1 Prodigal Studen (2/2)

However, his body was in excellent physical condition already from years of training in the Wing Chun martial arts, and Sifu Man viewed Koji as an unpolished diamond.The boy had a sharp memory and learned all 720 acupuncture points of the body quickly.

After every training session, Sifu Man would give pop quizzes to test his pupil's memory because physical fatigue often led to mental fatigue, and the teacher wanted to sharpen Koji's mental concentration.However, Koji upended the sifu's plans by answering every question correctly, regardless of how long each physical training session lasted.

A month after Koji's enrollment, Sifu Man gave up on the quizzes because he realized it was pointless since his pupil never gave a wrong answer in the short exam.The teacher recognized that Koji had a fierce determination, and this iron will would distinguish him from other martial artists in the future.Thus, the teacher elevated Koji to the status of an intermediate student after merely one month of enrollment in the dojo.

However, the backlash was swift.The other students at the academy became jealous of Koji's rapid advancement.Some students took six months or longer to reach intermediate status; others remained stuck at the novice level and even quit due to their lack of progress.

The students thought that Sifu Man had displayed favoritism because Koji was Asian, but none dared to voice this opinion to the teacher's face.Instead, the students offered other reasons: Koji was a new student who hadn't paid his dues; he needed more training to break with his previous martial arts training in Wing Chung.They were vocal and forceful in their objections to Sifu Man, who offered a simple solution: beat Koji during the next practice session.

All the students challenged Koji--and lost.Koji was a prodigy in martial arts, with extensive close-range fighting experience from his years of training in Wing Chung.His fighting instincts were sharp, and every move against him led to an immediate counterattack.

What impressed the teacher more, though, was Koji's restraint in avoiding the use of lethal attacks.The young lad respected his fellow students and passed up on big openings in his opponent's defense during combat.None of the students realized this, however; they thought Koji was ”lucky” and never gave him the proper credit he deserved.

In the end, the students, who were Caucasians, Blacks, and Hispanics, publicly accused Sifu Man of racism, and most of them quit in protest.Also, the former students began to post their accusations on social media.The negative attention drove the remaining students to leave the school due to public pressure; eventually, Koji became the last student in the academy.

Of course, these accusations left out something important--Koji was half-Caucasian, too!His father was a U.S. Marine stationed at the U.S. military base in Okinawa when he met his mother, a Japanese native who also worked at the site.The two eventually married, had Koji, and returned to the States.

The parents named their child after his maternal grandfather.Despite his mixed German American-Japanese heritage, Koji's physical appearance was Asian as he possessed yellow skin and black hair.People were often surprised to learn he wasn't a full-blooded Japanese.Only when they noticed his crystal blue eyes did people realize that Koji was biracial.

When Koji was half-finished with his chore of cleaning the dojo, something came in through the open windows.He saw several Molotov cocktails!Before Koji could reach any of them, the bottles exploded!He ducked and avoided most of the exploding glass, but some pieces stuck to his shirt and cut his forearms.

Koji pulled himself up and raced to the door, only to find that the flames were too intense to touch!He desperately turned left and right and found himself trapped inside the burning building.Keeping his mind calm, Koji alertly grabbed the bucket and started running toward the bathroom to get water.

Suddenly, a black vortex popped up in front of Koji!He stopped his body in time and hopped back.It looked like a wormhole from an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.Koji saw stars beyond the wormhole.However, an impossibly brutal suction force pulled his body through the vortex!