The week-end after Yang's incident with Shell, she attended a ceremony at her local dojo, but she still remembered how the aftermath of their encounter had devastated her mood.
One of her gang's parents had shown up and stopped the action, but not before she gave a few hits and the jerk gave some back.
The rest of that day had gone by in a blur.
Yang and Shell howled together a mixture of nonsense and threats.
Grown-ups' faces and grasping arms blended together.
Her friends, when they returned, cried for a number of reasons, turning red-faced and their voices blubbery.
Once Shell vanished from sight, Yang cried, too, because adults had taken the raccoon babies to shelter. She wanted to be with them. She had to make sure they were okay, even though they were going to better hands. She'd found them, but no one let her go along.
She kept hiding her face and mopping her eyes, because no one seemed to care about the babies' mom, either. Her nose ran with snot. Her vision blotched the world through stained glass, so everything was worse of a haze than it was already.
Later that night, long after the gut-wrenching explanation to Mom and Dad, and everyone had gone to sleep, furious tears stung her cheeks and spread into her bedsheets, too. Linen stifled her nostrils. She roared into her pillow and kicked like she was hitting a sandbag.
Darkness settled on her back and shoulders to make her lie still, but when she closed her eyes, the figment of Shell snarled louder in her head than anyone would ever be able to hear.
She didn't know what to do with that psychic pain.
She clamped it in her pillow until it burned her fists.
No one should've had to hate this badly.
No one her age should have to feel that pain.
She curled on her side facing her closest window and hiccupped. Patch oak foliage answered by scratching the glass outside. She wiped her nose on the hem of her sheets. Soreness ached in her arms and legs, but no amount of hugging herself relaxed them.
She'd heard so many things from all the people around — too many strangers whose voices formed a sonic helmet around her, until one timid voice of a child broke through her solitude.
"Yang, you can sleep over here if you want."
Yang touched her feet to the cool bedroom floor. She joined her little sister after a forever of crying came to its end. Though she didn't get to sleep right away, and her knowledge of what Shell had done coursed her veins with violence, she eased under the covers while her breath found its rhythm once more. "Sorry if I kept you up, baby sis. I just don't know if I'm a bad person."
It wasn't the only thing on Yang's mind, but it had slipped out before she realized.
She still didn't have an answer so many days later. She didn't know how to ask Mom or Dad. Her gang of friends wouldn't understand, either. Mentors at the training hall didnt go around answering questions like that, but none of the senseis would know what she meant, anyway.
Shell was a bad person.
Above all else, she had to be better than him, even if it didn't make her good.
Come to the day of their initiation testing, where she sat cross-legged on floorboards gleaming from pine-sol.
Her dojo's ceremony lasted the whole week-end in stages, but the youth segment went on between dawn and noon-time Saturday morning, with an awards finale Sunday afternoon.
She would advance to the next degree of martial arts training, as long as she executed her technique, showed off her fitness level, and proved herself in sparring.
Some kids didn't make it. They had to stay behind to hone their degree until next Winter, during the next examination.
Kids among the ages of seven and twelve knelt in their clean uniforms. Yang's was freshly washed to pearly white and smelled like the trees from home. Even the grass stains in her leggings had vanished overnight.
Sable, beside her, said, "Watch them fail me because my stance is an inch too wide."
White walls and wooden beams secured the training hall's eight-sided interior, while rafters supported its pagoda-sloped ceiling. Windows let in a morning breeze and the songs of summer birds. All of their shutters were splayed as wide as they could go to air out the school. The eastern side invited streams of sunlight that pooled in rectangles across the floor.
Training sessions took place on the lawn, upon the courtyard outside, where students got as dirty, loud, and wild as they needed during drills.
Opening the dojo's double-doors meant a sacrament was taking place — a vital rite of their martial arts mentors. This was a sacred floor. The space within its walls even inspired the children with respect.
One by one, Yang's senseis called each student to the central floor to present their technique.
They started with first degree students, then second.
They called Sable among them. She smirked at Yang as she rose, before she pounced ahead into the second degree's starting stance.
Yang groaned and covered her face, because her friend had already failed.
Sable thrust into a series of fists and kicks while she went, "Hyup. Hai. Yah!" Her bare feet slapped the floor. She punctuated every strike in the air, grunting, "Hah. Hup! Hyah~" The seams of her uniform shifted at crisp twists. She jabbed, spun and blocked, whipped forward. She pivoted to an imaginary foe, who she smacked with her toes.
She landed half a minute later, her last block and punch relaxed, in the exact spot she started. She slid her feet together, ended her technique, and hopped with applause. "Nailed it!"
The senseis didn't even prompt her before she returned to Yang's side on her knees.
She hissed, "I dare them to hold me back after that. Perfect form!"
One of the masters called Yang's full name.
Sable slapped her shoulder. "Beat em up, dude."
Yang took her friend's place on the training floor, where sunlight and a draft coaxed her to life.
Outside the dojo, a dark bird landed on a visible bough of foliage.
Yang planted a fist into the open palm of her other hand and bowed low enough to expose the back of her head to both senseis.
This alone set their techniques apart.
One forgotten sign of respect to her elders had ruined the whole rest of Sable's demonstration. It didn't matter how perfect the stances landed. Her blows could have been sharp enough to split wood. Maybe her blocks could have stopped a blade.
None of those made a difference.
Yang rose to full height staring straight ahead, not meeting either of her teachers' gazes. "I'm sorry for my friend, masters. I know you're going to fail Sable." A knot pinched her throat, but gulping it down didn't clean her voice.
"If I'm allowed to do this, she should go again instead of me. She doesn't disrespect you, masters, she just forgot to bow before she started. She also forgot to bow when she finished. She really wanted to do her technique the best. It meant so much to her to get it right that she forgot about showing you respect. This dojo is the only chance my friend has to learn self-defense, but I can go back to Signal and earn my next degree there. You know I'd pass my ceremony today, anyway, so it really doesn't matter.
"Please, don't fail her, masters. She tried really hard. She deserves to move up with everyone else. Is there anything I can do to help her?"
One of the senseis gestured for her to quiet by holding up his palm.
Once she was finished, since she had nothing else to say, she sucked on her bottom lip and swallowed harder.
Someone from the gathering of kids sniffled.
A tree's branch outside bucked with a sudden release of weight.
Both mentors returned her bow at long last, but only one of them responded. "We will review what you have said. You may be seated, Yang Xiao Long."
"Thank you, masters." She released both hands she hadn't known were fists and eased her shoulders she didn't realize were strained, then she returned to her spot among the other kids.
