03 Tyche in Friendship and Focus
Added 2020-03-04 20:00:02 +0000 UTC
“Wish I could go,” I said wistfully. It wasn’t a lie, either; I’m vain enough to be competitive, but my innate sense of fair play forbade me participating in any sort of tournament. I had something of an unfair advantage, especially when it came to sparring, and my metahuman awareness even weighted kata in my favor more than casual thought suggested.
Chao pursed his lips and frowned at me. “You work too much,” he said at last, “and you worry about things you cannot change.”
“What are you,” I asked, “a mind-reader?”
“I’m an old man,” he replied, “but I’m not a blind old man. Come. Let’s play together for a little bit and then, maybe, you can relax. At the very least, you’ll be able to tell me what troubles you.”
I groaned theatrically, but pushed myself into a standing guard. Shidoshi Chao bowed formally and stepped onto the mat. We faced each other, the diminutive round-faced Chinese-American man and the Amazonian Italian-American woman, and we bowed again, eyes up to spot treachery even in this friendly match.
* * * * *
This story has been sitting on my hard drive for more than a year; it was never released, although, properly, it belongs between A First Small Apocalypse Part 01 and A First Small Apocalypse Part 02. I like it because it's a good little slice of life, but it was always too short to stand by itself as a purely textual story, clocking in at only a little over 1300 words, all told.
