Kenji’s older sister, Akari, lay in a hospital bed with a fractured skull and a shattered right tibia. She had been the true champion. And Goro had stepped on her face after she’d already fallen.
Kenji moved.
But then he saw Akari’s face again. Not broken. Whole. Smiling. And she said something else—something she’d whispered to him the night before the original final, when no one else was listening. Buchikome High kick- -Final- -Aokumashii-
"The Final Buchikome High Kick. No audience. No referees. No ambulances. The Pulverizer vs. The Ghost of Akari. Warehouse 13, Docks. Midnight. Come to die."
"The final is over," he said, his voice a whisper of broken glass. "Aokumashii." Kenji’s older sister, Akari, lay in a hospital
He looked up. Goro was walking toward him slowly, savoring the moment. He raised his steel-shod right leg for the final axe kick—the same one that had crushed Akari’s skull.
The word again. The bruise-colored finality. The first exchange lasted 0.8 seconds. Kenji moved
He walked out of the cage. No one stopped him. The bruise-colored sky was beginning to lighten at the edges—a thin line of gold, like the first clean strike of dawn. The next morning, Kenji visited Akari in the hospital. She was awake for the first time in three weeks. Her eyes, still swollen, found his face. She saw the cuts, the bruises, the broken hand.