Katas?

[Reiji Shimamura]

Reiji bowed as he entered the dojo, repeating the action as he stepped onto the empty wooden floor. He liked coming down in the early evening, when no one was around. It provided a quiet place for him to practice, and think over the day's events.

He knelt in the centre of the floor, meditated for a few minutes, and then stood with a bow, even though there was no sensei or senpai to bow to. He ran in a few circles, stretched, did a few push-ups, and stretched again. When he felt ready, stood straight, and went into his favourite kata.

'Hekodachi Kihon Kata Ni!' he said, starting in the centre of the dojo and working outwards. The kata was quite pretty in its own way, though he was a little jerky with it. He was only a yellow belt, after all, only second kyu.

He finished, bowed, and sat down tailor-style on the floor again. Now what to practice?

[Freddie Marinov]

Freddie entered the dojo and smiled when he saw Reiji - he was quickly developing a crush on the boy and felt happy to see him, even if they hadn't actually met yet.

He crossed the room to and empty space and began to stretch. Once he was finished with some simple stretches, he grabbed a couple of mats and put them on top of each other until they were about six inches high. After a few moments, he moved into the splits with his right leg in front, since it was his better side. Concentrating hard, he lifted his right leg very slowly off the ground and let his heel rest on top of the mats. He then leaned forwards and grabbed his foot with both hands and rested his head on his knee.

[Reiji Shimamura]

Reiji turned towards Freddie without really noticing the boy was there. He was going into the third punch when he saw what the other boy was doing, and stopped short. The kid was FLEXIBLE.

He resumed the kata, but stole a glance every few moments at the stretching Freddie. How could anyone bend like that? He could do 'almost-splits' for karate, but you didn't have to be THAT flexible. How come the other boy could do that?

His mind went around in circles until he was quite curious, and could no longer concentrate on what he was doing. He finished rather sloppily, returned to his original stance, bowed, and then quickly bounced over to where Freddie was doing the splits.

'What are you doing?' he asked, totally unabashed. For a sixteen-year-old, he was awfully hyper, and very curious. 'I mean, I do sort-of splits for martial arts, but that doesn't look like anything we do. Are you a dancer?'

[Freddie Marinov]

Freddie's head snapped up as he realised he was being spoken to, by Reiji no less. He released his grip on his foot but didn't move his leg, deciding that it was probably better to leave it there for a little longer.

He smiled at Reiji and replied, "Yeah, I am. I do a lot of dancing but my friend does competitive disco and every time I'm with her she's always practising tricks and splits and stuff, so she makes me join in. At the moment I can do a reasonable oversplit on both sides, when I only really need to just do the splits for ballet and modern. No splits at all in tap."

Reaching behind him, he pulled another mat over and put it near his back leg, which he then lifted up onto the mat. "The thing I'm better at, though," he continued, "is jumps. We do a lot of them in ballet. And turns, too - pirouettes and things. I really like acro as well. Sorry, I talk too much." He blushed a little and leaned forward to move the mats under his foot slightly nearer.

[Reiji Shimamura]

'No, you don't talk too much,' he said, grinning. He was beginning to like this guy already. 'I talk too much. I talk about all sorts of random stuff that no one wants to hear about. At least, I do when I've had coffee. Like today! Milky coffee is the best.'

He sat down on the floor, stretched his legs out in front of him, and started stretching as well, momentarily inspired by the other boy. 'I think dancing is really cool,' he said. 'I've never really tried it myself, but I love watching the ballet. Everything is so graceful and beautiful. The jumps are very cool to watch. I once saw the Firebird performed, and the bird was so gorgeous, every time she leapt into the air...'

He trailed off, happily reminiscing. 'So you do ballet, tap, and um, what was the other thing you said?'

[Freddie Marinov]

Freddie moved his leg down onto the floor and changed positions so that his left leg was now in front. He removed a mat from the top of the pile before putting his leg on top of it, as this was his less flexible side.

"Modern," he replied. "But I've done bits of lots of other styles too. I've decided I want to do musical theatre as a career, because it looks like I'm going to end up too short to be in a ballet company."

He smiled happily to himself, pleased at how well he was managing to speak Japanese. He often worried that he'd get a word wrong and end up embarassing himself, but for now it seemed as though his Japanese was good, although heavily accented.

[Reiji Shimamura]

'Too short for ballet? Are there really height limits?' he asked, holding his ankles together in front of himself and leaning forward until he could touch his forhead to his crossed wrists. 'I knew they have height limits for models, but I didn't know that they were for other things, too.'

He uncurled his legs, and stuck them out in front of him. He wasn't terribly flexible, but it was getting easier now that he was doing it more regularly. He had been quite lax about it over the summer, and now he was paying for it.

'So what is it like, dancing I mean. Do you think it's anything like a martial art? I know it looks pretty, but is it really hard? I suppose you have to practice a lot.'

[Freddie Marinov]

"Well, dancers are supposed to be pretty much the fittest athletes in the world, particularly ballet dancers. If they're in a professional company they'd train all day and perform at night. It's hard work, really hard. And difficult too. But it's so worth it," he finished, grinning.

"As for the height thing - well, I'm 5' 7" and if I don't get any taller I'll be too short. There's no official limit, but you have to think about girls on pointe. That adds a minimum of about four or five inches to their height. For partnering, my partner couldn't be any taller than 5' 3" to be able to dance with me. Some companies have their own limits, too, like girls have to be at least 5' 4" or whatever. If I can't get taller, I can't do ballet." He sighed sadly, then looked at Reiji again.

"Oh well, not much I can do about it really."

[Reiji Shimamura]

'Oh.' That made sense. He hadn't really ever thought about it before, which was no surprise since Reiji wasn't exactly a dancer. 'I get it, I think. But if you know a lot of other kinds of dancing, you can get a job somewhere else, right?' he said, thinking back to one of the boy's previous comments. 'What was it you said? Eto...musical theatre?'

He got up onto his knees, and bent his body backwards, wincing as his back made an audible popping noise. Definantly a good idea to do this more often. He straightened, twisted to the left, then the right, and straightened again before bending forward. Now that his back was thoroughly tweaked and in pain, he stood up and went into position for another kata.

Talking while he went through the motions, he continued to ask Freddie questions about dance performance. 'So you mean you can sing? Or would you just be a dancer that came on for dance scenes? Would you do opera stuff too, or just the more contemporary ones? Would you do any traditional Japanese theatre? They have lots of dancing.'

[Freddie Marinov]

Freddie brought his other leg back down from the mats and crossed both legs in front of him, deciding that he'd done enough splits stretches for now.

"Yeah, I sing too. And act, actually. I can do quite a few different accents when I'm speaking English. It helps that my first languages are Russian and Lithuanian, and I also speak Japanese and French, so at least I have a choice of countries to try and make a career."

He giggled for no apparent reason and brushed his hair back out of his face. "What do you want to do when you leave school?" he asked Reiji.

[Reiji Shimamura]

'I have no idea,' he said happily. 'I'll probably do something with writing, since I like it so much. Teaching sounds fun, too. And I think it's amazing that you speak so many different languages,' he added. 'I'm not very good at English, but I'm working on it.'

He finished the second kata, and sat down again, facing Freddie. 'Maybe I'll be a journalist. Then I could travel. But I'd really have to work on my English, since you can communicate with nearly anyone in the world if you speak it.'

[Freddie Marinov]

'Writing? Cool! I'm crap at writing...' Freddie thought to himself. 'Well, in every language except Russian.'

"Any time I speak English, people just go on about how interesting my accent is. They never say how well I'm doing, just that I sound cute. Kind of irritating after a while... But you're right, it does help with being able to talk to people. I speak it just as well as any English person. I just hope I'm not made to take English classes here, because then I'll have to translate between two languages that aren't my own and that'd get really confusing."

[Reiji Shimamura]

'Yeah, writing is fun. I write short stories, sometimes. And for some reason, I'm really good at essays.' He made a face. 'I hate them, though.' He twisted his body, popping his back again. It probably shouldn't be doing that, he thought, and dismissed the thought.

'They probably won't, if you can pass the English test. They don't make the foreign exchange students take it, at least.' He looked curious. 'So which languages are your native languages?' he asked, aware that Freddie might have mentioned it before. He just couldn't remember now.

[Freddie Marinov]

"Russian and Lithuanian," Freddie replied. "My father is Lithuanian, but my mother is half-Russian, half Japanese and my step-father is Russian. And I live with them and all of my half brothers in Russia for a few years. I've always seen a lot of my father, even before I started living with him, so I was brought up bi-lingual. I also started learning English when I was three, and Japanese and French when I moved here and started school."

After pausing to breathe, he added, "But just because I'm not talking in my own language, that doesn't seem to stop me talking a hell of a lot more than I should."

[Reiji Shimamura]

'Nope, doesn't seem to stop you,' Reiji agreed, laughing. 'But that's okay. I talk a lot, too.' The subject of talking seemed to be a high one in their conversation, but that didn't bother Reiji. Anything to keep the conversation going was fine with him. That was the trouble with being talkative- you got bored when you ran out of things to talk about.

Casting around for a new subject, the happy-go-lucky teen quickly came up with something quite new, and quite off-topic. 'Do you like cats?' he asked suddenly. It was something he just had to ask new people that he would like to be friends with.