Juan Li picked another serendipitous time to enter my life, calling me two weeks after my afternoon at the Lab pool. We met at a small Chinese restaurant near my house in San Francisco’s Mission District. He told me that he had read my newspaper article and liked it.
“But,” I said sternly, “you should have warned me that Kazz considers the Sword of Heaven a secret project. I would never have written about it had I known.”
“Sometimes I can’t figure Kazz out,” Juan replied. “He never told me it was secret.”
“Well, it’s not now,” I said nervously. I described the responses I had received to the article, both the positive and the skeptical.
“And to be honest,” I continued, “I’m having some second thoughts.”
His big eyes were bright, amused by what he saw as my naïveté. “There is nothing simple about Shinto or the Japanese.”
“I know,” I said softly.

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