entire year around one grumpy old man's sentence," I say.
He snorts softly.
"Why are you here?" he asks. "In your own words."
It's a test. Obviously.
"I've gotten as far as I can with what I have," I say. "Body, basics, street lessons. I'm good enough to scare idiots. Not good enough for the rest of the world."
"That's vague," he says.
"I want structure," I say. "Not just 'don't die.' I want to understand what I'm doing, not just react on instinct. I want someone who knows more than my teachers to tell me where I'm stupid."
"And if I tell you you're wasting your time?" he asks.
"Then I still walk out stronger than if I never tried," I say.
He hums.
"Come here," he says.
He steps out from behind the counter and walks toward the worn patch of floor.
I follow.
The boards under that area feel different, even through thin shoes. Slightly softer, maybe. Or maybe it's just my nerves.
"Stand," he says, pointing at the center.
I stand.
"Relax," he says.
"I am relaxed," I lie.
"You're lying," he says. "Breathe. Let your shoulders go. Don't soften your spine."
I exhale, roll my shoulders once, let the tension bleed down without letting my posture collapse.
He circles me slowly.
Not like a predator. More like a craftsman looking at a piece of half-finished furniture.
He taps my heel lightly with his foot.
"Too planted sometimes," he says. "You like feeling solid, so you give up being able to leave."
He taps my hip.
"You hold too much tension here," he says. "Useful for driving power. Bad for endurance. Good for hurting your back at thirty if you live that long."
He brushes a finger across my wrist.
"Guard line is better than I expected," he says. "Hands know where they belong most of the time."
"Most?" I ask.
"When you think you're winning, the right one wanders," he says. "You get greedy. Greedy gets clipped."
He steps back.
"Walk," he says. "Same as last time. There and back."
I walk.
I feel stupidly aware of everything now: how my weight shifts, where my toes land, how my arms swing.
I turn, come back.
He doesn't comment.
"Attack me," he says.
I blink.
"Here?" I ask. "In the shop full of expensive metal?"
"If you break something," he says, "that means your control is bad. Then we've already learned something."
"How hard?" I ask.
"As hard as you can," he says. "Without turning your brain off."
I hate him a little already.
But this is why I came.
I bring my hands up. Not full guard. Just ready. I edge closer.
He just stands there.
Loose. Hands at his sides. Weight… nowhere obvious. Like he's just a tired shopkeeper waiting for someone to finish a sentence.
Everything in me screams wrong.
I step in and throw a jab at his chest.
It's clean. Fast for my size. Good mechanics. I've been drilling it for months.
My fist hits air.
He didn't block.
He just… wasn't there.
A quarter-step. A tilt of his upper body. My punch passes in front of his shirt, misses by an inch, no more.
If I wanted to turn it into a hook, I'd have to drag my weight around first.
"Again," he says.
I jab. Cross. He's just outside each one without looking like he moved.
Tiny adjustments. Nothing wasted. It's infuriating.
"Stop looking at my chest," he says. "Look at your own feet."
"I kind of need to know where you are," I say.
"I already know where you are," he says. "You're the one trying to learn."
I grit my teeth and throw a combination. Jab, cross, low step, body shot. The kind of thing that works on most grown men if I time it right.
It feels like punching a shadow.
He's there enough that I feel the air move. Never there enough that I get a clean touch.
I start to overreach without meaning to. He doesn't punish it.
Which somehow feels worse.
"Enough," he says finally.
I'm breathing harder. Not exhausted. Just… annoyed. I didn't even touch him.
"Lesson one," he says. "You're very good at making bad fighters look worse. You're decent at handling good street men who commit too early and don't understand distance."
"Thanks," I say dryly.
"You are not good at attacking someone who owns his space," he says. "Your feet are honest, but your mind is louder than your body. You think ahead too much and forget the moment you're in."
"That's very poetic," I say. "Did you practice that line?"
"Yes," he says.
I snort before I can stop myself.
He almost smiles.
"Now the other way," he says. "I attack, you try not to die."
"That's an intense way to put it," I say.
"It's also shorter than 'defend yourself fully while minimizing damage,'" he says.
Fair.
He doesn't go into a dramatic stance. No fists up, no bouncing.
He just steps toward me.
My body reacts before my brain fully catches up. Weight back, hands up, feet angling, eyes on his shoulders.
He lifts one hand like he's going to flick my forehead.
Every cell insists it's not a real attack.
I treat it like one anyway.
Small step out. Frame up. Outside angle.
His hand changes halfway. It turns into a short, sharp pat on my guard.
The impact is light. The information isn't.
He's checking structure. Not power.
He does it again. From another angle. Fake tap, adjustment, touch.
My arms burn from micro-corrections.
He never hits my face. Never even threatens it properly.
He doesn't have to. My nervous system is screaming anyway.
"Good," he says after a bit. "You don't panic when you can't read the attack. You try to solve. That's rare."
"Feels more like guessing," I say.
"Guessing is just bad solving," he says. "You're better than that. Barely."
He steps back.
"Take off your shirt," he says.
I stare.
"What?" I ask.
"I want to see your back," he says. "Not for free, obviously. You still owe me for wasting my air."
I sigh, peel off the sweat-sticky shirt.
The shop is not warm.
He walks behind me.
Fingers trace the line of my spine, the muscles along it. Shoulders, shoulder blades, the sides of my ribs. My skin flinches once, then settles.
"Turn your head," he says. "Slowly. Left. Right."
I do.
He makes a small sound. Not approval, not disappointment. Just "noted."
"You've been working," he says. "Not just pretending. Good."
"That'd be a very committed prank," I say.
"You still carry too much in the legs compared to your upper body," he says. "Your base is ahead of your frame. That will break if you start hitting people who hit back harder and smarter."
"I've started meeting a few," I say.
"You haven't met the real ones yet," he says calmly.
He walks back around, gestures for me to put the shirt on again.
"So?" I ask. "Verdict?"
He looks at me like he's deciding whether to invest in a tool or throw it away.
"You're not ready," he says.
My stomach dips.
"Yet," he adds.
I breathe again.
"All right," I say. "What does 'ready' cost?"
"Time," he says. "And obedience. And boredom. Lots of boredom."
"So, hell," I say.
"Hell with better posture," he says.
He moves back behind the counter, pulls out a small scrap of paper and a stub of pencil.
He writes three things.
He slides the paper to me.
On it:
MORNINGS: 10 min balance work (one leg, eyes closed, slow)
EVENINGS: walk home slowly, feeling every step / weight shift
ON WORK DAYS: lift with legs and hips, not back. Always.
I blink.
"This is… underwhelming," I say.
"You want spinning kicks and secret moves," he says.
"I want not dying," I say. "Secret moves can wait."
"Then you start with this," he says. "You think your basics are good. They're not. They're better than most. That still means bad."
He taps the list.
"You do this every day for three months," he says. "No skipping. No 'I forgot.' No 'it was raining.' After that, you come back here once a week. I'll decide if we add anything or if I tell you to go learn pottery instead."
"No fee?" I ask.
"You work in a workshop," he says. "You already lift and carry. That's your fee. If I decide you're worth more of my time later, we'll discuss it then."
It's such an uncommercial answer I almost trust him by default.
"Why?" I ask. "Why me?"
"Wrong question," he says.
"What's the right one?" I ask.
"Why now," he says. "Answer that and you might live long enough to find out the other."
Vague old man nonsense. Great.
But he didn't say no.
He didn't say "you're a waste."
He gave me homework.
Which, in this world, is about as close to a contract as I'm going to get.
I fold the paper carefully, tuck it into my pocket.
"I'll be back," I say.
"Or you'll be dead," he says. "Either way, my day will go on."
"Comforting," I say.
As I reach the door, he adds:
"And tell Kain he still leans too hard on the front when he thinks no one's watching. Old habits cling."
"I'll tell him you said his stance is garbage," I say.
"For once, don't exaggerate," he says.
Outside, the world feels the same.
People shout. Carts roll. The city doesn't care that one old fighter just poked holes in my entire sense of progress.
But something shifted.
Stage one was about not collapsing.
This is different.
He didn't feed my ego. Didn't praise the fights I've already won. Didn't care that I beat a seventeen-year-old. Barely acknowledged it.
He only cared about what would break later.
That's the kind of person I need.
I start walking.
Slower than usual.
Feeling every step and every shift of weight, like an idiot.
Ten minutes a morning. Conscious walking in the evening. Lifting right.
It's nothing dramatic. No glowing aura, no instant power-up.
Just the first bricks of something else sliding into place.
Phase two has started.
Quietly.
Exactly the way it should.