The old woman goes quiet. Then something in her snaps. With a wet snarl, she shoots out a hand and grabs Hitomu’s short hair, like she’s trying to rip his scalp off. “TABETAI.”

Option three it is.

In the split second it takes to lunge at her and slam her into the wall, a dozen thoughts go through my head. Most of them revolve around getting arrested, losing my work visa, and being deported over arm-barring a decrepit old woman. The others are about how little I care. The next thing I know, I have the old woman’s gaunt wrists bound in my hands behind her back. Hitomu is hiding behind me, still crying. It won’t be easy to drag her all the way to the elevator. A faster way pops into my mind. The emergency exit.

“Hitomu-kun, hijouguchi,” I tell him.

Without hesitation he runs out the door. I pull the old woman nice and hard (I hope it hurts) and herd her in front of me just around the corner of the hall. Hitomu reaches up on his toes to push the handlebar of the emergency exit. It’s too high for him. “Scooch over,” I say, not really caring if he understands me or not, but he does. He ducks out of the way as I push the old woman ahead of me, kick the door open, and shove her into the stairwell.

“Hhhhrrrnngh …” she turns and snarls at me. Now I recognize her. I have seen this woman before. Here and there, around town. She’s the same woman who spat at me a few months back, for sure. What she’s doing here, how she got here, or why she’s attacking my student, I don’t know. Don’t care, either.

But now that she has seen me apparently she has something to say. “Hrngh … gaijin … kuso, baku-gaijin …”

She lunges at me with another snarl. I hiss back at her like a snake. “Put one of those chicken-bony fingers on my student again,” I add, “and I’ll eat your fucking face.”

She reels back, afraid, and retreats into the stair railing. I step back inside and let the door slam shut on its own with a resounding, satisfying clang. The door does not open again.

“You all right, buddy?” I turn and kneel to Hitomu’s level. Without warning, he runs right at me. I have no idea what he’s doing until I feel his chubby arms wrap tight around my neck and his little feet scrambling up my torso. It feels like a small hyperactive monkey scuttling up my tree trunk of a body. “Daijoubu?”

He’s not crying anymore, but his voice is still unsteady. “Un. Daijoubu.”