Then he walked back to his work, picked up his cloth, and began polishing the window sill again. He moved with the steady, unhurried pace of a man who had decided something and was comfortable with the decision. He was going to wait. He was going to watch what this dojo did with this particular girl before he said a single word.
The rumors started the way rumors always start, with children who couldn't stop talking. Ben, the chubby seven-year-old with the enormous brown eyes, told his mother in the car on the way home that the new girl was the best fighter he had ever seen, and she could probably beat everybody in the whole school. His mother smiled and said that was very nice. Ben's mother then mentioned it to another parent in the parking lot, who mentioned it to a parent whose older son trained in the intermediate class, who brought it up at dinner that evening.
By the following Tuesday, several of the older students had heard some version of it. The story had already traveled through the distortion of multiple retellings and arrived at various destinations. Some little kid who's really good, or a girl who was placed in the wrong class, or apparently there's a beginner who's been embarrassing the teenagers. None of these descriptions were entirely accurate, and none of them were entirely wrong.
Nia, for her part, showed up to every class exactly as she had the first day, quietly, punctually, with her worn blue GI and her duffel bag and her composed expression. She trained in the beginner group, followed the drills Dylan assigned, and gave nothing away. When other students tried to draw her into conversation about her background, she answered simply and briefly. She was polite.
She was calm. She did not volunteer anything. This, paradoxically, made the rumors worse.
Ethan Cole heard several versions of the story over the course of that week, and each one annoyed him a little more than the last. He was not accustomed to sharing the conversation about the best fighter at Iron Gate. That position was his and had been his for 2 years. He had worked for it.
Genuinely worked, training hard and consistently, competing in regional tournaments and bringing trophies back to this building. His black belt was not a gift. He had earned every piece of its significance. But now people were talking about a nine-year-old girl who had wandered in on a Saturday morning with a second-hand GI.
He tried, at first, to dismiss it. Kids were impressionable. A technically clean kata sequence from someone who'd clearly had some training would look amazing to a seven-year-old who was still learning which foot to put forward. It didn't mean anything.
It certainly didn't mean what the whispers were starting to suggest. But the whispers kept coming. On Thursday evening, Ethan walked past the side mat during a break and let his gaze drift toward the beginner group. Nia was practicing a stepping drill, moving across the mat in a straight line, alternating techniques on each step.
He watched for maybe 20 seconds. He looked away. He didn't say anything about it to Ryan that evening, but he thought about it later. The following Saturday, the atmosphere in the main hall had a different quality to it.