Office hours. Outside Professor Korogi’s window it’s a bright blue January day. People pass each other on the paths with streamers of breath unwinding over their shoulders like the speech balloons in eighteenth-century political cartoons. The 108 tai chi bodyguards soldier on, having progressed to push hands, a two-person form of slow motion kung fu. The professor sits down at the desk, takes the silk-wrapped diary from a drawer, and begins to read and make notes, humming the Chinese folksong “Picking Flowers” all the while.
From the corner of the room a Chinese voice says, “You are about to be attacked.”
Korogi turns toward the corner. On the Chinese table is a plastic bag of groceries containing some oranges, a box of coffee filters, and a four-pack of soap, and beside it a stack of assignments weighted down by the Irish Spring Jade. Korogi looks at the window, the door, then the table again.
“Weird.”
There’s a knock at the door. Korogi gets up, puts the diary in the drawer, and says, “Come in.”
A student enters. The student is dressed in sneakers, rumpled combat trousers, a blue polar fleece over a green hoodie, an army surplus gas mask bag under one arm, and a yellow and orange striped woollen balaclava with an enormous orange pompom on top and an opening just large enough to show two eyes and the bridge of the nose. (Note: nineteen is pretty much the last time in your life when you’ll be able to carry off a look like this.)
Korogi (bemused): “I can see you’re ready for winter.”
The student pulls off the balaclava to reveal a severe case of hat-head and . . . Da Xi Shuai.
“Amazing what you find in the snow.”
Korogi moves hastily backward and to the right and draws the wooden kenjitsu sword from its resting place.
The intruder steps to the corner by the window and takes hold of one of the poles bearing the Hokkaido banners. With dismay Korogi notices for the first time that the flagpoles all have little ornamental spearheads on top. Da Xi Shuai attacks with a rapid series of overhand thrusts, which Korogi parries furiously with the sword. The blue banner brushes past Korogi’s right, left and right ears and then comes away with the sloop Spray stuck on it. Da Xi Shuai shakes the spear, then throws it down and reaches back for more. Korogi uses the moment to yank open the filing cabinet drawer and pull out a half-empty bottle of Jamaican rum. The bottle catches the scholar-warrior a glancing blow to the skull and spins away. Da Xi Shuai responds by reaching back into the bookcase and hurling The Mountain and the Valley, which opens in midflight in a burst of flapping pages. Korogi ducks under the book but in this time Da Xi Shuai has leapt up on the desk and is attacking with two spears in one hand. Korogi slips sideways, retreats to the door, puts a hand toward the doorknob but pulls it away again as a spear crunches into the panel. Korogi makes a second grab . . . and the doorknob comes off.
“Damned heritage building!”
Cornered, Korogi attacks, forcing Da Xi Shuai backward off the desk and onto the rolling swivel chair.
“Wah!”
The scholar-warrior recovers by stepping onto the radiator, climbing up the adjacent bookcase and crouching along the top of the bookcases to the corner.
Korogi circles to the window, hoists it open, and casts out all the remaining spears. Da Xi Shuai glares down like Poe’s Raven.
Korogi: “I hope you realize you’ve made me very cross."
“Fine words from a traitorous minion of Chihli!”
This characterization strikes Korogi in an unintended way, viz exciting a sudden desire to do research.
“Do you mean—“ Da Xi Shuai cuts off the rest of the question by leaping off the bookcases spear first. Korogi stumbles backward onto the Chinese table.
“You know why I’m here! I want it back!”
Korogi fumbles behind. The youngster thrusts the empty gas-mask bag out. Korogi puts the object in it. Da Xi Shuai retreats to the window, throws out the roll of black and yellow bungee cord, drops the spear out the window and climbs after. The cord pulls taut against the radiator, then slackens. Korogi goes to the window and peers out. The intruder is running away across the snow. The tai chi bodyguard, taken aback at first by the tumble of Japanese spears, now leaps into action, and runs after.
Korogi surveys the damage, and picks up the spear with Spray stuck on it like a fish, the injured book, the doorknob and the balaclava. “No one ever suspects the one in the orange pompom.”
On the Chinese table a four-pack of Irish Spring Soap lies torn open, a three-pack now. Korogi puts the jade and diary in with the groceries, wriggles a hand through the plastic handles, throws a leg over the window sill, and rappels out.
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