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different way. You'd better be ready.”
    So I was prepared for it, and just kept quiet.
    Even when I didn't feel like it, I always tried to help people, and I was careful to always maintain an easy-going attitude. And somehow, I ended up getting really popular with all of the girls in class. If the girls had something they didn't understand, or something in the study guide that didn't make sense, they'd always come to me for help instead of the teacher.
    “Oh, Masaki's so smart! Must be all that studying abroad.”
    I hadn't really studied abroad in the traditional sense of the term, but for some reason, the idea stuck.
    Honestly, I was a bit out of my league. I couldn't push the girls away, but the guys in my class -- in my entire school -- all started to look at me funny.
    By this point, high school entrance exams were right on top of us, so I wasn't exactly bullied by anyone (not much, anyway), but when I left school grounds, things would get a little. . . argumentative. In school, lowerclassmen would never bug an upperclassman, but once school was over, that line just vanished. I got glares from all directions.
    It wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't always have a group of girls crowding around me. All they ever did was just squeal and treat me like their own little toy; never like a true friend. I was pretty fed up with it by then, but I stuck with it.
    Then one day, I slipped up. Guess I must've been tired or something.
    I had to swing by the station, so I cut through a back alley, and found myself surrounded by five guys.
    “So, Mr. Study Abroad. You've been doing pretty well for yourself, haven't ya?”
    “Getting a little bit too much attention, see?”
    You'd think these guys would be dressed all trashy, but they weren't. No, they were all wearing pretty expensive jackets and didn't look like delinquents at all. So I hadn't realized what they were up to until it was too late and I was already surrounded. And by then, they already had switchblades open.
    I wasn't sure how old they were, but they had to have been younger than me. One of the kids' voices had barely even cracked. Still, that didn't make the others any less menacing.
    “Right. . . I'll be more careful.”
    I'd blown it. I'd been so careful not to let myself get into a situation like this that I had walked right smack dab into one. . . now they had me.
    “You'll be careful? How are you gonna do that?”
    “I'll try not to get as much attention?”
    They all cackled.
    Then suddenly, one shouted, “Don't you fuck with us!” And a hard punch connected with my cheek.
    I saw his fist coming for me easily enough, but I let him hit me. I swung my body back a little and softened the blow.
    The punch had connected enough to cut the inside of my cheek. There was blood in my mouth. . . but my teeth were fine. He hadn't hit any key points, so I wasn't even shaken.
    This guy was nothing much. In Phnom Penh, I'd been studying a sort of undisciplined form of karate -- kind of a child's self-defense class, if you will -- for a pretty long time. I'd learned to size up my opponents just by looking at them. Their shoulders alone were a good indicator of just how much damage a person could really do.
    The most effective technique in this self-defense class was to yell for help as loud as you can. I considered this, briefly. If these were professional kidnappers, it might work, but this was Japan, and I felt that with opponents as inexperienced as these guys it would just provoke them. Plus, people tend to ignore cries for help anyway. The only real way to get anyone's attention is to just lie and scream, “Fire!”
    What really had me worried was that these guys probably went to the same school as me. If I kicked their asses, they'd just come back in larger numbers, and then the trouble would never let up.
    And just as I was trying to figure out if hitting them four or five times would settle things or not. . .
    “Hey,” someone said.
    She was talking to all of