CHAPTER 91
"I didn't get it." Miguel's voice came out no louder than a whisper, so the other 3 teenagers barely heard him as he spoke. He couldn't believe it. The words of the letter burnt a hole into his mind as he processed what had happened. He hadn't gotten the scholarship. The chances of him going to college was now officially zero.
"W-w-what?" Sam stammered, thinking, hoping for a moment that she had misheard him.
"I didn't get it." Miguel's voice came out a lot louder now, frustration beginning to take over. "Shit!"
He had officially failed. He wasn't going to Stanford. He wasn't going to college at all. His whole life, he had been taught that if you put in enough hard work, good things would come. Well Miguel had put in everything he had, worked himself to the bone in school, and yet he still hadn't succeeded. He was quickly learning just how merciless this world could be: how you could have all the gifts in the world, but without the right background he didn't stand a chance. This was the sad truth, and Miguel had been shown this first-hand. A bit too late though.
"Miguel, I'm so sorry." Sam murmured.
"This is bullshit!" Eli exclaimed, snatching the paper out of Miguel's hand and reading it for himself.
Sure enough, Miguel was indeed being honest. He hadn't gotten the scholarship. He had been beaten out by other candidates, probably some prodigy from God knows where. Miguel had been invited to apply for the college for general admission, which basically slammed the door shut on that option given his family's lack of money. He was officially out of options. He had no college applications left to hear from. With every college rejection he got, the likelihood of his life being wasted away doing a meaningless dead-end job was growing larger, and it had absolutely skyrocketed today with this most recent development.
"It's fine. Stanford was a long shot anyways." Miguel murmured, trying to soften the blow by using realism. It was true. With the number of people who applied to Stanford every year, him receiving this scholarship was indeed very much a long shot. However, a small part of Miguel really thought that he had gotten it. The interview had gone really well, and the interviewer had sounded optimistic about his chances. This made the rejection even more crushing for him, even if he acted somewhat nonchalant about it.
"Don't worry, Miguel. There are always other options." Sam tried to support him by saying. "You can always come to New York with me if you want. Maybe you'll find something there that you love and want to pursue further."
Miguel didn't respond, but he knew that that wasn't a viable option either. He wasn't just going to blindly follow Sam to New York without a plan in mind. He wasn't going to ride on her coattails for the rest of his life. That wasn't who he was. Miguel Diaz was a leader, a strong character who fought for opportunities, not someone capable of sitting around on his ass and lazily waiting for opportunities to come his way. Now that the college option was firmly out of the way, Miguel needed to find a new direction for his future, a new direction for his life. And fast. Graduation was fast approaching, so time was slowly ticking away for him to find a new path.
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Another week passed, and they were now reaching the end of January. All of the teenagers could feel time ticking away, or flying by rather, and the Taikai drawing closer and closer. It was a tough balance for all of them, trying to work on both Karate and school at once, but they were all managing it well. Or rather, most of them were.
There was one teenager, a certain Cobra Kai leader, who was beginning to slip from his perch as one of the most potent fighters in the Valley, a perch he had only reached due to relentless hard work. Marcos had begun to miss a few training sessions, something he NEVER did under any circumstances, so it was only natural for eyebrows to begin to raise further. Marcos was off. There was not a doubt in anyone's mind about that. The main speculation was as to why exactly that was the case.
"Something's not right with him." Kenny remarked as the Cobra Kais warmed up for practice that day, with Marcos yet again absent for some reason. It was his 3rd time missing practice that week, a practically unthinkable act by Marcos' high standards for himself. "It's not like him to miss this many practices."
"Yeah, where the hell is he?" Shawn grumbled. "This is like the 3rd time this week!"
"Maybe he's doing something at the same time?" Piper asked.
"What though?" Mitch asked. At that moment, all of them realized just how little they knew about Marcos. They knew him as their champion. They knew him as the brutally ruthless fighter. But in terms of what he was like off the mat, none of them had really gotten close enough to him to know that. Except Sarah that is, but even she didn't know what was going on with him.
"What do we even know about Marcos anyways?" Kyler remarked, asking the question that all of them were thinking at that moment. "What does he do outside of training?"
"Well, up until a few weeks ago… Sarah." Mitch replied, an insensitive comment, especially given that Sarah was only a few feet away from him. Her face darkened as she looked down, taken back to the breakup that had been consuming her mind for the past few weeks.
Since the night it had happened, Sarah had been second guessing herself. She had been pondering whether or not it was the right decision, whether she had just made the biggest mistake of her life. She wondered if it would've been better for her to remain together with him, as it would allow her to eventually find out what was happening to him and help him, rather than getting pushed away like she had after their breakup. The more she thought about that, the more sleep she lost spending entire nights crying or thinking about this, she reinforced the belief that breaking up had been the right decision. She couldn't spend the next few weeks, months, years, not knowing if Marcos would ever confide in her or get better, while she was forced to occupy her entire mind at all times stressing about his well being.
That didn't change the fact that the breakup was still incredibly painful for her. Every time she saw him at school or at training, Sarah's heart stabbed at her with longing, with devastation, with regret. She saw the spark that used to twinkle in his eye completely extinguish, and she felt immense guilt and sorrow for all of the pain she had caused him. She missed him so much it hurt. Her entire life felt almost empty without him. They had gone from sometimes spending entire days and nights together to not seeing each other at all, a huge adjustment that she definitely wasn't handling well.
"That's probably what it is. He's probably just taking some time to get over the breakup." Piper commented, sympathizing especially with Marcos after her breakup with Moon a while ago.
All of a sudden, a voice spoke up from behind all of them.
"No. That's not it." Marcos remarked as he had walked into the dojo and heard them discussing him. "What's this? You guys are gossiping about me behind my back now?"
His quiet, clear, almost threatening voice sent shivers down the spines of the other Cobras, with all of them instantly silent. He was almost challenging any of the Cobras to say something to him now, and it was only Kyler who was brave enough - or stupid enough - to speak.
"Yeah, um… we were just… we were just… worried that you might be a bit, uh… a bit distracted right now. After everything that happened." Kyler stammered. Marcos took half a step towards him as he spoke, Kyler's voice trailing off in fear of Marcos lunging at him right there, but Marcos didn't. Instead, he turned away at the moment to address all of the students.
"Let's get something straight here." Marcos declared to all of them, staring each and every one of them in the eye. "First thing's first, if you have a problem with me about everything, you come to me about it. You don't bitch about it behind my back. You don't go to Sensei Kreese. You don't go to Sensei Kim. You come to me. Is that clear?"
All of the Cobra Kais slowly nodded at him, most of them out of fear of him. He was an unhinged, untethered individual. All of them could tell. He had changed severely since the beginning of the Christmas break in December, and the person he was now was practically unrecognizable from the person he was back then. He was the perfect Cobra now, but that came with the side-effect of being a ticking bomb, even amongst his own teammates.
"Second thing…" Marcos continued speaking. "You're right. All of you. I haven't been here nearly as much as I should've been, these past few weeks. And for that, I'm sorry. But if you want to know why I haven't been around much, it wasn't because of Sarah and I breaking up. The breakup is over and done with. I'm not letting it occupy too much of my mind and neither should any of you."
This last part was almost directed right at Sarah, though it wasn't particularly true. Marcos missed her terribly. The breakup of their relationship was the latest casualty of everything that was going on with his father, as Marcos knew that he'd rather not be together than risk Sarah knowing about what was going on and getting hurt.
"The real reason I haven't been around as much… I've been training. I found a new sparring partner so I've been training a bit with him on the side."
That wasn't even remotely true. It technically wasn't wholly a lie, but it sure as hell wasn't the truth either. How was he supposed to tell him that his new 'sparring partner' was a biological relative, and the only thing they did was regularly beat the living shit out of him on a daily basis.
The reason Marcos hadn't been at training as often was that with everything happening with his father, all of his energy seemed to have drained away. Before, it had been Sarah who had been the reason Marcos got out of bed every morning, but now that she was no longer a part of his life, there were days Marcos struggled to even pull himself out of bed. His father's relentless abuse had sucked the life out of his body, filling him with nothing but unspeakable pain, and so Marcos hadn't had the strength to show up for training various days that week.
Now that Marcos had cleared that up, even if it was with yet more lies, it was time for training to begin. Just in time too, as the senseis walked into the dojo moments later and they were able to get started…
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Two hours later, at the end of a grueling training session, Kreese and Kim were finally satisfied and allowed them to leave. Training really was ramping up for them as the Taikai drew closer: there was more and more physical and tactical training they were forced to do to improve their game.
After class, Kreese summoned Marcos into his office, away from the other students, in hopes to have a private conversation with him. Kreese wasn't an idiot. He also knew as well as anything that something was up with his champion. He initially suspected that it was to do with his breakup with Sarah, but as the days passed and nothing improved with Marcos, Kreese started to think that it was something more than that. He wasn't quite sure what it was, but he knew that he needed to address it with his student as quickly as possible, nip it in the bud before it became seriously detrimental for his student.
To Marcos' surprise, as he followed Kreese into his office, he found Sensei Kim also there, waiting for the conversation.
"Please. Sit down." Kreese instructed him, gesturing to the chair opposite him, and Marcos obeyed. He sat down, and both Kim and Kreese sat down opposite him.
"Uh… what's going on?" Marcos asked them.
"Mr. Oliveira, we're your Karate senseis." Kreese began. "It is our job - our pleasure - to help you become the best fighter and Cobra you can possibly be. I hope that you trust that we'll always have your best interests at heart, and we'll always be looking over your shoulder for you, for the dangers you can see and the ones you can't."
Marcos was beginning to realize what this was about, and he sighed, knowing he couldn't tell his senseis what was really going on. A web of secrets, a network of lies, it was becoming exhausting for him to keep track of everyone he had screwed over.
"What's troubling you, Mr. Oliveira? Is everything okay?" Kreese asked. "You've been missing class and whenever you are here, you seem distracted."
You don't tell anyone about what happened, you hear me? That girlfriend of yours… I would hate to see her get hurt.
Remembering his father's threats and hearing them just as vividly as ever, Marcos forced on the familiar poker face as he looked at his senseis.
"Everything's fine. I'm sorry that I haven't been here as much as I should've. I've just been really swamped between schoolwork and Karate and everything else… not being able to study for the two weeks I was in Japan definitely didn't help. But I should be back in the dojo more regularly now."
Kreese and Kim went silent for a while as they listened to him, staring him up and down and reading him like an X-ray. For a split second, for one horrible moment, Marcos thought that they wouldn't believe him. That they'd press further. But thankfully, they didn't.
"Okay. I'm glad to hear that you'll be back more often now. We'll need you at full strength for the Taikai." Kreese said. "Go home. Get some rest. You trained well today."
"Yes, sensei. Thank you." Marcos replied, standing up, turning on his heel and walking out of the dojo's front office. Once he was gone, Kreese and Kim turned to one another, their facial expressions troubled as they glanced at the seat where their champion had been sitting.
"He's lying." Kim commented. It wasn't a question, but a statement. One that Kreese knew was definitely true. They had been training Marcos for 5 months now, and they had never seen this from him. Something was going on, and Kreese knew that as his sensei, he needed to find out exactly what so he could help him. Not just help him win the Taikai, but genuinely help him, as Kreese truly cared about the boy.
"Yes. He is." Kreese murmured, thinking deeply for a moment as he decided on what to do next. "I'm going to go by his house tonight. Maybe his father will know what's going on. Maybe he can help."
"I'll go." Kim volunteered.
"Are you sure?" Kreese asked.
"Yes. Don't worry about it. I'll go by his house now to make sure everything's okay there." Kim replied. Kreese nodded.
"Okay. Please do that." Kreese said, and so Sensei Kim stood up and left the dojo too. Once she was gone, Kreese sat back in his chair, shocked by the strange, unfamiliar emotion that he was feeling. It was worry. He was genuinely worried, not about Cobra Kai achieving their objections or anything like that, but about Marcos. It was a sincere human emotion, one that Kreese seldom felt anymore. But then again, never before had he had a student he connected with as well as Marcos Oliveira. Not Johnny Lawrence. Not Tory Nichols. Which is why Kreese wanted more than anything to help him. He just didn't know how…