During the noisy and monotone basic exercises and loudly announced commands, I again got deep into my thoughts. “How did Sensei manage to bend the spoon? And why did he call that phenomenon simply a trick? If that were a trick, then, in my understanding, it should have been thoroughly prepared. But he just took the spoon and bent it with his gaze alone.”

I could say that I believed and disbelieved it at the same time. I believed because somewhere I’ve read about people who possessed such abilities. I recalled that there were described people-magnets. But any objects, regardless what material they were made of – wood, metal, plastic – would stick to them. I remember that I was amazed most of all by the weight those people could hold up: more than ten kilos!

It was a paradox, but I didn’t believe that I had seen all that with my own eyes, as they say, “live.” Or rather, this disbelief was caused by my reluctance to realize that this fact itself was real. Everything seemed so mysterious. I would have understood if our crowd had been hypnotized, had had it explained to use beforehand what we would see. But Sensei just took it calmly and did it. How?!

Nevertheless, the fact that it was possible was very important for me. It was some kind of, not yet known to me, firm platform formed by Sensei’s knowledge. And my subconscious was intensively grasping it in every way possible, resisting those antagonistic thoughts. I don’t know why, but I started to trust that interesting man. At least, he obviously knew where there is truth and where there is fantasy.

After the basics, finally came the moment long expected by our company. This part of the training we used to call “the free style program” because people, having split up into pairs, were exercising old techniques or some peculiar techniques from the previous trainings. Andrew picked up his nunchaku and being followed by our curious glances came up to the Teacher.

“Is it possible to do something against nunchaku?”

“And do you know how to use them?” Sensei replied with a smile.

“Of course!” bragged Andrew self-satisfied. “I haven’t put them down for four years. One could say, I eat and sleep with them.”

Andrew demonstrated a couple of, in our opinion, complex movements.

“Not bad,” Sensei said.

“And still, is it possible to do something against nunchaku?” Andrew repeated his question, obviously provoking the Teacher.

“Of course… For every Vijai there is a Rajah.”

“What?” Andrew asked again, not understanding the last phrase.

“I mean, for every power there is a counter-power. Nunchaku is not an exception.”

“Can you show me?”

“I can, but then it will not be fair, you with nunchaku against me… Take somebody else with you.”

We looked at each other with astonishment. Nevertheless Andrew went along to look for a partner, and our company to look for the second weapon. To our regret there were no more nunchaku. Instead of that, we found a lot of two-meter-long poles in the sports equipment room.

But although we found weapons fairly easily, fin ding a partner for Andrew was more difficult. Senior guys flatly refused the proposal to take part in this fight and laughed: “No, thanks, guy. You’d better do it alone.”

Finally, Andrew managed to convince a man among the newcomers. Meanwhile, Sensei was peacefully chattering with that skinny old man in the white kimono.

“Here, I found one!” Andrew happily announced to the Teacher.

“You have found one, great. Let senior sempai second us. At his clap, start to attack with full contact. Is that clear?”