Excitedly, the diminutive manservant sprinted down the long corridor. What he held in his hand would surely earn him rewards beyond his imagination. He rounded a corner at such speed that his legs slipped out from under him on the freshly-oiled wood floor, but he scrambled to his feet and continued to run. He crashed through the cypress double door into the private sanctuary of his employer, his chest heaving.
The handsome young man before him did not turn or acknowledge his presence in the slightest. He sat cross-legged on the dojo floor, staring forward silently at a small shrine.
The servant dropped to his knees, prostrating himself on the cypress floor and awaiting his master’s attention. After a few agonizingly long moments, he received it.
The young man stood, turning back toward the door and the retainer who knelt before it. A calmly-restrained anger boiled in his eyes and voice, as if it were always there, and too familiar to react to. “How dare you enter this place, cretin? This space is too sacred for one as low-born as yourself. You desecrate it with your presence.”
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“A thousand apologies, master, but…” He whimpered, not lifting his forehead from the wooden floor.
“Well, out with it, man! What, in your tiny little mind, did you think was so vital of importance as to disturb me during my meditation?!” He folded his arms impatiently over the loose-fitting blue kendo uniform shirt he wore.
The diminutive servant reached underneath his body, producing a folded newspaper. It showed signs of wear, as it was nearly two weeks old. He laid it out on the floor with both hands. The headline read LOCAL WAITRESS SAVES BOY FROM CARNIVAL ACCIDENT. There was an accompanying color photograph, and the shock of red hair was unmistakable. It perfectly matched the poster-sized photo on the dojo wall to the right of the shrine, that of a smiling girl in a green sleeveless dress. The unnamed girl’s photo mirrored the one of Akane Tendo on the shrine’s left.
“Master Kuno, I’ve found her at last.”