Smell of straw, and the taste of it too. Nothing to be said of the cheek, just hit, but the sting would come later. A fight never hurt while it was going on, though this wasn't a fight. Just senseless battering. A year now since his Father's temper first flared. Then it had been only a smack, rigid, enough to place Sai on his back foot – Father standing there looking as confused as angry- it hadn't been the bludgeon of the fist. That would come.

Back then, in this situation, knocked down, mouthful of a poor substitute for flooring, Sai would have been asking himself what he had done wrong.

There was no answer, there had been no wrong.

Fighting back was pointless, he was small, he was weak.

A testing and ineffectual punch once long ago laid taught him this, aimed at Father's ribs. Father had laughed, caught him by the wrist and hauled him up and then down, across the apartment. How Mother wailed. Now she looked away. Later she might excuse herself to cry. Sai had caught her once at night doing just that, slinking out in the dark. He said nothing, he pretended to be asleep.

Sai raged inward. To Father's eyes, to Mother's back, he merely stood up, brushed straw from his shoulders, looked Father in the eye. It was unwise to engage an enraged animal thus, but pride called for it. So he could not fight: at the very least he would not allow himself to hurt visibly. He would endure, and one day he wouldn't be weak, he would know how to fight if only...

But there was no only. No money for him. No tuition, there would be no returning to Miyo. He would remain weak, ineffectual, for the whole of his life. No one wanted him, there was nothing to be earned. His eyes began to water, and Father's face showed a grim satisfaction. Guilt too.

“I'm sick of looking at you,” Father said, and he looked himself sick. Taking a shuddering breath, shaking his head, turning his back. One day it would be hard to remember things hadn't always been like this.

Sai left. When the door clattered shut behind him he allowed himself to cry. Quietly, chin held high, great lungfuls of air. The spell would pass, the new bruise would come, and too, pass. There might be someone, somewhere, willing to let him work – whatever it might be. Anything at all. There still had to be hope.

When he had calmed himself he noticed he wasn't alone in the mouth of the alley. Yabona was there. He felt mortified. He wiped snot away with the back of his hand, sucked it back inside.

“How long have you been there?”

Yabona was slow to smile, but she did smile. A sad upward line, hesitant.

“Awhile.” She shrugged.

Sai nodded.

They met eyes. Yabona shifted from foot to foot. “I have good news.” Her voice lilted, as though she were posing a question.

“Good news?”

Here her grin blossomed full. “Yes! But you have to come with me, you're not, you're not uhh... busy?”

“I am not busy.”

“Are you feeling okay? I mean, maybe it doesn't have to be today. You don't look much better than yesterday, I mean. The bruises.”

“I am okay.” Sai looked down.

“Good! Come on then,” and she grabbed his arm like yesterday, when she pulled him along to the temples to perform sacrilege. As they ran he found his mood lighten. He found himself wishing she wouldn't ever stop dragging him places, even to commit sacrilege. At last he found himself wondering where they were going, and did not have to wait long to find out. They were going to the dojo. Where else? He had walked this very route in the past, took it in reverse to bring her to his home. He pulled back, slowing his run and she felt the tug through her arm. She looked back and frowned.

“I do not have mon,” Sai said. “I cannot go back.”

Yabona raised the fist she had been clenching all the while, and she loosened it, and shook. The clink of currency. She winked, and was off again, dragging him.

Dumbfounded he followed. There would need be recompense. What he had asked of her yesterday was what he asked of Miyo: mentor-ship, a guiding hand. He did not mean for her to go off alone and do whatever it was she had to do to get that money. How could he repay her? His position then had not changed remarkably. He would still need to find employ somewhere, but at least he could train. He could set one foot in front of the other and day by day feel himself grow stronger.

They were not long in arriving for their sprint, and both breathless before Miyo's gate. Unceremoniously, without a word, Yabona let herself in. Sai followed a few steps behind.

“Old man! Old Man!” Yabona cheerfully called to the door. “Old Maaaan, I have something for you.”

No one answered. No one stirred. Yabona looked at Sai.

“Should we just go in?”

Sai shrugged.

“Maybe he's out back.” And she lead the way to an empty yard. Wind tickled the tall grass here.

The door, as ever during summer, was left open. Miyo was laying on the mats, arms and legs spread, eyes puffy but vacant.

Yabona looked at Sai.

“He has been drinking again,” Sai said, and he made to sit down. There would be nothing to do but wait. A small price to pay. Perhaps the old man was not at his best, perhaps had never been good, but he was what Sai had. He was something to cleave too, and there were moments, few and far, when Miyo appeared to be a master in complete control of his faculties.

“Not today,” Miyo said at a hoarse whisper. He folded himself upright like a paper craft, jerking. It looked unnatural, something taken at a pain. “You're back,” he said at last, looking to Sai.

Sai nodded.

Yabona fidgeted between the two, and then looked at the coins in her palm. “I have something for you,” she said.

Miyo moved his mouth as if to speak, or to wet it in preparation. He looked like a dried piece of meat. Thin, strung up.

“Twenty mon, you said?”

The old man looked confused, and then he shrugged. “Never mind that.”

She was up the step, on the mats. Grinning uneasy. There was something in the atmosphere dragging it thin. The way he looked, the way he spoke. Little more than a corpse, an image of a body on strings played behind Sai's eyes. This was who he had to work with? But still, glimpses. How he dispatched those kids, kids for true, but he had thrown the largest of them without apparent effort. Sai had saw it, through elbows and forearms, as he was being pummelled.

“Here is forty,” she said, and held out the coins.

Sai saw Miyo look from Yabona's hand to her face from where he stood still in the yard. Miyo's mouth hung open. He shut it.

“I want to train too,” she said.

Miyo stared somewhere beyond her, the distance between here and anywhere. At length he nodded. When he met Sai's eye there was a presence in him, a balloon filled up. Miyo slapped his face and stood up.

“So be it,” he said, and he took the coins reverently. “Sai!” He barked, and Sai's backed straightened. “Thirty strokes! Show her the form, as I taught you. I will return.”

Sai smiled as broadly as he ever did, a very little bit. “You will watch me,” he said to Yabona.

She beamed at him.