Kensei Jon's Arc

Chapter 46 of 49

The red-marked papers sat on the table for three days. Ha-ni did not go back to the low school. She stayed home with the high books and worked through them. But the questions started that first morning. She climbed onto the bench beside Kensei and asked how a body wanted another body. She asked how children were made. She asked what changed when a person grew. Kensei froze each time. His first thought was to soothe her. To tell her she was clever, brave, good for asking. Praise was easy. Praise cost nothing. It also answered nothing. Jeon-min watched him fumble. On the fourth question he set down his thread. "You keep telling her she is smart," he said. "She did not ask if she is smart. She asked how it works." Kensei looked at Ha-ni. She waited, plain and steady, the way she waited for everything. He saw the choice clearly now. He could praise her and dodge, or he could ground her and answer. "Ask again," he said. "How are children made?" Ha-ni said. So he told her. He used the true words, small and slow. He said a father carried her inside his body. He said her Ah-pa did that. He named the parts without shame and without the long book's heat. When she asked about the body wanting, he said want was a feeling, like hunger, and that grown people learned to hold it and use it with care. "Like a skill," Ha-ni said. "The book said learned." "Like a skill," Kensei said. "You learn it when you are bigger." Jeon-min took the next question. He was blunt where Kensei was careful. "Puberty is the body changing so it can carry a child one day," he said. "It happens to everyone. It is not a secret. It is not dirty." He said it once more, flat. "Not dirty." Ha-ni nodded. She did not blush. She did not flinch. She took each answer the way she took a hard word on a page, worked it, filed it, and reached for the next. By the end of the morning she had run out of questions. She slid off the bench and went to her pebbles. Kensei sat back. His hands were steady. He had spent his whole life being told want was shame, that the true words could not be spoken. He had just spoken them to his daughter across a table, in the light, and nothing had fallen on them. "That was better," Jeon-min said. "You answered her. You stopped hiding behind good girl." Kensei looked at Ha-ni stacking her stones. She had every answer now, plain and unashamed. But she had them faster than the low school could ever hold her. The next question would not be about bodies. It would be where do I go to learn more, and this city had already run out of what to teach her.