Granny didn’t knock. She didn’t ask. She didn’t even pause at the threshold like a normal person. The second Carl left for work, she stomped downstairs, slid open the creaky wooden door leading to the ground floor of the house—and stopped dead.

  Her eye twitched.

  The dojo—the legendary Roux Dojo where she once trained warriors with fist-calloused discipline—was now…

  A storage room.

  Boxes stacked to the ceiling. Shelves cluttered with tools, pstic containers, cables, what looked like half a busted capsule pod, and even a dusty rack of comic books Carl clearly thought he’d hidden from the world. An old hover-wnmower sat in the middle like it was meditating. The once-polished floor was coated in a thin yer of grime.

  Granny crossed her arms. “This is bsphemy.”

  She turned her head like an executioner preparing the guillotine.

  “KALBI!”

  I peeked from around the corner upstairs.

  ‘Oh no. That tone. That’s her cleaning orders with violence subtext tone.’

  “Yes, Sensei-Grandma-Lady?”

  She jabbed a thumb at the cluttered room. “Clean it up. All of it. Now.”

  I stared at the pile. Then at her. Then back at the pile.

  “…You’re aware I’m a child, right?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You’re a child with super strength. That makes you a servant.”

  ‘And that’s the most honest thing anyone’s ever said to me.’

  “Yes ma’am.”

  I got to work. There were probably easier ways to clean, but Granny’s training had turned me into a one-boy demolition crew. I started lifting boxes, some of which were twice my height and probably weighed more than Carl and his moral compass combined.

  I stacked them with precision, tossing lighter ones onto shelves and dragging the heavier ones like I was staging for a moving company on steroids. What would take three adults an afternoon, I reduced to an hour of shirtless, sweaty bor powered by spite and protein.

  As I was lifting a cabinet with one hand, the soft clink of footsteps echoed from the stairs.

  “Kalbi?” Sasha’s voice floated down. “Do you need help with—”

  She stopped. Her eyes widened.

  There I was, holding a toolbox in each hand, squatting beneath a metal table like it was a barbell, and tossing bolts into a box with my tail—yes, that tiny bit of regrowing monkey tail poking out of the back of my waistband.

  Her gaze locked on it.

  My tail, of course, twitched at the worst possible moment. Real subtle, like, hey, what’s up, I’m alive again!

  She opened her mouth, probably to ask the kind of question you save for after coffee and therapy, but Granny intercepted the moment like an overprotective linebacker.

  “He was born with it,” Granny said, arms crossed. “Maybe that’s why his parents left him in the woods.”

  Sasha blinked. Twice. Then slowly nodded. “Right. Of course. That expins... the tail.”

  ‘She says it like it’s the only weird thing about me. Lady, I’ve got issues stacked like pancakes.’

  Sasha knelt beside me and started helping clean the leftover dust and gear, using gloves and a cloth while I zoomed across the dojo, sweeping, scrubbing, and stacking faster than a janitor on caffeine. I was moving like a blur, making broom swipes at near-sonic speed.

  I had the whole dojo cleaned, polished, and reorganized before lunchtime.

  Sasha looked around, stunned. “You did all this in less than two hours.”

  I wiped my brow. “When your babysitter is a professional warlord, you learn to hustle.”

  She chuckled, then paused, still gncing at the tail as I tucked it under my waistband.

  Later that evening, Carl came home with his usual chipper, tired energy. Bag over one shoulder, jacket off, socks already halfway gone.

  He walked into the kitchen, sniffed the air, and smiled. “Mmm. Smells like Granny made boar stew.”

  Then Sasha appeared from the hallway, tugging his sleeve like she was trying to drag him into an emergency meeting.

  “In the bedroom,” she whispered.

  Carl blinked. “What, right now? I just walked in.”

  “In the bedroom, Carl.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  They disappeared into the back hallway. Granny raised an eyebrow from the stove.

  “I give them three minutes before they call me in to fix whatever’s broken.”

  Inside the Bedroom (Third-Person POV)

  Sasha shut the door softly and turned to Carl with crossed arms and a tone that said this is serious, don’t crack a joke or I’ll strangle you with your tie.

  “We need to talk about Kalbi.”

  Carl, to his credit, didn’t even flinch. “I figured this would come up eventually.”

  “You’ve noticed too, haven’t you?” Sasha said. “He’s not… normal. He lifted our entire storage shelf. He cleaned that dojo like he had turbo-engines for arms. And he has a tail. Carl. A tail.”

  Carl exhaled. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about it since Mom brought him in. He’s strong. Too strong. But…”

  She tilted her head. “But?”

  “He’s a good kid. Weird, yeah, but… not dangerous. He doesn’t act like someone who wants to hurt people. I think we just need to make him feel like he belongs.”

  Sasha nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. We need to help him live in society. That means sending him to school. He doesn’t know how to read or write, and he needs kids his own age. People to talk to that aren’t seventy-five percent battle-hardened martial artist.”

  Carl rubbed his neck. “That’s going to be an adjustment…”

  She gave him a look. “He calls me ‘sister’ and asked if you were a secret agent. I think ‘adjustment’ is overdue.”

  Back to Dinner (First-Person – Kalbi)

  Dinner was id out beautifully—bowls of steaming rice, grilled meat, some kind of root vegetable stew, and a pitcher of iced barley tea. We all sat cross-legged at the low dining table.

  Carl was the one who broached it first.

  “So, Kalbi,” he said between bites. “Have you ever thought about going to school?”

  I froze mid-bite, rice hanging from my lip. “School?”

  “You know, a pce where kids go to learn,” he said, smiling. “Reading, writing, math. Social stuff.”

  I blinked. “Would this… mean I don’t have to do death training with Granny during school hours?”

  Granny snorted. “Only while you’re at school. After school, we train. This time, we also start your ki control.”

  I stared into the void.

  ‘On one hand: cssrooms, lunch breaks, other kids, NO DEATH SQUATS.On the other: ki training. As in real ki. Fireballs. Flight. Energy beams. Super Saiyan someday maybe?!’

  I looked up, slowly, a weird grin forming on my face.

  “…That’s acceptable.”

  Granny raised a brow. “You look happy.”

  “I’m happy the training is evolving. Death training with superpowers is still better than just death training.”

  Sasha chuckled. “We’ll enroll you first thing tomorrow. You’ll start with part-time csses, see how you adjust.”

  Carl nodded. “And I’ll get you some beginner books—alphabet, numbers, reading practice.”

  I blinked. “Wait. There’s… homework?”

  “Mmhm,” Sasha said with a smirk. “Welcome to civilization.”

  Granny jabbed a chopstick toward me. “Don’t sck. You fail in school, I double your training.”

  My soul screamed.

  ‘This is it. This is the full Dragon Ball Earth experience. Civilization, ki training, chores, near-death sparring, and now… elementary school. Kami help me.’