Eleanor Voss answers before he even knocks, as if she had been expecting him. She is eighty years old, small, with white hair pulled back tight. Her eyes have not softened one bit with age.
"Marcus Webb," she says. "I wondered when you'd come crawling back."
"Grandmaster," he says, ducking his head slightly. "I need to talk to you."
"I know," she says, stepping aside to let him in. "I saw the video, too."
Inside, the house is small but full of history: old photographs line the hallway; faded belts hang from hooks near the door, each one labeled with a name and a year. Marcus sits at her kitchen table—the same table he sat at as a scared nineteen-year-old, fresh off a suspension from his first academy.
"You saved my career," Marcus says quietly. "Nobody else would even look at me after nationals."
"I looked at you and saw a kid who made one bad choice," Eleanor says. "Not a bad person. There's a difference."
"I know," Marcus says. "That's why I never said anything to Derek. I kept thinking if you gave me a second chance, maybe he deserved patience, too."
"Patience is not the same as silence," Eleanor says. "You've been silent for three years, Marcus. Watching that boy get worse, saying nothing because you owed his father a paycheck."
Marcus flinches. She is not wrong, and they both know it.
"There's something else," Eleanor says. "You know who else I trained, don't you?"
Marcus looks up slowly. "Arthur Hale."
"Arthur Hale," she confirms. "Best student I ever had, until his daughter came along and passed him twice over."
"Vivian," Marcus says.
"Vivian," Eleanor repeats. "The girl your student put his fist near an inch from an old man's face in front of everyone. That girl trained under one of my own students for years. She has more discipline in her little finger than Derek has in his whole body."
Marcus sits with that for a long moment. "What do I do?" he asks finally.
Eleanor studies him the way she has studied hundreds of students over sixty years. "You start telling the truth," she says. "Before somebody gets hurt who doesn't deserve it."
"There's a report," Marcus says quietly. "From two years ago. A failed test at a regional tournament. Richard made it go away."
Eleanor's expression does not change, but her grip on her teacup tightens slightly. "I suspected as much," she says. "Now the question is whether you finally say it out loud."
"If I do, I lose everything," Marcus says. "The gym, the paycheck, probably my whole career."
"If you don't," Eleanor says, "you lose something a lot harder to earn back."
Marcus stares down at his hands for a long moment. "Give me a little time," he says. "To do it right."
"Time is what that boy's father is counting on you not having," Eleanor says. "Don't waste too much of it."