Conflicts.
He looked at his reflection through his full body length mirror, looking over his slight brown skin that he had gained from his recent years in Pakistan. Broad shoulders, dark brown eyes, short-cut black hair and a 6' towering and muscular frame supported by, as some girls liked to put it, a 'chiseled jaw'. He wasn't forgone to his good looks, or to his attractive buff-ness that he had achieved while training with monks in the Himalayas for a year, which had girls running after him wherever he went, he just wasn't interested. He sighed, running a hand through his hair and looking for his watch. It had been a long week of moving to Seaford and then unpacking afterwards. He liked this place, it was tranquil and he could smell the wetness of the leaves and the grass through his window every morning. This was like the tenth move, he and his dad had made since his mother had died but he was comprehensive of the circumstances so he didn't pay much mind to it.
After finally finding his watch, he walked out of his room, giving himself one more look, before he did so, to make sure he was presentable to whoever he was going to meet today. As he paid his morning farewells to his Dad and headed towards his car, his mind went back to the new house, which he had to now call 'home'. Yeah that, and 50 others, he thought to himself, smiling through his thought as he remembered.
"Home is not a four-walled secluded building, Sam. No, it is much more special and significant than that. Home is where your family is." wisely spoken words by a wise woman. His mother.
He parked in the seemingly deserted car park, the mustang and range rover being the exceptions that he thought probably belonged to some rich kids. After heading inside the mall, he found what he had landed upon while on the internet last night. The Bobby Wasabi dojo. He had laughed aloud when he had seen that the first time but after some more research he was more confused than when he had started. Apparently, the dojo was named after a famous, movie star, mediocre at best, but that wasn't the confusing part.
Apparently, the dojo had a deficit so large that it could create a hole through the fabric of reality, in other words a black hole. Now here was the confusing part; that was shown from records of 4 years ago, don't judge, boredom is the mother of unnecessary deeds, and the records followed through for the first quarter of the third year but it wasn't shut down or taken over by the black dragons, seriously, what kind of name even was that, rather the movie star continued to let it run and the second quarter showed business going up. What was strange was that, Bobby handled this dojo's paperwork personally and even after it cost him millions he still let it run and to this day, it still cost him the most amount of money, out of all the other dojos in the chain. There must be something very valuable to him at that dojo, was Sam's last thought before he decided to call it a night.
Now here he was standing inside the mostly blue dojo and introducing himself to Rudy's "star" students. He chuckled inwardly to himself at that. Only two of them had a black belt and one of them didn't even practice at the dojo. But he still kept a firm and natural smile and offered his skills up for performance, to seal the deal, he showed them a routine he had learned in his first week of training with the monks which was easily enough to get them excited and awed. They were all very welcoming and they all had light, lively gazes. All but one.
After all the introductions were through with, he had paid Rudy for the next three months and had signed the necessary paperwork, class had started. They were all very comfortable around each other and seemed very relaxed even in the most intense of drills, intense for some, warm-up for others. He might have been sceptical of Rudy at the start but he had found respect for him, clearly due to his knowledge of the martial arts but also due the moral and ethical warnings he gave to his students after every new move learnt or performed by Kim or Jack. He smiled, they clearly had some…...thing? Whatever it was, it was clearly out of bounds of platony and he wasn't the only one who noticed, apparently.
At the end of practice when they were waiting for everyone else to change, they had a mini-sparring session which nobody seemed to pay mind to except for him and Milton. Milton nudged him ever so slightly
"Are we the only two who notice?" came the whispered statement. All he could do was nod. He had found respect for the redhead, not only did he pick up on something that was barely noticeable, probably because of his friendship to Kim, but he had also over-heard his conversations with Julie, definitely girlfriend, and Milton knew things that were astonishing to him. Unlike most people, he met Milton was not living in a bubble full of ignorance or a bubble at all. Obviously the same went for Julie as she could understand the unfathomable knowledge about the merging of two black holes and the dispersion of quantum gravity as a result.
After they had all changed, they were sitting in a circle chatting when Kim asked
"So why did you not join the Black Dragons dojo?"
"Like all other sensible people would" Milton added with a chuckle but he was right, from the outside the Black dragons appeared to be the favorable choice but he was pretty keen on uncovering hidden gems wherever he went.
"Maybe I'm not as sensible as I appear." He replied with a chuckle. Everyone had sat down now, beside each other, forming an irregular circle in the middle of the dojo and the conversation continued. He talked with them, for half an hour more until the beckoning of his father occupied him and he had to return home. It was weird, talking to them like this. He knew how to have meaningless conversations and fake greetings with others but this, this was different. It was refreshing, he had forgotten how real human interaction felt like. Yeah, it was definitely refreshing, and that last part definitely didn't sound depressing at all.
He went home, shaking his head at himself the whole way back which was shorter than he had thought. It was needless to say that his dad picked up on his…. optimistic behavior, which he retorted to as nice friend-making that his dad was all too happy and apparently surprised to hear about.
Really? Had he gone that far away from real social interaction? obviously, the only baseline he had to measure himself with, was his dad and that wasn't very helpful.
Sam Watterson. Seriously, what kind of was that? A perfectly normal one. Too normal. Maybe he was looking too much into it, or maybe his hunch was right and he was on the verge of discovering a new Toy Carson. Whichever of the two, morally controversial and conscience challenging statements were two, he was still on someone else's Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages at 2 am in the morning on a school night. There was nothing to justify that, "to protect my friends", was the only thing that gave him the moral green light to continue. Maybe he wasn't as good as Milton or one his other nerdy friends but he had his moments and after poking around for nearly 6 hours, all he could find was the name of a woman, Julian Hudson. It was enough of a lead and enough probable cause to ask for help from Milton's other friends, more like acquaintances. He'll get them at school tomorrow.
A/N: I will not be updating my other story until I have finished this one as I need the character Sam for that one and this one introduces him to you guys. I feel like, that's always a challenge, to establish a character, as it is very easy, for me anyways, to write about characters already developed those that everyone already knows. Hope you enjoy and leave a review.