Kelly Oubre, wearing a white robe that was too small for him and surrounded by elementary-school-aged boys and girls, waited impatiently inside Jang’s Karate Studio. The place was located in a drab strip mall, but Yelp reviews had assured him that it was the best place in the DC area to learn Karate.
“You’re really tall,” commented the boy next to him.
“Yeah, I guess,” Kelly responded, looking down at the short, blond-haired boy, who couldn’t have been older than seven or eight, and wondering what sort of horrible life circumstance had driven him to learn how to fight his enemies karate-style.
“I’m Josh,” the boy said. “What’s your name?”
“Kelly.”
Josh made a confused face. “That’s my big sister’s name. Why did your parents give you a girl name?”
Annoyed, Kelly didn’t answer the question and instead focused his attention to the front of the room. The instructor, hopefully the eponymous “Jang”, had emerged from a side door and was standing in front of the class.
“Welcome, young ones,” Jang began, apparently ignoring the man in the middle of the room who was twice as tall as the children around him. “Today, you begin a journey of self-discipline and perseverance. The ancient art of karate is-”
Kelly raised his hand and interrupted. “Excuse me, when do we learn how to decapitate our foes with a single punch and instantly kill them?”
“Yeah, when do we learn how to instantly kill them?” echoed a girl on the other side of the room. Kelly doubted that she had an enemy who deserved a painful karate-induced death as much as Klay Thompson did, but was grateful that at least one other person in the class knew what the true point of karate was.
Jang looked annoyed. “If that is your goal, it is unlikely that you will learn the necessary techniques in my class.”
“I can’t believe I paid fifty bucks for this,” Kelly muttered, unbelting his robe and leaving it in a pile at his feet. “How am I going to kill Klay Thompson if nobody’s even going to teach me how to do ninja kung-fu moves?” He pulled out his phone and navigated to the studio’s Yelp page as he walked towards the exit. “One-star review coming your way, bro,” he told Jang on his way out the door. “But you can rest assured that Klay will meet his demise one way or the other. I’ll make sure of it.”