CHAPTER 89

2 weeks later…

2 weeks later and things were once again in full swing for the Miyagi-Dos. The Christmas holiday was well and truly over, so there was no time to waste, school work and Karate training piling up. They now knew exactly what was expected of them in both areas, so it was all up to them to meet those tough expectations.

Things between Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai were still at an all-time low. Tension was through the roof, with both sides increasingly weary of an incoming fight. Any semblance of the truce that Marcos and Robby had worked to establish together was vanished. It had died the day of their confrontation at the school football field during Phys Ed, when Marcos had singlehandedly taken out both Tory and Miguel, two monumental figures in Miyagi-Do. More than that, but they were Robby's girlfriend and his soon-to-be stepbrother, which led to Robby being the first to give up on a truce between the sides. And without Robby holding back the rest of Miyagi-Do, their aggression was able to be expressed at full blast.

Even without a truce, there hadn't been another fight. Not yet at least. For one thing, Cobra Kai were dealing with their own civil war that they needed to focus their attention on. Marcos and Sarah's breakup, now officially bringing their beautiful time as a couple to an end, had caused both Cobra Kai's leaders to have their attention distracted. They were barely able to be around each other anymore, and dealt with the breakup in completely polar-opposite ways. Marcos threw himself head-first into Cobra Kai, training day and night with Kreese, Shawn and anyone else who was willing to train with him. Combined with all of the resentment he was harboring about what was going on with his father, Marcos had grown more brooding, aggressive and unrestrained by feelings as trivial as sympathy or concern for the well-being of others. He was the perfect Cobra. Sarah, on the other hand, had grown slightly more distant from the rest of the dojo, still going to all required training sessions, but not hanging out with anyone else from the dojo after hours.

With all of this going on, Cobra Kai didn't have their leaders able to properly guide them, and that fact prevented them from waging another battle on their foes. Channel your anger, Marcos often encouraged all of them. Remember your emotions and let them fuel you, flow through your body like plasma, and when the time is right, release all of it in the direction of the enemy. But that time wasn't just yet. Just as well too for the Miyagi-Dos, who still weren't keen on the idea of another fight with Cobra Kai. Their confrontation on the Football field had shown them that no matter how hard they were working, Cobra Kai was still just as much of a threat. They hadn't been neutralized whatsoever, and it was going to take everything Miyagi-Do had to beat them.

However, towards the end of January, Miyagi-Do were forced to turn their attention away from Karate for a moment, when one of the most important times in their entire childhood had arrived. College acceptances had arrived! Focus shifted from Karate to the bigger issue: the older teenagers' futures. Their whole lives, the kids had been told that they had the entire world at the palm of their hands, and they could do anything they wanted to. Time, unfortunately, proved just how wrong that was. They didn't have nearly as many options as they thought - at least options they figured were viable for them - so it was a lot harder than they initially expected.

For a start, Robby and Tory hadn't even bothered submitting any college applications. They knew that neither of them had enough money for college, with Tory's family completely broke and Robby's not much richer, especially with a baby on the way for his dad. Not only that, but neither wanted to have to go through 4 more years of college, only to end up having to do 4 more if they wanted any chance at a meaningful job. There were other things they could do that didn't require a college degree. Tory had successfully already found one of these things, hired by Amanda to work at Larusso Auto. Initially starting by just helping out around the dealership where she could with the meaningless tasks, the job had quickly grown as Amanda had seen promise in her as a future saleswoman, and Tory found herself thoroughly enjoying it. So Amanda and even Daniel had agreed to help train Tory to become another salesperson for the dealership, a massive step in Tory gaining their trust after such a long war with their daughter. Robby's future, however, as a lot less set in stone. None of the writing was on the wall just yet, and he was still fully determining what his next steps would be.

For the other teenagers - Sam, Demetri, Hawk and Miguel - all of them had applied to a varying number of colleges, to varying degrees of success. Sam had decided that she wanted to study Psychology, wanting to eventually work to study the psychology of PTSD and trauma in greater depth in teenagers. She had received almost all of the acceptances she was hoping for. It wasn't too hard either: between her stellar grades, emotional essay and her family's affluency, there wasn't really a college that could've rejected her.

Demetri and Hawk were in a similar boat. Eli had decided that he wanted to study architecture, with that being a serious interest of his for his entire life, and he had also gotten many acceptances for that. He was a Straight A student and did not possess a criminal record, even despite all of his past mistakes, so schools had no reason not to accept him. Demetri, meanwhile, wanted to study Computer Science, seeking to eventually become a programmer, and his incredible talent in the areas had attracted college acceptances left and right.

Lastly, Miguel's case was the most complicated of all of them. Unfortunately, Miguel had come to learn that in many cases, simply having Straight As just wasn't enough. There were hundreds upon thousands of people out there with the same and even better grades than him. Normally his academics would've been enough to help him get into whatever program he chose, but this wasn't a normal case. Miguel's family didn't have money. No money at all. Between the debts from his medical fees, living with only 1 working parent and now whatever costs were going to come with having a baby, Miguel couldn't rely on his family to provide the tuition for college. This meant that to stand a chance at getting into these places, he needed to apply for financial aid or scholarships. Financial Aid was a non-starter as he quickly found out just how merciless the government was: having a mom who was a nurse apparently earned enough money to render him ineligible for financial aid, even if a lot of that money was used anyways to repay the medical debts.

This left only scholarships. And even in this area, Miguel was at a disadvantage. Even if quite a few people managed to achieve athletic scholarships, Karate wasn't exactly a sport that allowed you to do that. Academic merit-based scholarships were his only option and those, he found out, were really, really rare. He had been rejected for them by every college he had applied to so far, even with his amazing SAT score and grades, proof of just how unfair the world could be. There was only one school left that he was yet to hear from, his first choice: Stanford University.

By some weird stroke of luck, neither Miguel nor Sam nor Demetri nor Eli had all heard from their first choice schools yet. Sam hadn't heard back from Columbia. Demetri and Eli hadn't heard back from MIT. And Miguel, of course, hadn't yet heard back from his final hope at a scholarship or college acceptance, Stanford.

And by an even weirder twiste of fate, their letters of admission or rejection all arrived on the exact same date. Collecting the mail that morning as all of them did every day, eager to receive that all-important letter, they were all shocked to see them sitting in their mailboxes, and they immediately called one another, meeting up to open the letters together. They knew that it was each other's first choice schools, so they wanted to share in each other's success or be there for each other's disappointment.

They met up at Miyagi-Do, the dojo completely empty when all four teenagers walked inside, their hands trembling inside their jackets as they felt their letters burning a hole into their pockets. One single page of A4 paper could determine not only the next four years, but their futures as a whole.

"Hey." Miguel and Sam nodded at Hawk and Demetri nervously as they greeted them.

"You guys got your letters?" Eli asked, and both of them nodding, pulling the sealed envelopes out of their pockets, Eli and Demetri doing the same. They all held them out, seeing the almost identical black font lettering written on the outer address labels, trying to gauge by the thickness of each envelope whether it was good news or bad news.

"I'm having trouble breathing right now." Demetri murmured, his hands shaking so violently that the letter threatened to fly away in his hands.

"You guys ready?" Sam asked them.

"I kinda want to wait." Miguel admitted quietly to his best friends and his girlfriend.

"For how long?" Sam asked. Miguel sighed.

"Forever." He murmured. "This is the last moment before we know."

"Miguel's right." Hawk stated in a gentle tone very unusual for him. "After we open these envelopes, it's going to change our entire lives, no matter what's in them."

"So who's going to open theirs first?" Demetri asked.

"I'll go first." Sam volunteered, trying to sound confident but unable to keep her nerves at bay. Her final letter, the letter that would determine whether or not she'd be going to Columbia University, the school of her dreams. She didn't know why she was so nervous. After all, there was nothing she could do now. She had done all the hard work leading up to this point, and it was officially out of her hands.

Although a part of her mind was reassuring her with this, the rest of her body refused to listen, her entire body trembling with anxiety as she slowly began to peel back the seal of her envelope. Just before she pulled the letter out of the now unsealed envelope, she felt Miguel's hand gently squeeze her own for a moment.

"No matter what happens, we're all here for you." He murmured comfortingly, and Sam nodded, ever-grateful that he was such a huge part of her life. Such an incredible person, Sam felt horrible that Miguel's final hopes for college rested on the letter in his hands. He didn't deserve it. He deserved so much more than that. Even if he got in, which Sam had faith that he had, the fact that the journey had been so different for him than her for reasons that were totally out of is control was really hard for her to watch.

That didn't prevent Sam from slowly slipping the letter out of the envelope and opening it up, revealing a single-paged letter from Columbia University themselves. Taking a deep breath and closing her eyes for a moment, Sam then began to read through the entirety of the relatively short letter. After she was done, she looked up at the group, an unreadable expression on her face as she stared at their eager faces.

"I…"

To be continued…