บท 94: Sparring
The sun rose per usual on a Saturday morning. Sato awoke with a deep sharp pain on his forehead. It throbbed to the beat of a drum. "Ahh..."
Looking to his right, Sato noticed a pill of aspirin and a cup of water placed on his bed side table. He ate in without hesitation. Sato also realised that someone had helped him to change out of his clothes from yesterday. Man, I can't remember much after the King Game last night, Sato thought.
He had partied too hard for his first time. Now, he regretted it deeply. What exactly went down afterwards?
Sloppily, Sato dragged his feet into the bathroom to take a warm shower in hopes of getting away the headaches. The water flowed down on him incessantly as Sato stood still. He was in the midst of recollecting his thoughts, but there wasn't much to it.
When he went down for breakfast, Gray was already there at the table, having his morning coffee. Gray wore a nice brown sweater to kept him warm. He read his news on his tablet before putting it down when realising Sato was up.
"How is your head?" Gray asked with a welcoming smile.
"Terrible... Thanks for getting me home in one piece though." Sato rubbed the temples on his head while talking.
"It's nothing." Gray paused slightly before continuing. He tried to sound cool on the outside, but within he was secretly anxiously. "So do you remember anything from yesterday?"
"Ahh, I sadly can't remember anything beyond a certain point of the party..." Sato shook his head in dissapointment. He looked up at Gray, embarrassed.
"Did I do anything embarrassing when I got home? Was that why you were asking?"
Gray shook his head too. Obviously, he was dispirited that Sato couldn't remember yesterday night, but he didn't show it on his face. "No not really, except for the fact that you did not want to sleep and wanted to play games instead."
"Serious?! Ahhhh!" Sato covered his face shyly. This was his first time knowing how it felt to be drunk. It was a pretty bad experience like everyone else.
"Well, eat up the porridge before it gets cold. The housemaid prepared some hangover soup to help you recover faster." Gray carried on to read the news while sitting in front of Sato.
The whole time, Sato had been staring at Gray. Ever since last night, his perception and thoughts when being with Gray, changed completely. Today, he was admiring Gray's blue eyes. Although he was looking down, the blue hue resembled the Pacific ocean. It was utterly mesmerising.
Sato was in a trance-like state whereby he had lost all awareness of his surrounding and was only focusing on Gray. He didn't realise that Gray had a keen sixth-sense. Without much time, he could tell that Sato was looking at him intensely.
"Do I have something on my face?" Gray joked a little. He looked up to see the reaction on Sato's face. As expected, the boy blushed as red as a tomato.
"Not.. Nothing!"
Sato went back to his food, but would try to steal occasional peeks at the handsome General in front of him. The whole breakfast was filled with youthful romance.
As promised, Sato started his first Taekwondo lessons with Master Choi. Today, the venue was in the mountains where Master Choi dwells in. It was also the place that Sato was placed to the test.
Unlike traditional methods of teaching new students the art of Taekwondo, whereby the students would first learn a set of moves that is rigid and inflexible at times, Master Choi taught his students differently.
"Attack me." The master said to Sato without any expression.
"Pardon?" Sato didn't quite understand what his teacher was getting at.
"Attack me using your legs." Master Choi spoke simply and precisely.
"Uhhh..." Sato didn't know if he was serious, but he followed through regardless. "Then, excuse me for making a move."
Through the first two extracurricular lessons in Taekwondo, Sato was only taught the forward kick. It was a simple vertical up kick that any beginner could do. However, having a curious learner's mindset, Sato searched up all the other kicking forms and had watched other experts perform them.
As a result, although he had only practiced forward kicks, he was an encyclopedia when it came to all kick forms.
Sato reached out and kicked his leg forward, aiming at Master Choi. He aimed upwards at his teacher's chin. Yet, his legs could no reach it's planned final destination because of how inflexible the boy was. Master Choi knew of that from the very beginning and did not even flinch or move a single bit. The old man followed up with a thrust of his hand right in the center of Sato's chest. The boy stumbled backwards with slight discomfort.
"Again." He said simply.
This time Sato was more determined to land a strike on his teacher. He measured up the distance correctly this time and launched another forward kick. Before it could go beyond Master Choi's waist, a hand had intercepted his kick and repelled the force away. It hit the bone on Sato's bare feet, causing great pain there.
"Again." Master Choi repeated.
And so began the long repetitive training where by the teacher stood still and the student launched many fruitless attempts at landing a proper hit on his teacher. In the past 30 minutes of training, Master Choi had only said one word, 'again' repeatedly. He never stopped to give any advice and only asked for Sato to attack him. Even the academically advanced boy could not figure out the purpose of this repetitive sparring.
He had been launching a frontal kick on Master Choi for so long and all the old man had done is repel it with his hand downwards. There was simply no way of landing a strike this way.
Unless...
It was then something clicked in Sato's head. Looking back at the moves in his heads, he memorised the movements of the next kick which he would have learnt in university. It was time to put it to the test.
Sato hopped a step forward to get closer to Master Choi. Launching the same frontal kick from before, Sato's teacher was yet again, about to parry his movement. To his surprise, Sato's leg suddenly changed direction. The vertical kick was made into a horizontal one. Sato had combined the front kick with the side kick.
Caught slightly off guard by his student's action, Master Choi rotated his body slightly leftwards. It allowed Sato's kick to miss him. Although that was the final outcome, the spontaneous move by Sato had finally earned him a nod from his teacher. Within a second, Master Choi was back to himself again.
"That move was good. Now on to the next step..."
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