Morning arrived with a clean-edged sky, the kind you could fold and tuck into your pocket. The academy courtyard wore its usual quiet—ivy breathing on the brick, the koi in the small pond writing unreadable cursive with their tails. Aiko and Javier walked the loop without speaking, their steps syncing the way pendulums sympathetic to each other do.
"Ten minutes," he said at last, glancing at the lock screen where his boarding pass pulsed in grayscale. "Then train. Then airport."
Aiko nodded. She had braided her hair in a low, steady pattern that felt like a decision. The tiny shell from the beach—thumbprint small and perfect—rested in her palm. She didn't want to be dramatic with gifts or vows. She wanted to be precise.
"When your plane takes off," she said, "I'll be in color theory. When it lands, I'll be in Mrs.Fujiwara's tendon class. I'll set an alarm so your 'landed' ping hits when I can read it."
"Time zones, same day," he said, and smiled. "It's only a map."
They sat on the low stone edging around the pond. He took her hand, turned it palm-up, and found the pulse like he always did. She had a small bottle of camellia oil ready—one drop pressed into his wrist, one onto hers. Their metronome.
"Say it," Aiko said. "The plan. All of it."
"Okay," Javier said, and the athlete in him clicked into the coach who lived under his skin. "Eight months to the international. That stays our north. I go back to Spain to lock the hand speed and structure blocks I can only do with my home mentors and the university rigs. Online classes—two theory modules, one biomechanics lab. In three months, an amateur MMA fight somewhere in Europe—I'll confirm venue with my coach next week. I'm doing it for timing, for breath control under pressure, not for damage. Hands stay wrapped. No sparring that risks cuts in the last three weeks before the exhibition with Yanyue."
Aiko's mouth tilted. "Our exhibition."
"Our exhibition," he corrected, quick. "I fly back for that in three weeks. No negotiations. We go, we measure that room, we learn."
"And Hoshizora?" she asked.
"We keep it monthly," he said, softer. "If I can't be here in person, I fund the kit drop and send videos for the teens who are learning. You, Yuki, Kenta, Rina, Satoshi, Mei-Ling—you're the crew. Aprons outside, armor inside."
She exhaled, full. "Okay."
He continued, counting on his fingers, a blueprint unfolding.
"Scheduling: We make two tracks. Training track and public track. Private calendar—our drills, our calls, our mock judging. Public calendar—sponsorship touchpoints after midterm, light and clean, with boundaries: micro-content on service, not spectacle. No couple gimmicks. No viral bait."
"Say it again," she murmured.
"Service, not spectacle." He looked up, eyes leaving no room for doubt. "We don't let the industry teach us how to be together. We teach it how to treat us."
Aiko smiled, the kind that reached the eyes and set up camp. "This is why I chose you."
He squeezed her hand once and kept going. "Calls: fifteen minutes at your dawn, my midnight. Ten minutes at your lunch, my early morning. One long session every Sunday—technique review, we both film our hands, no faces needed, feedback on the quiet channel. We keep one day a week fully off-screens. We meet in a book, or a song, or we just sit with the call open and breathe."
"And the windows," she said. "Make them special."
His smile bent into mischief. "Scheduled magic is still magic. Every month I fly for a weekend—48 hours. Non-negotiable unless a meteor hits Madrid. We'll rotate: Tokyo, or somewhere halfway if your schedule is chained. If you ask, I come sooner. If it's bad, I drop everything."
He paused, his expression growing more thoughtful. "But Aiko—remember what you built when you were searching for me. Remember those months when you didn't know where to find me and kept going anyway. That strength isn't something to set aside now that I'm here. It's the foundation everything else stands on."
Aiko's throat tightened. Rain on a park bench. A basin. A stranger who became a compass. All the nights she'd spent in libraries researching hairstyling schools, applying for programs, building skills that would eventually lead her to Spain. She had built a spine from small routines and kindnesses that no one saw.
"I won't forget," she said. "I don't want to build my life around waiting for you to come back. I want to weave your visits into a life that stands on its own."
He cupped the back of her neck, thumb drawing a slow half-circle. "Exactly. We stand apart, then together, then apart again. Not as punishment. As practice for becoming people worthy of what we're building."
The koi stirred the surface, composing ripples that wrote nothing and everything.
"After the tournament," Aiko said, eyes on the water, "we map the rest. Sponsorships we choose, not the ones that choose us. Service trips—countries where we can actually help, not vanity tours. And—" She swallowed, a little leap in her chest. "The place."
He blinked. "Our place."
"Not all at once," she said quickly, aware of the way the future could be as heavy as it was bright. "We start with a room. A door that locks. One basin. A kettle. A quiet sign. We grow it when the work demands it, not when the world demands it."
He looked very serious, and very young, and very old all at once. "I'll build the shelves," he said. "You pick the light."
"Soft," she decided. "Always."
His phone pulsed again. Nine minutes now.
They walked to the station with their hands in their pockets, their shoulders angled so they touched anyway. Yuki and Kenta were waiting by the turnstiles like parents pretending not to be parents. Mei-Ling stood with a bag of airport snacks she had over-prepared and then over-apologized for preparing.
"Security line fuel," she said, pressing packages into Javier's hands. "Also this wrist wrap. Mrs. Sato says if you come back with a single new scar on your hand, she will personally lecture your coach about tendon ethics."
"I fear Mrs. Sato more than any opponent," Javier said gravely, accepting the wrap like an oath. "I'll bring her a fight clip with hands safe and shoulders soft."
Kenta slung an arm around Aiko's shoulder and then thought better of it and put it around Javier's instead. "Win with grace. Lose with grace. Text when you land."
"Hydrate," Yuki added, shoving a water bottle at him as if he hadn't just finished one. "And if any Spanish brands try to make you do a couple dance, tell them Yuki from Tokyo said no."
"Absolutely not," Javier said, deadpan. "Our choreography is combs and consent."
They laughed because it was funny and because they needed to.
On the platform, the train breathed in, then out. They didn't take seats; they stood in the open space by the door, swaying, the city peeling past in slices—vending machines, a bicycle leaned against a fence, a dog in a raincoat even though the sky was clean.
"I'm a little scared," Aiko said, because honesty was oxygen, and they had promised to trade in oxygen.
"Me too," he answered instantly, because this was how you held a thing without pretending it wasn't heavy. "We let it ride in the car with us. We don't give it the map."
She nodded, and some of the fear settled into the seat with the luggage and behaved itself.
"There's something else," Javier said quietly, his voice carrying the weight of thoughts he'd been organizing for days. "About training separately, about the distance. This isn't about testing whether we can survive apart. We already know we can. You spent months in Spain searching for me. I spent months after waking up building skills to be worthy of finding you again."
Aiko looked at him carefully. "Then what is it about?"
"It's about becoming people who choose each other from strength, not need. Who can offer partnership instead of dependence." He paused, watching the city blur past the windows. "When I think about the competition, about facing someone like Yanyue who uses psychological pressure as strategy, I want us to be unshakeable. Not because we're clinging to each other, but because we're each solid enough to stand alone and strong enough together to face anything."
"That's a lot of pressure on both of us," Aiko said softly.
"Maybe. But I'd rather put pressure on ourselves to grow than let someone else put pressure on us to break."
At the airport, fluorescent light tried and failed to be sunlight. They moved through check-in like water—smooth, practiced, side by side. At security, the rope line forced a line to be drawn between them.
"Two minutes," he said, stepping into the channel that would snake him around the corner.
"Two minutes," she echoed, and reached up to frame his face with both hands. "Spain is not far. It's a different angle of the same sky."
"Different angle," he agreed. "Same sky."
He kissed her—no grand gesturing, just a press that put words to the things they had already laid out in columns and bullet points and shared calendars. When they separated, he opened his palm.
"Trade?" he asked.
She placed the shell there. "For your pocket."
He unknotted the wrist wrap Aunt Keiko had sent and tied it loosely around her wrist. "For when the day is too loud."
The security guard coughed in a way that meant time was a real thing again. Javier stepped backward, then backward again, walking the line like it was a tide he had decided to respect.
He didn't look away as the line bent. He lifted his hand when he reached the metal archway. She lifted hers. Their palms met through air and distance and the ordinary bustle of an airport on a bright day.
Aiko stood until he vanished past the checkpoint. She did not make a drama of it. She breathed. She looked at the wrist wrap—plain, practical, a loop of fabric that smelled faintly of chalk and citrus.
Her phone buzzed. A message already in place, scheduled to send at the first cell tower beyond the airport.
Liftoff in five. Drink water. You are my north. —J
Her answer was simple.
Land safe. Build well. I'll keep the quiet. —A
On the train back, the city reclaimed its cadence. Aiko let her head tip against the cool glass. The metronome of the rails lined up with her pulse, the camellia warmth in her wrist keeping time. She opened their shared calendar and added the small things: "Sunday long call—braid tension audit." "Hoshizora—Mei's detangle refresher." "Exhibition attire—no capes, soft soles, clear pockets."
Her reflection in the window was steady. Not a girl waiting at a window. A woman walking a road.
At the academy gate, Yuki and Kenta were waiting again, this time with iced tea and a few jokes they delivered too loudly on purpose.
"You okay?" Yuki asked when the jokes did their job.
Aiko looked at the sky and decided it was the same one that would be over Madrid in thirteen hours. "Yes."
Kenta nudged her arm with a shoulder. "Then we run the afternoon tape. Sayuri's tendon sequence at four. I'll be the metronome if you're the hands."
"And I'll be the annoying judge who asks for intent," Yuki said, already slipping into the role with relish. "Why this section? Why this choice? Why now?"
Aiko smiled, rolled her wrist, and felt the wrap answer with a give that said you can move and still be held.
"Because," she said, lifting her kit, "we're building something that will not need defending when it's finished."
They crossed the courtyard. Somewhere above the city, a plane climbed a blue page and drew a line between two points that had decided to be one story. Aiko didn't watch the sky to look for it.
She went inside to train.