Kensei Jon's Arc

Chapter 45 of 49

A week after the school took Ha-ni, the teacher sent word. She wanted both fathers to come at midday. Kensei read the note twice. His hands went cold the way they always did before a clerk pulled a record. Jeon-min set down his thread. "We go," he said. "Both of us." They walked Ha-ni's route to the low school and waited in the yard while the children filed out. The teacher met them at the door. She held a stack of papers marked in red. "Your daughter," she said, "is two years old. She reads. She writes numbers past a hundred. She corrects the older children." She spread the papers on a bench. Every mark was the top mark. "I have taught twenty years. I have never seen this. She is a prodigy." Kensei looked at the pages. Then he looked at Ha-ni, who stood by the wall stacking pebbles into a row. Pride rose in him. But the teacher was not finished. She pulled one paper from the bottom and turned it so only the two men could see. "She drew this," the teacher said. Her voice dropped. "And she used words. Words about wanting. About bodies. About want between people. She read them somewhere. A book meant for grown men, not this. I do not know your house. But I had to tell you." Kensei's stomach dropped. He knew the book. Not the kamayaki blessing. Another one, from the crate. He had left it on a low shelf, thinking Ha-ni too small to reach. He had been wrong. Jeon-min did not flinch. He crouched to Ha-ni's height. "You read a book at home," he said. It was not a question. "The one with the drawings." Ha-ni looked up. "The words were long," she said. "I worked them out. It said want is not bad. Is that true?" She waited, plain and steady, for the answer. Kensei knelt beside Jeon-min. He thought of the slope, the gray-haired woman, the blessing they had carried home. He thought of everything he had feared telling her too soon. "It is true," he said. "Want is not bad. But some books are for later. That one is for later." "For when I am bigger," Ha-ni said. "Okay." She went back to her pebbles. Kensei turned to the teacher. "We taught her the words are not shameful," he said. "But we will keep the grown books high. She is quick. Too quick for the shelf." The teacher studied him. Then she gathered the red-marked pages and pressed them into his hands. "She belongs in a harder class," she said. "I cannot teach her enough here." They walked home with the papers. Ha-ni ran ahead. "She needs more than this city gives," Jeon-min said. "More than either of us knows." Kensei looked at the top marks in his hand and understood. Their daughter had already outgrown the safe, small life they built to hide in.