Sensei Mika

 Mika knelt at the edge of the dojo, watching her father, Sensei Haru, correct a student’s stance. The wooden floors, worn smooth by decades of bare feet, held the echoes of every lesson taught there. She remembered her first day at six years old, fists clenched too tight, desperate to prove herself.  

"You leaning forward too much," her father had said, nudging her shoulder. "Balance is not just in the body. It’s the patience to learn."  

Back then, she’d huffed, believing mastery was a straight path. But life had a way of humbling her. At sixteen, she lost her first tournament by rushing, the same mistake he’d warned her about. At twenty-two, she left the dojo, convinced his teachings were outdated. Only years later, training alone in a cramped city gym, did she realize his lessons were never just about karate.  

Now, as Sensei Mika, she faced her own students, some eager, some impatient, all mirrors of her younger self. A boy, Kenta, scowled after a failed kata. "I know this alredy," he muttered.  

Mika smiled. "So did I." She unrolled an old scroll on the floor, its edges frayed, ink faded in places. Her father’s notes filled the margins, additions made over decades.  

"The strongest techniques," she said, "are the ones we relearn." She tapped a line her father had once written, now underlined in her own hand: "A lesson is only finished when you stop breathing."

Kenta frowned. "So… I’ll never get it right?"  

Mika laughed. "You’ll get it right a hundred ways. And then you’ll find the hundred-and-first." Outside, mango leaves trembled in the wind, their petals settling like old pages, waiting to be read anew.