After making the decision to start taking self-defence classes, Arian had started looking at the leaflets that Saffy kept bringing back as hints seriously. By this time the number of leaflets pinned to the fridge had grown to about seven. Four were for Karate clubs, two for taekwondo and the last titled simply self-defence lessons.

Arian had started with the Karate lessons first, opting to try the club based near the leisure centre. Although he hadn’t really enjoyed it, the dark-haired teen had managed five classes before the instructor had suggested that maybe Karate wasn’t for him. Taekwondo had seemed a lot like Karate and Arian had only last through one class of that before deciding that maybe Taekwondo wasn’t for him either.

He’d been at the library when he’d seen a small notice advertising Aikido classes on Thursday evenings at the community hall near the park. He’d been about to dismiss it, when he’d noticed the ‘beginners always welcome’ in big bold black letters.

Still in two minds, nonetheless Arian had given the instructor – a Mr Green – a call and had turned up on the Thursday evening in the recommended t-shirt and track suit bottoms after confirming that there were beginners’ classes available. He’d been the youngest one there – the next oldest there had seemed to be at least mid to late twenties – and apart from David (who had seemed better suited to maybe throwing darts in between savouring pints at the local pub) had been the only male.

It hadn’t helped when beginners classes appeared to mean copy what the more experienced people were doing and he’d gotten hopelessly lost during the warm-up classes, although no one seemed to mind that he was getting say about two steps right in about every eight when they moved from side-stepping around the edges of the training mat and onto the forms. He’d gotten even more lost when they’d moved from warm-ups to the actual exercises, feeling awkward when he’d kept stepping back when he should have been stepping forward and back when he should have been following through – he’d managed to get the basics of how to fall correctly down though – probably apt given that a lot of the evening had been spent falling down.

Despite all that it had ended being a surprisingly enjoyable night, probably because despite his cluelessness in when to go forward and when to step back everyone had been pretty patient with him and although Arian had drawn the line at attempting the fancy flip-somersault break fall – he’d probably have ended up breaking his neck in the attempt – it had been pretty amazing watching everyone else apart for his designated partner of the moment (they switched out each exercise) doing so. Watching Mr Green (call me David) move had been equally amazing – for someone who by the size of their beer belly looked like the pub should be their second home the man could certainly move – and boy did he know his stuff.

In fact Arian felt so positive after the evening class, that already knew that he would be coming back next week despite Mr Green’s (call me David) suggestion that he try out at other aikido classes (apparently there were a couple more places that offered classes in Destiny City) before coming to a decision about whether aikido was for him.

Only boy or not (and apparently this week had been an anomaly) and hopeless lost at the exercises or not it seemed that he’d finally found a set of self-defence classes that he liked.

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