7. Best Foot Forward
********** at the restaurant, Sam discovered that Sandra had ordered a little bottle of rice wine during his ordeal in the Grand Hall. Still shaken by the unseen hand, he felt the need for a restorative. That night, he floated home from Yu Chun, spirited there by spirit.
He awoke the next day already five minutes late for his first class, which was located all the way on the sixth floor of Building 46. For all the faux-rowing he’d done at the gym in the year of preparing himself for Sun, he had never exhausted himself as much as he had climbing those six flights of stairs, hung over. When Sam entered the classroom, the teacher and students all turned to behold him, sweating and huffing like a sow.
‘Come take a seat. Quickly, now,’ said the teacher, who had written h
