by M. D. Massey
“Mei, I presume?” I said with a shaky voice in a really bad Kiwi accent. I avoided eye contact as much as possible, both to look the part of a shy nerd, and because it was considered rude in Japan… something a Japanophile would know.
She giggled. “You were expecting a hairy middle-aged man, perhaps? Sorry to disappoint.”
“Am I going to be joining class? I did a little judo in high school, but—”
She smiled sweetly. “Don’t worry, you’ll do fine. Here, put this on—class has already started.” She shoved the judo uniform into my hands and bounced off across the mat to join the advanced judoka.
I ducked out to the locker room to change, and by the time I came back the class was in full swing. Rather than injure myself by jumping in without warming up, I did some jumping jacks and light stretches, then I joined the beginners who were practicing osoto gari, or outer reaping throw. I got paired off with a tall, husky orange belt who apparently thought he was hot shit, because he took to throwing me to the mat with abandon. I allowed it, since Mei was watching and I wanted to look the part.
I pegged the guy for a football player, most likely a lineman and probably third-string. With his buzz cut, wide shoulders, and prodigious gut, I figured he’d been the big man on campus in high school, but not quite good enough to garner a starting position on the university team.
A typical frustrated jock. Great.
Each time I got tossed by the wannabe Anthony Muñoz, I tried to take the fall with just enough skill to avoid getting hurt. The problem was, it’s damned difficult to take a hard throw with correct technique, much less avoid an injury when you’re trying to look like a noob. After the fifth or sixth time I had the wind knocked out of me, I got tired of taking abuse from the punk and decided to give him a taste of his own medicine.
I gingerly picked myself up from the mat, holding a hand on my lower back while I waved him off with the other. “Aw, man, this judo stuff is tough. Give me a sec, will you?”
Hot shit smirked at me. “You think this is tough? You should try scrimmaging with the first string. I was in the Orange-White game this year, and let me tell you—the hits we put on each other make this look like child’s play.”
“Sounds brutal.” I did my best to look confused, playing the nerdy kid who didn’t know anything about football. I continued to stretch my back out until the green belt told us to switch sides. “Alright, I guess it’s my turn now. Let me see if I can make this move work.”
The guy laughed. “Good luck.”
As we locked up, the guy actually fought me for grips. Much of a judo match’s outcome could be determined by who got the best grips, because hand position on the opponent’s uniform was everything. However, in practice, it was considered poor form to fight for position. Uke, the person receiving the throw, was supposed to more or less cooperate, so tori, the person practicing, could work on their technique.
The idea when doing an osoto gari was to step to the outside while yanking the opponent off balance, sweeping their legs out from under them with a huge reaping motion with your inside leg. However, my partner resisted me the first time I tried to perform the throw, pushing back against me and throwing me on my back. This happened a few more times, so I decided to add some speed to my step, knowing he’d have to change his tactic to stuff my throw.
This time, I yanked him hard to the right as I stepped to the outside. As expected, he moved with me, stepping back and bracing his rear leg to prevent the throw. Anticipating his counter, I did a quick switch-step and pivot, swinging my reaping leg between his as I turned my back to him and lowered my hips. At the same time, I kicked my leg back between his, which resulted in a textbook uchi mata, or inner thigh throw.
The problem with getting thrown with uchi mata was that, if done with bad intent, uke landed awkwardly on their head or shoulder. Plus, if tori chose to follow uke to the ground they could land hard on top of them, bruising a few ribs in the process. I hit the throw hard, tossing hot shit on his head and landing on his rib cage with a sickening crunch.
“Wow, I have no idea where that came from,” I said as I bounced to my feet. Hot shit was trying hard not to show it, but I’d hurt him. Not bad enough for an ER visit, but probably enough to make him sit out for the rest of the class.
I heard giggling from the other side of the room, and turned to find Mei chatting quietly with a few other girls who had obviously been watching our exchange with interest. While my partner was gathering his wits, I walked off the mat to grab a drink of water. Mei popped up beside me, nudging me with an elbow.
“You’ve gained a few fans among the girls in the advanced group,” she said with a snicker. “Darrell is a bit of a jerk, and several of them have been injured pairing up with him for randori.”
“Well, I hope I didn’t make too much of a show of it. Like I said, I trained a little judo in high school, but I didn’t want to be the ass who shows off to impress his date. You know, deru kugi wa utareru and all that,” I replied. It had been a favorite saying of my Japanese karate teacher, roughly translating as “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
“Oh, so this is a date?” she replied, an inscrutable poker face masking her intentions.
“If this isn’t, maybe we could do the date thing after class?” I asked, flashing her a hopeful and purposely bashful smile.
Mei squinted at me and pursed her lips into a playful moue. “Let me think—do I want to go out with this cute nerd who does judo like he was born to it? Hmm.” She tapped a finger on her lips before leaning in close with a sly grin. “Lucky for you, I like guys who stick out. We can talk about it after class.”
Before I could reply, she pranced back onto the mat. It was time for randori, or free-sparring, which meant I’d have to wait until later to find out more about my enigmatic suspect.
14
“Later” came sooner than I expected, as Mei invited me onto the mat for randori. In most judo dojos, it would be a faux pas to ask a higher belt to spar, but it was likewise considered to be poor form to refuse such a request from a senior student. Wondering what I was in for, I stood, bowed, and walked out to the center of the mat.
In judo, there were three ways to win a match: yuko, waza-ari, or ippon. Yuko, which loosely meant a technical advantage, was the weakest way to win a match. Waza-ari, or half-points, were typically awarded for effective techniques that were executed with less than perfect delivery or follow-through. But to win by ippon, meaning full point, was to win decisively. Ippon was awarded either for a throw that caused the opponent to land on their back, a twenty-second pin, or forcing the opponent to submit to a choke or joint lock.
Needless to say, unless the disparity of skill between judo players was very great, the larger player would always have the advantage. That’s why they had weight classes in judo, to make sure the matches were fair. Plus, weight classes forced players to use good technique instead of brute strength to win a match. No one wanted to see a three-hundred-pound brute pick up a hundred-thirty-pound lightweight and slam them to the mat for a win. In judo, the more elegant the technical execution of a throw, the more honored the victory.
Granted, some smaller judoka might hold their own against a much larger opponent. Yet, one would need to be at a very high level to pull off such a feat against a bigger opponent with even a moderate level of aptitude. That’s why I felt unsure whether I should use all my skill against Mei or hold back. Thus far, I hadn’t really determined her to be anything but a normal, if quirky and mysterious, girl. The last thing I wanted to do was toss my date on her head, only to discover she was human by injuring her unnecessarily.
So, I decided to be a gentleman and take it easy. Big mistake.
After we squared off and bowed to each other, Mei transformed—in the figurative sense, mind you—into a ruthless she-devil with little if any compunctions against violence of action. The first thing she did was step in and hit me with an ippon seoinage, or one-arm shoulder throw, that sent m
e sailing through the air with my feet momentarily pointing at the sky while I got an upside-down view of the mat. I landed flat on my back and had the wind knocked out of me on impact.
The class all clapped, of course. There was nothing quite as amusing as seeing a five-five, one-hundred-twenty-pound woman toss a six-foot-one, two-hundred-ten-pound guy like a sack of potatoes. I stood, wobbly and dazed, then the next few minutes were a blur—a very painful blur. Mei must’ve scored ippon at least a half-dozen times, executing beautiful throws that caused me to land with increasingly harder impacts each time.
Finally, I thought I might get a breather when she nailed a tomoe nage on me. Tomoe nage was a sacrifice throw that involved grasping the opponent’s lapel and sleeve, then falling back while planting a foot in their abdomen and kicking them hard overhead. It was a relatively gentle throw, unless the attacker decided to hang on to their opponent’s uniform. This accelerated the throw greatly, increasing the impact—which was exactly what Mei did. Still, usually the throw ended with both players on their backs. Usually.
Instead of allowing me to stand up again, Mei rolled over backward as I got to all fours, wrapping her left leg over my shoulder with her hips behind my head. She reached under my right arm to grab her left shin, yanking her lower leg across my chest and wrapping her right leg around her left ankle under my right arm. With the completion of those movements, she’d successfully secured a sankaku-jime, or triangle choke, from the reverse position. Mei then rolled over her shoulder, controlling my right arm as she used her hips and legs to flip me over. When we’d both rolled over onto our backs, she sunk in the choke by squeezing her thighs like a python around my shoulder and neck.
I tried to fight it, but a deep triangle choke from the reverse position was difficult to escape. Soon, I felt myself begin to white out—when you got choked out, everything kind of faded to white, not black—so I tapped the mat. Just to make my intentions clear, I croaked “maitta, maitta,” which meant “I submit”—just in case she didn’t see or hear me tap.
Mei waited until I’d almost passed out before letting me go. I laid there on the mat, allowing the blood in my arteries to resume its journey to my brain so I could gather my wits before standing. I got up, wobbly—but none the worse for the wear unless you counted the bruises I’d have in the morning. Mei stood facing me, her face blank, and I gave her a shaky bow that she returned with sharp precision.
As I walked off the mat some of the guys were smirking, while the ladies in the class seemed to be split between concern and delight. Darrell, my partner from earlier, clapped me on the shoulder as I sat down with the rest of the beginners.
“Man, Mei sure whipped your ass,” he said with a grin, obviously reveling in the treatment I’d just received. “What’d you do to piss her off?”
I stretched my neck and got a few loud pops as my vertebrae settled into a more comfortable position. “I, uh, asked her out on a date.”
Darrell winced. “Shee-it, nobody does that anymore—mostly cause Mei’s a little crazy. Last guy here who hit on her went home on crutches. Still, I think you got it way worse than he did.”
Despite the beating I’d taken, it was all I could do to avoid smiling, because my “date” had just put on an almost superhuman display of skill. It was just the sort of thing a supernatural creature would do—to go just far enough to humiliate a human, but without blowing their cover. The fact that she discouraged suitors in places she commonly hung out was another dead giveaway. A predator never shat where they ate.
I watched her across the mat and wondered what she was, because she sure in hell wasn’t human. I suspected Mei was listening in on our conversation, and was certain she knew I was looking at her, but she avoided my gaze and remained focused on the match.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, still keeping an eye on Mei. “I think it was worth it.”
Darrell chuckled like a seventh-grader telling a fart joke. “Can’t argue there. Just imagine if she’d decided to kill you with that choke,” he whispered behind his hand. “What a way to go.”
After class, I waited until most of the students were involved in their own conversations before approaching Mei. “Thanks for the match,” I said. “Although I could have done without getting thrown so many times.”
“I was hoping for a greater challenge,” she replied with just a hint of contempt in her voice. Then she seemed to catch herself, and the mild disdain in her voice vanished as her expression softened. “But you didn’t do too bad for someone who hasn’t done randori in a while.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve been tossed around by a black belt. However, it is the first time I’ve been soundly trounced by a girl,” I lied, hoping to play on her obvious need for dominance. I faked shivering and smiled playfully. “I’ll have nightmares about it for weeks.”
“Probably not for weeks, I wouldn’t think.” She hid her mouth with her hand as she giggled like a flirty teen in an anime movie. Whether she was laughing with me or at me, I couldn’t tell—her acting was that good.
I smiled. “Now that introductions have been made, might we discuss the prospect of me taking you out on a date?”
She squinted and crinkled her nose. “I suppose I might be up for a bite to eat. Do you like noodles?”
“I love them, in fact,” I replied with complete honesty.
Her face lit up in genuine delight. “Great! Give me a minute to go change and freshen up. I’ll meet you out front in, say, fifteen minutes?”
“Absolutely,” I replied, watching her bounce away toward the women’s locker room. The loaner uniform I’d been wearing was clean, but I still smelled like sweat from rolling around on the mats. So, I grabbed my Craneskin Bag and beelined for the showers.
A few minutes later, I headed outside and took a seat on a bench to wait. And wait. And wait. I was just about to assume I’d been stood up when Mei came trotting up beside me.
“You were taking too long, so I put my stuff in my car.” She grabbed me by my wrist, practically yanking me off the bench. “Come on, I am so hungry right now.”
Rather than me proffering my arm, it was more like Mei had simply decided to borrow it for the evening. She managed to lead us to our destination while making it seem as though I was the one leading, and a few blocks later we ended up at a small, hole-in-the-wall ramen joint I’d never even known existed.
We both ordered the same thing, the house special, and had hardly taken our seats when the proprietor brought out two steaming bowls of broth, sliced chicken, noodles, and vegetables. The bowls were each a work of art, with the delicately-sliced veggies and meat fanned out over the noodles and broth in a colorful arrangement that pleased the eye, while the steam carried a scent that tempted the palate.
“This looks delicious,” I remarked.
“Doumo arigatou gozaimasu, Ito-chan,” Mei said to our server, bowing her head slightly.
Weird, the -chan suffix is usually only used when speaking with children or close friends. I noticed that the proprietor showed her quite a bit of deference, both in the way he bowed smartly in acknowledgment, and in his general bearing and demeanor around her. Strange, considering he was in his fifties and Mei looked to be in her early twenties. Was it merely because she was a loyal customer, or was it because her cover identity held status in Japanese society?
Or did he actually have some idea of what she was?
I must have been lost in my thoughts, because Mei giggled at me as she toyed with her chopsticks. “Dig in, Colin. It’ll get cold if you don’t.”
I proceeded to tuck into the bowl with abandon. However, Mei seemed to mostly play with her food, only taking dainty bites when I was watching. Curiouser and curiouser.
I had nearly finished my bowl when I literally threw in the towel, tossing my napkin on the table. “Oh, but that was good.”
Mei smiled demurely. “Ito-chan has a way with food, that’s for certain.”
An uncomfortable lull in the conversation f
ollowed. Finally, I broke the silence with my typical awkwardness, again finding little difficulty in playing the part.
“So—what’s next?” I asked.
Mei twirled a few noodles around her chopsticks before setting them down across the lip of her bowl. Her eyes looked down at the table as she replied. “Well, I thought we might go to my place and watch a movie. I have the live-action version of Rurouni Kenshin at home. That is, if you’re not too tired after judo—and the huge meal you just ate.”
“Actually, I have quite a bit of energy left in me. Tons, in fact.”
Mei flashed a sweet smile that belied the mischief in her eyes. “Hah! You’re awfully feisty now, but we’ll see what happens when we get to my place.”
Mei’s place turned out to be a converted warehouse loft off East Fifth. The apartment building was just trendy enough to look casual and workaday, with its weathered brown bricks and almost random distribution of windows on the exterior. However, I knew from the time I’d spent looking for affordable housing in Austin—which didn’t exist—that these condos went for a half-million and up. Either Mei’s parents were wealthy, or she was a supernatural who’d accumulated significant wealth over an extended span of life—take your pick.
Of course, her place was on the top floor, with a decent view of downtown. When we entered the apartment, a balanced blend of pop culture art, hipster chic, and Japanese design sensibility greeted me. The rooms were walled partitions that stopped several feet short of the high, exposed-rafter ceiling overhead. Spare, Scandinavian-style furniture clashed with anime and manga posters that had been artfully framed and hung on every wall. Authentic shoji doors shielded certain areas of the dwelling from the living room and kitchen, and traditional Japanese calligraphy was displayed here and there so it cleverly balanced the more modern decorations.
I couldn’t help but admire her digs, and I let out a soft, low whistle as I slipped off my shoes at the door. “Wow Mei, your home is amazing.”