Connectivity Issues with a Cobra 🐍

Chapter 7: Trust (Is a Fickle Thing)

Once they were out of the diner, Johnny followed his son down the stairs and across the small walkway leading away from the awning. The sky overhead was clear, but the wind was chilly, and their breath came out in tiny white puffs.

Johnny noted how his son pulled the long sleeve button up a little tighter around him to hide from the chill and immediately pictured his little boy sleeping tonight in the back room of a dojo.

"Robby?" the father's mouth spoke before his brain could catch up. "I want you to come home with me."

"Really, dad?" his son chuckled. "Putting out on the first date."

Johnny bit his lip to keep from laughing. "Smartass."

Sometimes his boy's quick humor and mischievous smiles reminded him so much of his mother.

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His father's expression quickly turned serious again as he pushed the comparison aside, and he settled his hand on the boy's shoulder. "I know you want to make this into a joke and put it behind us, but I'm being serious. I know you're angry with me, and I understand why —you have every right, but I can't bear the thought of you training with that monster."

Robby's walls immediately went up like a shield, eyes glinting with mistrust, and he stepped away from his dad. "Kreese has been good to me — he's done more for me than you ever have. So as far as I'm concerned, you can take your pissing match with him and fuck the hell off."

Johnny cringed at his choice of words.

'Pissing match' probably wasn't the best description considering what he'd done before the All-Valley tournament. Thank God his son didn't know about that particular drunken incident, or he'd never be able to live it down.

It admittedly wasn't exactly his finest moment.

Robby was downright infuriated. "You don't get to dictate who takes care of me when you won't do it yourself. You should have put your problems with Mr. LaRusso to the side when you realized the conditions I was living in, but you didn't, did you? It didn't matter to you whether I was going hungry or living in the dark? Not as long as I suffered in silence."

'I deserve that,' Johnny thought even as he mentally retreated from the accusation.

Johnny could try to comfort himself by saying he hadn't known how badly his son's living condition had deteriorated or that the boy's mother had left him alone for weeks to run off with some random schmuck. Still, deep down, he knew it was his fault for not checking up on his son more often.

Robby shouldn't have had to run to his father when things became too much to handle or seek him out in order to get help — not when he should have taken a more active role in his son's life from the beginning.

"Robby, please, listen to me. I realize now that I was wrong to react that way when I found you with Daniel. I let a stupid high school rivalry keep me from seeing that you needed someone in your corner, but this is not about a dumb rivalry."

His son looked at him quizzically.

"Kreese is dangerous — he'll hurt you."

Robby snorted under his breath and glanced away.

It pained him that his son didn't believe him and thought he was lying, but he also understood because he'd caused the boy so much heartbreak over the years.

"Sensei Kreese has been good to me, dad. He visited me in juvie when no one else did, he helped me protect myself in there, and he offered me a place to stay with no strings attached after I couldn't go back to Miyagi-Do."

There were strings.

Of course, there were — the damn things were just invisible.

Kreese never did anything without an ulterior motive.

"I know I never told you this, and I should have, but it's about time you found out the truth."

Robby peered up at him curiously.

Johnny took a deep breath. "When I was a kid — about your age actually, Kreese tried to choke me to death in the parking lot after I lost the All-Valley Tournament."

"You got the second-place trophy that year," his son pointed out.

"It wasn't good enough for Kreese. In his eyes, I was a failure, and that was inexcusable. If it hadn't been for Mr. Miyagi stepping in when he did and stopping him, my sensei would have killed me."

Robby looked horrified for a second before he shook his head, refusing to believe it. "You're lying — you have to be! I read all the articles on Kreese when I was still in juvie. None of them ever mentioned anything like that, and what you're describing would have had witnesses."

Johnny swallowed the lump in his throat. "There were witnesses, Robby. Many people saw what he did to me in that parking lot, but no one tried to step in or stop it. You have to understand it isn't like how it is today. People didn't care back then — they just viewed it as a teacher punishing his student."

"Punishing his student with death?"

It sounded absurd.

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Robby seemed conflicted.

His son wanted to believe him (he could see his desire written plainly in his eyes), but his sensei had taken care of him when no one else did, and that carried a lot of weight to a teenager who'd repeatedly been abandoned.

Robby couldn't mentally reconcile the child-abusing monster his father was describing with the kind, elderly man who had shown him more concern and understanding than anyone had in his entire life.