Zhao Han showed up to the fifth bell assessment with both hands wrapped.
Not because he had been injured. Because he had been practicing forms the night before using a reference scroll he had borrowed from the library, and somewhere around the third hour he had realized his grip technique was fundamentally wrong, and somewhere around the fourth hour he had given himself friction burns on both palms trying to correct it.
Master Jiang looked at the wrappings. He looked at Zhao Han's face, which was carrying the expression of someone prepared to be told they had done something foolish and ready to receive it without complaint.
"What happened?" Master Jiang said.
"I was practicing."
"Without instruction."
"I wanted to be prepared."
"For an assessment." A pause. "Of your baseline."
Zhao Han absorbed this. "I see the issue now."
