Daydream » VKook

15. Friends

"Hi, there! Are you here for the Sohtai Dosa class?"

"Uh, yes I am." I answered the greeter.

"Great, what is your name?" 

"Jeon Jungkook."

"Ah, Jeon Jungkook." He recognized my name. "You must be seonsaengnim's son."

"Y-Yes..." I awkwardly confirmed. "Who are you?"

"I'm Mok Minho and I'm one of your father's teaching assistants. I'm also learning how to become an instructor like him."

"Cool, okay." I nodded. "Um, so what do I do need to do now?"

Minho looked over to the older kids hanging around in the middle of the facility and pointed towards that direction.

"Go ahead and join them over there. The class will start in 15 minutes." He directed.

"Thank you." I bowed and then made my way to the group of kids.

It was my first day to train with the older kids like I wanted to and my father promised me. I felt excited that I was finally going to learn and compete with them. As much as I loved those little kids from the past four months, they couldn't keep up with my stamina and strength. I had bench-pressed at least two kids at a time to keep up my cardio and strength training. Plus, they just loved to be lifted up into the air as if they were flying.

This class was bigger than the one with the little kids. It was almost doubled the count. There were a few that I recognized from school, but I wasn't close friends with them, let alone acquaintances. To be honest, I didn't have many friends because some of the kids liked to pick on me due to my scrawny size. With my defensive nature, I always picked those fights back at them, but most times, I was left beaten and broken. That was one of the major reasons why I wanted to practice Kendo, so I could be stronger and refined to protect myself from those attacks.

I saw a small group of boys huddling in one area and were playing around with bokutos* and kodachis.** It looked like they grabbed them from the equipment rack and felt the need to practice or show off one another. I decided to sit down a couple of feet away from them to focus on my mokuso. I closed my eyes, took in many deep breaths and tried to imagine myself at the temple looking out to that beautiful sunset. However, the boys were making a lot of noise hitting the swords against each other with loud laughter and banter. It was difficult to focus with all of that clamor that I chose to watch their movements instead and overhear their conversations.

"Hey, Chungho! Show me that one command again... the one that has three movements with the men strike." A boy demanded.

"Oh, you mean san-kyodo shomen-uchi? Yeah sure, that's an easy one." I assumed the boy named Chungho replied. "Step back everyone. Someone give me the command."

"San-kyodo shomen-uchi, Hajime!" That one kid had the loudest voice I ever heard of.

What a coincidence. He was demonstrating the command that my father undoubtedly forced me to do and repeat five times at my assessment. I observed the way the kid moved through each step and I already noticed some mistakes. All of the boys clapped thinking that he did it right, but he was falsely praised and those kids should know that.

"Hey," I spoke up. "You did that wrong."

The boys were looking at the one that demonstrated the command, wondering if that was true. When I looked at that kid's eye, I could sense that he was slightly embarrassed.

"No..." Changho objected. "I definitely did that right."

"Really?" I challenged. "Show it to me then."