## Chapter 298 — Keep Both The recording made the first body kick look smaller than it had felt. Morita's left shin crossed the frame, touched Isha beneath the right elbow and withdrew before the fixed camera had time to make the impact dramatic. The sound reached the tablet through the enclosure, the audience and the hall's high ceiling. It was flatter than Isha remembered. On the mat beside Shibata's office, she could still locate the strike along her ribs, though the bruise had vanished more than a week earlier. Shibata paused the video after eleven seconds. The image froze with Morita already returning to southpaw. Isha stood near the centre marker, taller by enough to be conspicuous, her rear heel light and both gloves higher than she had expected. The referee occupied the far edge of the frame. Nothing in the picture showed the delay she had felt between seeing Morita move and accepting that the bout had begun. Arai sat cross-legged on Isha's other side. She had changed after work into training clothes but had not wrapped her hands. The regular class would begin in forty minutes. Until then, the three of them had the small mat, the tablet and the organiser's unedited recording. “What happened before the kick?” Shibata asked. Isha watched the frozen right glove in front of Morita's face. “She touched my guard with the jab. I waited to learn whether it was a real attack.” “It scored while you were deciding.” Shibata moved the video back to the opening and played it once at normal speed. Morita's right jab landed with little force. Isha's feet shifted backwards. The left kick followed into the space the retreat had left. Arai rose and adopted a southpaw stance. Her right foot came forward, body shorter and more compact than Morita's but close enough to carry the shape. “Again?” Isha stood opposite her. Arai touched the lead glove towards Isha's guard. Isha stepped outside the right foot before the hand arrived. The movement placed her beyond the body kick and left Arai turning to find her. Shibata shook his head. “That is the answer from the second round. Show me the first.” Isha returned to the centre. Arai jabbed. Isha gave ground, watched the rear hip and brought her elbow down after the kick would already have landed. The mistake felt larger when repeated by choice. “Keep that one,” Shibata said. “The video is useful because it does not improve your memory for you.” Arai reset her feet. Isha looked at the paused image, then back at the right glove waiting in front of her. --- Thomas arrived at the municipal dojo before the changing room had opened. His judo bag hung from one shoulder. The gi inside was clean, folded and unused since the evening he chose not to attend. The belt lay across the top. He had packed both after work because arriving without them would have made the visit feel decided in advance, though the decision had been settled for most of September. Nakamura stood near the equipment cupboard, checking a plastic box of tape, spare hair ties and disinfectant wipes. The tatami had already been laid. A teenage class occupied the far half of the hall, practising turns under the supervision of another instructor. Their feet made a soft, repeated drag against the surface. Nakamura looked at the bag before Thomas spoke. “Are you training tonight?” “I don't think so.” He had prepared several sentences on the train. Most began with gratitude and became explanations for a choice that did not require defence. Nakamura waited while he removed his shoes and placed them beside the wall. “I've decided to stop the beginner class for now,” he said. “I wanted to tell you in person rather than let the absences continue until they became the answer.” Nakamura closed the equipment box. Her faded black belt was already tied, although the adult class would not begin for another twenty-five minutes. “Injury?” “No. The gym is going well, and I am exercising consistently. I don't enjoy judo often enough to keep using the evening for it.” She considered him with the same direct attention she used when deciding whether a beginner's awkward fall required correction or only repetition. “How long have you known?” “Longer than the message I sent before missing the first week. Less long than I have behaved as though I knew.” Nakamura nodded once. “Then stop.” The answer ended so quickly that Thomas almost supplied the missing argument himself. He had expected at least one question about perseverance, the normal pace of learning or whether a different partner might help. Nakamura turned towards the attendance folder on the low table. “Your registration is monthly. I will mark that you are leaving after this block. You do not need to attend the remaining sessions unless you want to.” She opened the folder and found his name. “Do you want to train tonight?” Thomas looked across the empty half of the tatami. The hall smelled faintly of clean cotton, vinyl and the disinfectant used after the children's class. His body knew what would come next: changing, bowing, warm-up, falling drills and the first grip with Tanabe. The sequence produced affection for the room and no desire to begin it. “No,” he said. “I came prepared in case the answer changed when I arrived.” Nakamura looked once towards the changing-room door. “Did it?” Thomas adjusted the strap of the bag. “No.” She drew one line beside his name and closed the folder. --- On the tablet, Morita drove Isha backwards beneath the right jab. Shibata let the first wall sequence play without pausing. Morita's forehead entered under Isha's jaw. Her hands joined low. The fence flexed once behind Isha's shoulders, then held while Morita changed pressure between head, hip and feet. From the camera's angle, the clinch seemed almost still. Isha remembered the movement inside it: each route narrowing before she completed the answer, Morita's weight arriving where space had been a moment earlier. The video showed something else. Her own left arm remained outside for two full seconds while she searched for a turn that required the underhook she had not yet won. Shibata stopped the frame there. “I thought I had the inside line sooner,” Isha said. “You felt the attempt. The recording shows the result.” He tapped the screen near Morita's head. “She reached this position before the fence. You started solving it after both hands joined.” Arai stood against the padded wall. She placed her forehead lightly beneath Isha's jaw and left her hands open near the waist. “Morita was heavier here than I am.” “She was better placed,” Isha said. “That also increases weight.” Arai stepped forward. Isha framed at the shoulder, found the inside position before the hands closed and turned. Arai's back met the padding with a controlled impact. On the second attempt Arai moved her head first and denied the arm. Isha tried to force the previous turn and remained against the wall. Shibata told them to stop after the third repetition. “The bout is over. Do not build a new one from a woman who is not here.” Arai released the clinch and rubbed one forearm where Isha's frame had pressed. “That instruction would have been useful before I volunteered.” Shibata returned one hand to the tablet. “You volunteered because you wanted to feel the answer.” “I wanted her to feel it,” Arai said, taking her place beside Isha again. Shibata returned the video to normal speed. Morita reached the knee tap and brought Isha down. A short punch landed near the ribs. Another touched the guard beside her head. Isha turned, recovered a knee and began standing against the fence before Morita pulled her away and returned her to the mat at the horn. The camera showed Isha's face for only part of the exchange. There was no fear in it. There was concentration and a narrow irritation she recognised from failed judo groundwork. She had not been overwhelmed by the force. She had been late to the rules shaping it. Arai leaned closer to the screen. “I thought you were less trapped than that.” “I appeared calmer than I was.” “You were calm.” Shibata advanced the recording to the corner break. “Calm is not position.” On screen, he spoke close to Isha while Arai held water to her mouth. The camera could not recover the words over the room. Isha remembered them precisely: she had given Morita the beginning and the wall. Morita had accepted both. Shibata skipped the final seconds of the break and stopped before the second round began. “What did you believe when you stood?” “That I had already lost one round.” “That is a score.” Isha looked at her own stance beneath the blue marker. “I believed she would enter the same way until I stopped her.” Shibata pressed play. --- Tanabe arrived carrying his gi over one arm rather than inside a bag. He saw Thomas beside the low table and changed direction before entering the changing room. His greying hair was still damp from the heat outside. A narrow strip of office-shirt collar showed above the T-shirt he wore beneath the folded gi. “You came back,” he said. “To stop coming.” Tanabe looked at Nakamura. She continued arranging the attendance folder as though Thomas's phrasing required no correction. He set the gi on the bench. “That is less efficient than a message.” “I sent several messages by not attending. They lacked precision.” Tanabe accepted this. He sat to remove his socks, placing each one inside the corresponding shoe. Thomas had seen him perform the same arrangement every week and once assumed it belonged to judo discipline. Tanabe had explained that it belonged to losing a sock in a public changing room fifteen years earlier. “Are you injured?” he asked. Thomas shook his head. Tanabe followed with the next practical possibility—work, illness or another claim on Thursday—and received the same answer. Thomas shifted the bag higher against his shoulder. “I like the gym. I like some people here. I don't like trying to learn judo enough.” Tanabe pulled one trouser leg of the gi free from the fold. Disappointment crossed his face without becoming surprise. “You were poor at it.” Thomas agreed. Tanabe looked down at his own white belt. “So am I.” “You enjoy it.” Thomas watched him begin tying the trousers. “That is the defect,” Tanabe said. The answer made Thomas laugh. The children's class ended at the far side of the hall. Students bowed, then broke formation and began carrying water bottles and towels towards the exit. Their instructor called after one boy who had left a belt on the floor. Tanabe stood with the gi trousers over one arm. “You learned to fall.” “I did.” Thomas looked towards the section of tatami where they had repeated the same moving step until one attempt finally arrived at the correct time. “You caught my foot once.” “I did that as well.” Tanabe nodded, as if confirming that the record required no further additions. “Then you learned something.” Thomas looked at the bag. The belt inside had never changed colour. It had held his jacket closed, marked him accurately as a beginner and given his hands something to tighten before standing opposite another person. “Yes,” he said. “I did.” Tanabe went into the changing room. He did not ask Thomas to reconsider or promise that the next month would become better. Before the door closed, he looked back. “If you return, begin in the beginner class. Do not spend six months inventing private intermediate status.” Thomas said he would try to avoid the administrative fraud. Nakamura handed him a small withdrawal slip containing the date and no space for a reason. He signed at the bottom. She checked the signature, tore off the receipt and gave it to him. “Keep the gi,” she said. “People return after months. If you do not, it will still remain a usable gi.” Thomas folded the receipt and put it in the outer pocket of the bag. “Do you expect me to return?” “I do not predict returns.” Nakamura looked towards the adult students beginning to arrive. “The beginner class will still exist.” Thomas bowed to her. She returned it with the degree of formality appropriate to the hall and no more. He left before the class lined up. --- The second round began with Morita's jab missing. The camera showed the space more clearly than Isha had felt it. Her lead foot moved outside Morita's right before the glove completed its path. The straight right reached Morita's cheek. Arai made a quiet sound beside the tablet, less approval than recognition. Shibata played the first twenty seconds twice. He did not slow the footage. On the third viewing, Isha watched Morita instead of herself. Morita adjusted after the first clean strike, doubled the jab and shortened the distance. She had not repeated the first round mechanically. She had found another route into the same preferred range. Isha stopped the screen herself at the moment their foreheads met. “I reached the inside position first.” “Yes.” Shibata looked at her hand still resting on the tablet. “Then what?” “I used it.” They watched the clinch reversal and takedown. Isha's movements appeared economical from outside, almost slower than Morita's because they changed fewer times. Morita tried the old judo turn. Isha followed the beginning, blocked the step and used the exposed back. Both reached the mat. Arai pointed at the lower corner of the screen. “Your second foot almost caught the fence.” Isha had not noticed. The heel passed close enough that another few centimetres would have shortened the step and altered the return to the ground. Shibata rewound it. “The referee was moving around the same side. You had space because he moved first. Do not assume the wall gave it to you.” The observation reduced the sequence from a clean answer to an answer completed inside several other people's movement. Isha watched again. The referee crossed behind them. Morita turned towards the fence. Isha's foot found the open section after both changes. The recording continued into the back take. Morita fought the hands, turned towards the choking arm and trapped one hook. Isha changed the grip, found the second hook and closed the pressure. The camera could not show exactly where the forearm settled beneath the jaw. It showed Morita's right hand striking Isha's arm three times. Isha released before the referee touched either of them. Shibata moved back one second and played the tap again. Morita's hand rose, struck once, twice, three times. Isha's arms opened on the third. “Keep that,” he said. Isha watched her own body withdraw. She had wanted the finish and remained able to hear the end chosen by the other woman. The old road had offered many endings no one else could safely request. This one had belonged to both fighters and the referee between them. Arai sat back on her hands. “The first round was hers. The second was yours.” “The result was mine,” Isha said. “Yes.” Arai looked at the frozen frame of Morita sitting up after the release. “Keep both.” Shibata closed the video before the official announcement. The analysis file contained another camera angle and the judges' sheets, but neither would change the central work. He asked Isha for three things she wanted to train from the recording. She answered through action rather than listing the whole bout. She stood southpaw opposite Arai, let the right jab begin and practised taking the outside line without retreating straight. At the wall she fought for head position before the hands joined. From the mat she built to one knee while Arai prevented the first route and made her find the second. They worked each problem only a few times. By the final repetition, Isha had begun correcting the woman in the recording into someone who had never made the mistake. Shibata stopped them there. “Morita is not your permanent opponent,” he said. “You will train with the people who arrive tonight.” Isha drank water and looked towards the closed tablet. “Will you send me another proposal?” “When I have one worth asking about.” Shibata reached for the tablet. “Not yet,” Isha said before he closed it. His hand stopped above the cover. “I want to train without an event date for a while. I enjoyed the second round. I also want to understand more of what happened in the first before another person agrees to test it.” Arai began wrapping her left hand. “How long is a while?” “I do not know.” Shibata placed the tablet in the office drawer. “Then the answer is no until it changes.” The regular class began arriving. Mizuno entered first, broad shoulders filling the doorway while she removed her shoes. Kurata followed carrying a bottle large enough for two sessions. Neither asked whether Isha had selected a future from one local win. Arai tossed a roll of wraps towards her. Isha caught it with the hand that had released Morita. --- At home, Thomas opened the wardrobe and found that the judo shelf required no rearrangement. The gi had occupied the left side beside two folded gym towels. He removed it from the bag, checked that no dampness had entered during the journey and placed it in the same position. The belt went on top. Its knot had been undone after the last class and never tied again. Thomas stood with one hand on the wardrobe door. He had expected relief to arrive again, as it had when he sent the first absence message. What came instead was smaller: the removal of a recurring question from Thursday evening. The gym notebook lay on the desk in the office. Tomorrow's lunch session already had three exercises written from the previous week, each with a load he intended to keep. The page waited for Friday's lunch session. He folded the empty judo bag and put it behind the towels. Isha would return later from mixed training. Thomas did not message her; the regular class would have started by now. He closed the wardrobe and went to shower. --- Five days later, the neurology clinic asked Thomas the same event in four different shapes. A nurse began with the referral form: loss of consciousness at home, delayed meaningful response, same-day emergency assessment and no acute finding on blood tests or brain imaging. She confirmed his medication list, current work, alcohol intake and the absence of spontaneous or unprovoked episodes. Thomas answered from a chair beside a desk whose monitor displayed only part of his name and date of birth. A junior doctor asked whether he remembered warning symptoms. Thomas described pressure and visual disturbance immediately before the event, then the room returning around him. He did not describe letters or a damaged interface. When asked whether he had experienced other unprovoked blackouts, he answered no. The consultant asked about the period Isha had observed: regular breathing, no sustained shaking, no loss of bladder control, no bitten tongue and recognition that returned unevenly before becoming stable. Thomas repeated the details already recorded in the emergency notes. He had experienced no recurrent headache, weakness, altered sensation, speech problem, confusion, visual symptoms or exercise-related collapse since then. The room contained a model of the brain with several coloured sections that could be lifted apart. One seam had acquired a grey line from repeated handling. Thomas looked at it while the consultant reviewed the emergency images on a second monitor. “You are exercising?” she asked. “Two conservative gym sessions most weeks. Machines, dumbbells and split squats. I stop before technique changes.” The consultant made a short note, then asked whether symptoms appeared during or after training. Thomas said no. Running was less regular and had caused nothing unusual when he did it. She asked about sleep, hydration, infection and the emotional stress recorded around the episode. Thomas answered without adding the private mechanism beneath it. The fifth send had since left him unconscious for little more than a minute under an unexplained protection message. That fact could not enter the consultation without every fact around it. The consultant turned from the screen and began the examination. Thomas followed her finger with his eyes, smiled, raised his eyebrows and pressed his tongue against each cheek. He held both arms forward with palms upward while she watched for drift. Strength was equal through shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees and ankles. A cool metal instrument touched both feet. The tendon hammer produced reflexes he could not improve through attention. She asked him to walk normally, then heel to toe along a line in the floor covering. Judo had taught him enough about balance to make the second task feel easier than it would have a year earlier. He completed it without comment. Back at the desk, the consultant folded her hands over the referral letter. “The examination is normal. The emergency imaging and blood results were reassuring. Your description does not give me strong evidence for a seizure, a structural brain problem or an ongoing neurological disorder.” Thomas waited for the clause that would convert reassurance into an answer. It did not arrive. “The duration and slow recovery are unusual for a simple faint,” she continued. “They can occur with several kinds of autonomic or stress-related event, and sometimes a single episode remains unexplained. With no spontaneous recurrence and a normal examination, I would not start treatment or arrange extensive testing now.” “Would an EEG help?” Thomas asked. “It might produce information if the history suggested epilepsy, but it would not prove the cause of this event by itself. At present I think the chance of an incidental or unclear result is greater than the chance it changes what we do.” She turned the referral letter over and wrote several lines on the clinic sheet. “If you have another unprovoked loss of consciousness, new weakness, speech or vision change, a seizure-like movement, a severe unfamiliar headache, or an episode during exercise, seek urgent assessment. Otherwise you can continue normal activity.” Thomas looked at the list. “Including the gym?” “Yes. Keep the gradual programme you described. Avoid training through warning symptoms, which is advice I would give whether or not you had this referral.” She asked whether he drove. Thomas said he did not. Swimming alone and work at height were not regular parts of his life. The climbing centre belonged to Isha, and his own exercise remained close to the floor. The consultant entered the final note and asked whether he had another question. Thomas had several questions she could not answer. Why the fourth receipt had struck harder. Whether two simultaneous System changes had overloaded the same route. What protection had altered during the fifth send. None belonged to neurology as it existed in the room. “Is there a follow-up appointment?” he asked. “Not routinely. Your primary clinic can refer you again if anything recurs or the history changes.” The consultation ended with no diagnosis beyond the event already recorded and no new restriction. At the checkout desk, the receptionist printed the visit summary, confirmed that no return booking was required and slid both sheets through the opening beneath the glass. Thomas put them in his work bag and went back to the university.