Girl Fights Back (Go No Sen) (Emily Kane Adventures) Read Free Page A

wire” breathing
technique for most of an hour. It involved breathing in and out very deeply and
slowly while doing a dynamic tension exercise. It was intended to encourage his
students to regulate their breathing so that they could hear it, coming in and
going out, and hear past it to the stillness of their qi . It was one of Emily’s favorite exercises in the dojo, since it
focused on what for her had become the central truth of her life, the central
insight of her passion for martial arts training. It drove the boys crazy. They
desperately wanted to succeed, to see what Sensei was trying to show them. They
flexed and tensed their muscles and they breathed as deeply as they could. Some
of them sweated through their uniforms. But they just could not figure out what
to listen for. And they heard nothing.
    Her father knew, they had talked
about it before. There was something comical about the boys’ predicament. Emily
could feel for them, but the fact is their failure was itself a simple human
truth. One could wish them well, even lament their inability. But in the end,
there was nothing to do about it but laugh.
    “I have to go out of town tonight.
I won’t be back until Saturday morning at the earliest,” her father said.
    “Dad,” she groaned. “This was
supposed to be our weekend.”
    “I’m sorry, Chi-chan. It’s really
out of my hands. Why don’t you go camping tomorrow without me? If I get back in
time, I’ll try to find you. Then we’ll see how good you really are at covering
your tracks.”
    “You’ll never find me, old man!”
she retorted.
    “I already know you’re gonna climb
out onto Promontory Rock and hide there. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you
casing that spot. You can’t fool me!”
    “Fine,” she said. “But if you don’t
find me by Sunday morning, you’ll owe me big time!”
    “Fine!”
    “Fine!”
    They rode home in silence the rest
of the way. She was a little miffed with him for this change of plans. But
there were plenty of pleasures for her out in the woods by herself. And he had
been right about Promontory Rock. Damn!
    By the time they arrived home it
was already dark and Emily was hungry. Yuki, the cook, had something ready for
her: hot soup with chicken and some flavored rice. Her father, it seems, had
already eaten. He put the car away and retired to their apartment over the
garage. Emily ate in the kitchen of the main house with Yuki. They talked about
school, homework, boys, anything but the dojo. Yuki did not entirely approve of
how much time she spent there. She wanted Emily to focus on school, to go to
college, to find a profession. She had high hopes for this girl. She had
practically been a mother to her for the last sixteen years, so maybe she had a
right to stick her nose in to Emily’s life a little. But she also had no idea
just how profoundly her experiences in the dojo had shaped Emily’s growing
consciousness. To Yuki, martial arts was just a hobby, not something to take
too seriously, certainly not something to build a life on, certainly not for a
girl. No matter what that fool of a sensei thought.
    Yuki had come to America years ago.
Emily didn’t know the whole story. But there had been some sort of scandal
involving Yuki’s father in Japan. He was a scientist, specializing in
bio-engineering, genetics research. It must have been very cutting edge. There
had been some sort of dispute about patent rights to a discovery he had been
involved in. It was all hushed up in the end, but he was shamed by the episode
and had taken his own life. Later, perhaps as an act of contrition, the company
that had claimed the patent turned it over to the Japanese government. Though
Yuki never spoke of it, Emily had the distinct impression from the little her
father had told her of the matter that Yuki’s father had been falsely accused
of industrial espionage.
    Yuki was about the same age as
Emily’s father, though it was hard to tell exactly how old she really