Sunday evening at Yang's dojo, paper lanterns trailed above the enclosed yard. Clear and raw sunset blended with the waxy glow of lamps filling the courtyard with oranges and yellows, but within an hour it would darken to purple, then deeper into nighttime.

Woody perfume and the aura that always surrounds a celebration embraced the martial arts academy.

The masters occupied their building's double-doors, facing the crowd of their students young and old. Their voices rang highest and commanded everyone's regard.

"Congratulations to all our students who have passed this Summer's examinations. Observing your hard work while we trained every one of you has inspired both of us. You improved your skills beyond what we dreamed. You exceeded our hopes in every element. Your actions promise us that the future awaits those we can believe in.

"You are not only good warriors. You are good people."

Yang sat cross-legged on a grass section of the enclosure. She gulped past a knot in her throat before she echoed their last statement in a whisper.

Sable and the other second-degree youths sat with her.

She didn't know if it was true, what they said, but she wanted it to be.

The other kids her age rubbed their noses or they ripped manicured grass in tufts, some of them too bored to listen.

She didn't know if it was true for all of them, but maybe the masters meant it for some.

They went on, speaking back and forth as if they shared a mind that followed the same direction. They sounded like they knew what each was about to say before it slipped out, and they knew how to pick up where the other left off without missing a beat. Even their voices matched each other, while Yang drifted focus.

Applause jerked her attention back. The adults were putting their hands together, but Yang had lost all context.

She craned her neck and straightened where she sat, even propping herself on her knees to get a head or so taller.

The world shrunk around her at once — her world, anyway. A globe isolated her from those who sat closest, so they became shadows obscured by a screen. The celebration reduced to a cadence of thumping, because for a moment her senses narrowed into a tunnel. That narrow vision was all that connected her to who came on display.

Her mouth opened wider and wider into an O. Her expression spread with dumb shock which evolved into dismay. Hackles in her hair and the tips of her goldilocks frizzed as she bared her fingers into the shape of claws. She had nothing to clutch but her own mane.

The senseis invited a young boy who stopped in front of them. His back faced the audience while he bowed. A clean uniform one size too big guarded him, made of the same crisp seams and cloth as the other students. He'd forsaken the brambles and thorns in his hair for a combed bundle perfectly in place. His string bean limbs gave away less of how weak he was, since he'd dressed better than the rags he once owned.

Shell faced everyone holding a rolled-up parchment in one hand and his other curled timidly close to his chest. Something disturbed him, warping his expression with a wobbly frown. The same disturbing emotion mangled his brow and speckled his eyes. He couldn't meet anyone's gazes as he brushed the back of one forearm across his face.

"What is he doing here?" Yang burst out loud.

Her shout exploded the globe that had exiled her in a world of realization, and all of the setting around her rushed close.

Staticky surprise flared her nostrils. Purple bruised the sky. Paper lanterns glared at her, shrinking her shadow so it had nowhere to stretch but under her feet. Grown-ups' heads turned from all different directions to pin in her place: the eight-year old who didn't know how this happened.

A sensei gestured in her direction. After he murmured a few things in confidence to Shell, the boy made his way toward her with his head down and both hands at his sides. He said nothing, traversing around the crowd the long way, until he joined the second-degree kids.

Grass flumped when he dropped all his weight down. His body language stayed loose, but centered. He kept all of him close to his chest without drawing himself too tight. He was relaxed, but secure.

However, he refused to meet anyone's glowering.

One kid muttered, "Kicked me," with vengeance in his words.

Sable asked with a sarcastic edge, "What'd you do with the racoons' mom, huh?"

Another girl said, "Wait until my mom hears about this."

Shell eased himself more openly to his peers, before he sneered. "Thanks for giving me all those training pamphlets. I guess they came in handy."

"No one gave them," snapped a nearby boy, but a renewed round of applause jerked their attention.

For the second time within a minute, the adults were putting their hands together.

Yang searched her masters' faces with a frantic need for answers, while both of them nodded in unison.

They said in a combined voice, "Please stand, Yang Xiao Long."

Her uncertain balance swayed, but she managed to her feet amid the grown-up's encore. Lead weighed her limbs, and her joints pinched with some rigid fear. She swallowed. She didn't know what was happening, but this was somehow Shell's fault.

One sensei continued, "Your example yesterday showed us what you would sacrifice for someone in need."

The other one said, "You, of all our youth students, make us the proudest we've ever felt. It is what you've done, and our conversation with one of the dojo's benefactors, that inspired us to begin our newest summer tradition: crowning one recipient of the Rose-Xiao Long scholarship."

The one master who started, next included all of his audience in what he had to describe. "At the end of every summer during our initiation ceremony, we will select one new or returning youth student to receive all-paid tuition for the next two seasons.

Both of them exchanged turns back and forth: one speaking, then the next, and so on.

"We name this scholarship after two dedicated Hunters who have sponsored our dojo for many years now. Their careers span an impressive length of time, and their mission successes speak to how powerful they've grown: as good warriors and good people. In fact, one of them learned his first fighting forms within this courtyard.

"The fact he and his partner have offered this opportunity is a step beyond sponsoring us. It's an example of two people who have many resources to give, who want to see unfortunate children receive those resources, so they may have a chance at a better future.

"The first offer of our Rose-Xiao Long scholarship goes to a local orphan named Shell.

"He has spied on our courtyard many times from afar. His troubled past may come into question, but we believe this is the right decision to boost his morale.

"Now he may join us without being judged or ostracized by the other youth his age.

"We look forward to training and nourishing him from the orphan who hid behind trash cans into a young man capable of kindness."

Both of them waved politely at Shell.

He tucked his arms under the crook of his legs and rested a cheek on one knee.

"Now that we have welcomed our newest student, let us continue," said one of her senseis.

"Stop it!" Yang had not returned to her spot on the grass. She presented the boy for everyone to see like he was the empty space on a plinth. He was where she would've put her trophy if she had one. He was the void where something more appropriate belonged, but he tainted it by sitting in its place.

For the second time, the glowering of every grown-up here pinned her in place.

"Don't you know what he's done?" she pleaded.

Sable bounced to her toes in Yang's defense. "He hurts animals for fun!"

Yang pressed her friend's shoulder and urged her down, but Sable resisted and went on more hostile than before. "He was about to do it to three baby raccoons, too, if we hadn't stopped him!"

Yang hissed, "Why can't you let me handle this?"

Sable fought on. "He's the cruelest jerk and he doesn't belong here."

"Down this instant, young ladies!" one of the masters barked sharp enough to put Sable at once on her rear-end.

Yang shook from her fists to her jaw-line, as hard-edged as steel. Her teeth squeaked together from how taut she clenched them. Little by little, her weight sunk, and she coiled herself into a spring on the lawn.

One provocation.

One twinge was all it would take.

She needed the tiniest excuse to cut loose.

It never came, though. The sky was midnight by then, and the ceremony proceeded without another interruption. It seemed to drag around her, even during the youth awards when Sable and Yang earned their third degrees. A pit sunk Yang deeper below the going-ons around her, until she was buried up to her head in suspicion and fear.

The trashy bully sat beside her, while she was uncertain how much damage he could do in his new position.