Sohee

I was surprised by how little Kaiko had packed. When we gathered her luggage, she had one large suitcase, a medium suitcase, and a duffle bag, plus the backpack she had been wearing when she stepped off of the plane.

“Why couldn’t Sohee have packed like you when she first moved here?” Kevin joked while lifting her duffle bag, but he shut up quickly when I glared at him.

“I guess it’s a part of being born and raised in Japan?” She giggled. “I was raised to lead a simplistic lifestyle. Ask Sohee – I never owned many things.”

“No ,” I scoffed. “This girl,” I pointed at her, “owned ing ten pairs of pants, and fifteen shirts. And she was always changing them around, so I didn’t know until I saw into her closet once while we were hanging out in her room.”

“Whereas you owned about thirty of each,” Kaiko snickered. “And you aren’t counting my gym clothes.”

“Holy !” I groaned, rolling my eyes and trailing after Eli, who was carrying her medium suitcase. “I think you owned more gym clothes than casual combined!”

“You like to exercise?” Alexander asked, looking down at her.

“Not that much,” she shrugged. “I just find gym clothes more comfortable. However, I used to play soccer. But it’s been awhile,” then a sneaky smile grew on her lips. “The only thing I do regularly is -”

“Beating the ing out of people,” I deadpanned.

“Sohee-chan, that’s a little harsh -” Kaiko tried to object, but she was obviously fighting a smile.

“It’s not harsh – it’s the ing truth!” I declared crossing my arms. “Remember that one guy who tried to mug us on the way back from the movie theater that one time?”

“Sohee-chan, that was in self-defense,” Kaiko told her. “He had a gun, remember?”

“But you beat the out of him.”

Kaiko shrugged a little bit, “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Kaiko – you knocked him out in two hits,” I could see the mortified expression on all of the guys’ faces out of the corner of my eye.

“He looked like a druggie,” Kaiko told her. “And it was in self-defense!”

Alexander, Kibum, and Kevin

Note to self: NEVER piss this girl off…

Eli

Wait – Sohee was mugged once!? Why didn’t she tell me that!?

“You were mugged once!? Why didn’t you tell me about that!?” I voiced all of my questions, hysterically.

Sohee looked at me with a blank expression. “I forgot about it.”

“How do you forget something like that?” I squealed in disbelief.

“Most people block out traumatizing experiences like that,” Kaiko cut in. “It’s perfectly natural.”

“Kaiko made kicking that guys look so easy, I guess I didn’t think it was important enough to remember,” Sohee shrugged.

Kaiko opened to say something, but Kevin cut her off, “But you could have died if she wasn’t with you!” He sounded just as hysterical as I was.

“What the , guys?” Sohee looked around and glared at all of us guys. “It was years ago!”

“That’s one of those things that you usually remember!” Kibum declared.

Alexander

The van ride back to the dorm would have been silent the rest of the way, but we got stuck in traffic. Since we were going to take awhile, I was forced to contemplate. She took out a mugger in just two hits? Geez, how much does this girl fight? She could probably hand me my on a silver platter. It gave me an idea for a conversation starter that could give me a chance to get to know her better, as well as fill the annoying silence in the van.

“So, Kaiko-chan…” I began in English to get her attention. “How much fighting experience do you have, exactly?”

That was a good question to ask, because her face immediately lit up. “Well, I’ve been practicing Karate since I was eight, and I’m on the third dan,” she started to count on her hands. “I tried to add Judo when I was about twelve, but that didn’t really work for me, so that hardly lasted a year. But then I took up boxing when I was about sixteen, and that stuck.”

“Why didn’t you keep practicing Judo?” Kevin turned asked her.

Dammit, Kevin! Quit stealing the attention of the cute Japanese girl from me!

“Well, at the time I started Judo, I had been learning for Karate for four years. And Judo and Karate are two different fighting styles – Karate puts attention on quick strikes with punches, kicks, jabs, and a few open-handed techniques. I used to have a teacher who also taught us many pressure points, as well as grappling and throwing techniques. I kind of liked the grappling and throwing, so I thought I would try Judo, since that’s a style that really focuses on those aspects of martial arts,” she started to explain. “However, I had been practicing Karate for so long; it was a habit for me to integrate many aspects of Karate into my practices, which was illegal in Judo. It was a habit that I couldn’t overcome,” she shrugged. “Also, the uniforms in Judo were uncomfortable to me.”

Kibum reached over the back of the seat and poked my arm. “What’s she saying?” He asked me. Of course, she was speaking in English!

“She’s been learning Karate since she was eight,” I told him.

“Oh…” He nodded and then looked at her. “Kaiko-san,” he addressed her in Japanese and got her attention. “Since you’ve been learning Karate for so long, then do you teach it?”

She smiled sadly and shook her head. “I taught it shortly after I obtained my third dan. However, I was… relieved of my teaching position after about four months,” she explained in Japanese, then crossed her arms and slouched back into her seat, scowling. “I was also banned from that specific dojo.”

“Why?” Kibum and I asked in unison.

“What are you guys talking about?” Kevin whined.

“She taught Karate for a little bit, but was fired and then banned from that dojo,” I told him briefly. I then turned and smiled at her. “Please, Kaiko-chan, continue.”

“One of the other instructors was much, much older than me. And he was a ert,” she switched to English and glared at the back of the seat in front of her. “He would always look at me inappropriately. One day, he was teaching the class a grappling move and wanted me to be the one he used as an example. He took the opportunity to my chest. Naturally, my first reflex was to use my twelve-plus years of Karate experience to beat the living crap out of him. Because he had been working there longer than me, all of the other instructors, as well as the owner of the dojo, picked his side. I was fired, banned from the dojo, and had a permanent stain on my resume for everything. I was portrayed as a temperamental child who was to be viewed as a liability. So, I turned to my actual major and have worked independently ever since,” she shrugged one shoulder, but her scowl didn’t fade.

“Wait – actual major?” Eli Kevin blurted out. “What was your actual major?”

“Art.”

…Wait, what? This girl fights that much and that well, but her college major was art?

“…Seriously?” Eli asked, and Sohee thumped him in the back of the head.

Kaiko reached into the backpack she had been carrying with her that she still had and pulled out… a sketchbook and pencil box? She flipped to a blank page quickly, so I didn’t have a chance to get a good look at all of the other pages. Once she was on what I guess was a blank page she opened the pencil box and took out a regular black pencil, and then started looking at each one of us closely.

When her eyes landed on each one us, she would stare at us intently for a few seconds. I noticed that whenever the person she was looking at started squirming, she moved on to the next person. When her eyes finally landed on me, I refused to squirm. I just stared into her eyes, and after a few seconds, I smiled at her. Her eyes widened a little bit in surprise, but she broke our eye contact to look down at the open sketchbook in front of her, and then started moving the pencil over the surface quickly. Her hand moved with quick, yet light, . The only sound in the van was the engine running and the scratching of her pencil against the paper. Occasionally, she would glance up at me, but only for a second. Then she would look down at her paper again and continue drawing, and a few times her finger would move over the page. For at least five minutes, her hand never stopped moving over the paper.

“Done,” she finally said and held up the sketchbook so that we could all see. As soon as I looked at the picture she had drawn, my mouth fell open in surprise.

It was obviously me. You know those photo kiosks they have at malls that you sit in and it takes your picture, and then it does a “drawing” of you? It looked exactly like that. It was really, really good for something that was so spur-of-the-moment.

“I can add colors later – if you’d like,” she told me, smiling.

Kibum nudged me and I realized that she was holding it towards me very lightly, so I reached over and took it from her hands, staring at it. “This is… wow…” I mumbled.

Kibum looked at it closely and then at her. “How did you do that?” He asked her in Japanese.

She smiled and shrugged. “I was drawing long before I started taking Karate,” she giggled. “Of course, I’m counting all of the very lame pictures that I drew in the sand and on the sidewalk in chalk. But…” She shrugged. “I’ve been practicing for years.”

“Yah, Xander!” Sohee called over her seat and held her hand out. “Lemme see!” I couldn’t stop smiling as I handed it to her, and she looked at it with surprise. “Kaiko, this looks even better than the stuff you drew last time I saw you!”

Kaiko laughed again and shook her head. “Sohee-chan, it’s been years. Of course I’ve improved.”

“Kaiko, you have to draw me!” Kevin squealed as soon as he saw her rough drawing of me.

“Perhaps after I’ve moved my things in?” She asked, pointing out the window. We all looked where she was pointing and realized that we were actually slowing down in front of our dorm.

“Hurry up!” Kevin cried, practically lunging out of the van as soon as it had completely stopped. “Let’s hurry – I want Kaiko to draw a picture of me!” Everybody scrambled out of the van, but Kaiko still had to get her things back together. Once her sketchbook was back in Kaiko’s hands, she ripped out the page with the picture of me and handed it to me with a cute smile, and then climbed out of the van while putting her sketchbook back into her backpack.

I didn’t even undo my seatbelt; I just stared at the picture in my hands. I closely examined every line that she drew, and every smudge that she had made for a shading effect.

“Yah! Xander, hurry up!” Eli yelled, making me jump in surprise.

“Right, sorry!” I undid my seatbelt and carefully folded the picture. I kept it in my hand, because I didn’t want it to wrinkle in my pocket.