What It Is I Have Become

My opponent was whipcord thin with angry eyes, a younger version of his master. It’s funny how we all tend to become copies of our teachers. I know guys in New York who have developed Japanese accents. I’m not sure how I’ve come to resemble my own sensei. I’m taller and thinner and stamped with the genetic markers of County Mayo. But sometimes in the mirror, I catch a glimpse of the same flat mask Yamashita wears—the expression that seems so neutral but hides the fact that you’re watching everything, analyzing angles and distances, and, in fact, seeing the universe as a series of fluid scenarios of attack and defense.

I wonder, sometimes, what it is I have become.

— Tengu, Chapter 15