“Nik san, follow my lead and don’t do anything stupid,” K muttered under her breath with utmost seriousness as we walked down the stairs. All her cheerful demeanour with traces of tipsiness vanished.

I responded with a sharp stare. If anyone acted stupidly in all this it was her and Shin, whose whereabouts were still unknown to me.

“And don’t mention Shin at all, if anyone asks,” she added as if she’d read my mind.

I made a single nod, wondering who would be the one asking.

Two of the men that surprised us in the apartment were walking behind us, and while keeping a respectable distance they were watching us like a hawk. It must have been out of respect for whichever higher status K held in the complicated ranking system of Yamato Damashi that they accompanied us in such a civil manner, though they made it pretty clear that refusing to go with them was not an option.

Once we turned left and entered the hallway on the first floor, rather than going all the way down, I knew where they were taking us. Fujiwara’s name came up a few times in the brief conversation K had with the men in the apartment, and as far as I knew his premises were on the first floor.

Halfway into the corridor the taller of our two companions hurried past us, knocked on one of the doors ahead, and entered. When we reached that spot, K stopped and waited patiently in front of the closed door. Her shoulders rose and fell on a slow, deep sigh

“K,” I whispered, trying to make eye contact.

She glanced at the man behind us, then looked up at me. “It’ll be fine,” she said softly as if trying to reassure me. But this time I missed her relaxed confidence, which made up for the minimal information she usually provided, and her face showed signs of nervousness. This isn’t good, I thought to myself, worried sick about my future as a fighter.

The door was opened by the man that entered the apartment earlier. With his head bowed he waited until K and I walked in, and then left, closing the door behind him.

We found ourselves alone in a large room with no windows and a rather poor illumination. The minimalistic setting with almost no furniture had a focal point in a slightly elevated tatami platform with a large scroll hanging on the wall behind it. The little light there was it was focused towards that wall and the platform, leaving the rest of the room in a shadowy background.

Soft tatami mats sank under my steps as I followed K further inside. At a certain point, she paused and gestured me to remain in place, while she proceeded to the middle of the room. Facing the elevated tatami platform she kneeled and placed her palms on the floor in front of her, forming a small triangle. Then she bowed, her forehead almost touching the floor, and remained in that position.

Her bow was toward Fujiwara, who sat on the elevated part, behind a low, dark-wooden table, looking like some performer on a stage. Dressed in the traditional attire, he held a brush in his right hand and stared at an empty sheet of white paper, which was laid out on the table. With a sudden sweep across the white surface, he made a few strokes with the brush. Lifting it again he fixed his stare at the black ink lines his brush left behind.

“You must be our new fighter…Torsten san,” he said, his eyes still on the paper. “Welcome.”

His perfect pronunciation of my surname surprised me as much as him addressing me instead of K, who was still in the deep bow.

“Thank you, Sir,” I uttered with uncertainty, shifting my stare between him and K.

K lifted her head slightly off the ground, and, her eyes still lowered to the floor, rattled out a couple of sentences in Japanese that sounded like a very eloquent apology.

“Mhm-mmm…” Fujiwara kept looking at the paper in front of him with keen interest. “Hmmm….“ he muttered again, shaking his head slowly. “My calligraphy is not as good as it used to be. I’m shamelessly neglecting my practice of Shodo.”

The quietness that filled the room after he spoke required an answer. Not knowing what to do or say I looked at K for help. I got only an ambiguous glance from her. Was she signaling me to speak or to stay quiet?

“Sensei is skilled in many arts. It is natural, that not all of them get the same attention,” K commented politely.

Her words were left hanging in the air. Fujiwara seemed enraptured by the black kanji on the paper and remained perfectly still. The time too seemed to have stopped, letting my mind toying with the worse scenario possible. The thought of losing my position within Yamato Damashi made me physically sick. I was about to fall on my knees too, ready to beg for forgiveness when his mouth quivered and a smile appeared across his lips,

“Ah,” he swung his hand through the air and slightly rocked in his sitting position; “that’s just an excuse for my laziness.”

I heard myself exhaling and felt actual gratitude towards the universe or whichever higher power dispelled the unbearable stillness.

Fujiwara placed down the brush on its holder and stood up. Smiling, with his hands behind his back, he stepped down from his elevated tatami and continued towards K. Everything in his behavior and movements was somehow exaggerated and unfolding in a painfully slow pace.

Even his shadow, which followed him on the wall, grew disproportionally, distorting the outline of his body in a grotesque way. As Fujiwara reached K, the shadow’s nose elongated into something like a huge beak, its feet enlarged too, with curvy nails protruding out of the toes, and its back hunched slightly, looking like something was moving inside its spine and was about to come out.

I got so absorbed by this shadowy distortion I forgot about everything else until Fujiwara slapped K so hard she fell on the floor. The sound of the smack reached my ears as a distant echo, and the soft lines of the shadow fluttered with it.

Is this really happening?

K…she picked herself up and is listening to Fujiwara with her head drooped, her profile hidden by her hair that fell over her cheeks.… I can’t hear his voice well, as if he is too far, even though they are both just a couple of meters away…

The shadow….it grows….are those wings or it is just a play of a flickering flame from the candle on the altar… such a sweet smell permeates the room.

K…her shoulders tightening up as he speaks, I still can’t see her face, but I hear her sigh. I should go there, to make sure she’s ok. I push my right foot slightly forward… why am I so hesitant…He looks at me as I manage to do a full step. Something warm comes out of my nose. She turns to me too. Don’t come, she says, with a single shake of her head. Her face…I think I see pain…my gut’s telling me something’s not right, but my head says nothing’s wrong either… I can’t…

The shadow…it’s getting smaller, shrinking to the actual outlines of Fujiwara…

“Let’s go…” I hear.

K brushed against my arm as she walked past me. Her voice was like an alarm clock waking me up from a trance I haven’t realized I was in. I must have spaced out because when I looked at Fujiwara again he was already sitting back at his desk with his brush in his hand. Turning to K I squinted at her back as she proceeded towards the door. “Come,” she rasped, her voice a weak whisper, and I followed.

I stumbled out into the three men that surprised us earlier in the apartment upstairs. Without uttering a word they bowed and gave us space to pass.

As we walked down the hallway, I touched my nose and saw blood on my fingers. A nose bleed…now of all times?

The more I tried to think the less it was clear what had gone down in there. I was stressed the fuck out. Am I still a fighter for Yamato Damashi?

I felt K’s hand on my shoulder. “You okay?” she uttered, sounding slightly out of breath.

I was about to rant at her for putting us in this position and ask the dreaded question but seeing her face, bonier and swollen on the right side, shut me up. I realized her gesture was more for her sake than for mine for she leaned on my arm with all her weight and was barely keeping up with my steps. She appeared weak, not as in drinking all night hungover kind of way, but rather drained of all the energy. The exhaustion poured from her bloodshot eyes and she looked like she was going to collapse any minute. When I stopped she swung dangerously backwards. Luckily, I caught her over her lower back.

Once stabilized she let go of my shoulder and leaned against the wall, trying to avoid my stare. For a moment I forgot about all my troubles.

“Let’s go to your apartment,” I said and without waiting for her answer pulled her with me from the wall, spotting her over her back.

It wasn’t that she accepted my help, but she simply had no strength to fight against it. I’d have taken her in my arms and carried her over the stairs, but I knew she’d never forgiven me if I did that, so I took most of her weight on me while letting her walk on her own feet.

Once in her apartment, I laid her on the sofa and brought her a glass of water. She muttered arigatou and closed her eyes. With a wet cloth in my hand, I sat on the edge of the sofa and started wiping dried blood from my nose.

“K,” I said after a while, hoping her quiet murmur was a sign she was still awake. “I don’t care about that woman anymore. I don’t care what weird shit Fujiwara is messed up with, it’s none of my business. I think…well, I hope after today I’m still a Yamato Damashi fighter and that you’re still my proxy. I don’t want to jeopardize that ever again.”

Her breathing was heavy but stable. Her right cheek turned dark blue. The slap wasn’t something I only imagined. That was wrong of Fujiwara, regardless of how entitled he felt.

The glass she held in her hand was about to slip from her fingers. I took it from her, refilled it with water, and placed it on the table near the sofa. Then I left, gently closing the door behind me.

Thoughtful, confused, and scared shit about my future I was in for another surprise when I reached my dorm and saw a familiar figure lurking around its entrance.

“What the fuck, Shin—“

Before I could vent my anger at him, he grabbed my shirt near my neck and pushed me backwards with a force I didn’t expect from such a slender individual. His dark eyes above the mask sought me out. He didn’t need to verbalize his intent.

“K’s fine,” I said through my teeth.

His grip relaxed but his stare demanded more explanation.

“We were taken to Fujiwara. He scolded us…her…” Or at least this was a mild interpretation of whatever the fuck happened there. “But everything’s fine now. K was dead tired…don’t know what she did last night…I took her to her apartment. She’s there now… sleeping.”

I pushed him away, annoyed by him and all the shit that piled up in such a short amount of time. “How the hell did you get away?”

With a blank stare in his eyes, Shin was looking at some indefinite point on the ground. After a long, and, what looked like a thoughtful moment he walked away, ignoring my question completely.

“Great...” I grunted and went inside my building.