The three men on the mat made the calculations about getting up and the calculations came back with 'not yet.'
Kenji stared at her.
She picked up her water bottle from the bench. Took a drink. Looked at Master Cho across the room.
Master Cho had been watching from his office doorway.
He began to clap.
Slow. Deliberate. The clap of someone who has seen something that met expectations.
Then he said: "'Good timing. We have a new transfer arriving today.'"
The door of the dojo opened.
The light from outside came in first — the specific flat grey of an Osaka morning that hadn't decided on rain yet. Then the woman in it.
Red hair.
Not Veronica's dark auburn. Brighter. The red of something deliberate, the specific shade that didn't occur in nature and had been chosen rather than inherited. It fell past her shoulders, damp slightly at the ends from the morning air outside.
Her eyes matched.
