Late sun drifted over Stellar Academy like powdered gold, catching in the ivy and the glass doors of the main hall. Classes had just let out; students slid past in clusters, their voices a steady hum. Aiko was packing away mannequin heads after an advanced finish-work lab when the reception chime rang—three polite notes that usually meant a delivery or a visiting educator.
It wasn't either.
Li Yanyue stepped through the glass, tailored cream coat over black, a scarlet scarf coiled at her throat. Even without recognition, the room would have felt her: a quiet pressure change, attention focusing by reflex. At 5'9", she carried height and balance like a weapon she didn't need to draw.
"Aiko Matsumoto," she said, as if reading a nameplate. "Convenient."
Aiko's fingers paused on the case latch. "Ms. Li," she said evenly, bowing with the courtesy the academy drilled into everyone. "We don't have you scheduled for a guest session today."
"I told security I needed Mei-Ling," Yanyue replied, dismissing that with a flick of her gaze. "She can find me later."
Aiko straightened. Inside, her body did what Hana had taught it to do: breath lower, shoulders soft, attention open. Outside, she kept her voice polite.
"Mei-Ling's on an errand for the student office," Aiko said. "If you'd like to wait in reception, I can ask—"
"I won't be long," Yanyue cut in, and took two slow steps into the lab.
Yuki and Kenta, cleaning sinks at the back, exchanged a look and set their towels down. The room's quiet filled with their awareness. Satoshi moved a fraction closer to the wall phone. Rina positioned herself between Yanyue and the student lockers, as if blocking the instinct to look through their things.
Yanyue took in the space, then let her gaze settle on Aiko the way a judge settles a file: cool, prepared, final. Even her smile felt tempered. She stood close enough to force Aiko to look up.
"Let's save time," Yanyue said. "Javier Varela flew out. Madrid. I'm aware. I didn't come to miss him. I came to be clear with you."
Aiko nodded once. "Go ahead."
"You're going to end it," Yanyue said, tone smooth as a mirror. "Break up with him. He will be joining my team for a training program and a brand plan that fits his trajectory. He's useful raw talent; with my structure, he'll be what he could be, without local distractions."
She let the word distractions rest like a hair laid across shears.
Kenta's jaw flexed; Yuki's breath caught. Aiko didn't move.
"Ms. Li," she said, "Javier isn't a project. He's a person. He chooses where he belongs."
"Everyone chooses," Yanyue agreed, "within the lanes available. I'm opening a lane. You're closing one. And you know it. You felt it the moment you saw me at the station."
Aiko still felt the cold shock of that kiss—how it had ripped through the night air like torn silk. She filed it. Filed the memory of Javier's hand finding hers after, steady and unembarrassed. Filed the way he'd introduced himself, simple and direct: on an evening out with my girlfriend and her friends.
"I felt your tactics," Aiko said. "I didn't mistake them for truth."
Yanyue's eyes narrowed a fraction, as if appraising a seam she hadn't expected to hold. She took one half step closer—enough to let the height difference do its work. From up close, the champion's beauty was the specific kind that cameras loved: edges precise, symmetry almost mathematical. It was easy to see why a stage highlighted her the way it did.
"When you compete at my level," Yanyue said quietly, "you learn to remove variables. Hearts are variables. They scatter focus. He'll figure that out eventually. Save us all time."
Aiko kept her hands relaxed at her sides. The wrist wrap Aunt Keiko had given her sat against her skin, a small, ordinary anchor.
"We're not pretending this will be easy," Aiko said. "We've drawn our calendar on purpose. He trains. I train. We meet the work. We don't perform our relationship for anyone's brand."
"Your schedule is irrelevant," Yanyue said, dismissing the word with her eyes. "This is international competition. Your feelings are a novelty that burns out by qualifiers. You'll discover that at the exhibition."
Yuki's voice, when it came, was bright and too sweet. "Ms. Li, I'm happy to walk you to reception to wait for Mei-Ling."
Yanyue ignored her. She lowered her chin, eyelids half-lidded in a way that read as regal from a distance and as surgical up close. She sized Aiko, not like a threat—for Yanyue, the threat had already been filed under solved—but like a blueprint to be altered.
"You won a magazine feature," she continued. "A campus. A charity day. Nice. Those are local wins. Javier is not local. He doesn't belong to a campus. He belongs to a circuit. I'm giving him entry at velocity. You can admire from here, or you can do something useful: step aside."
The room held its breath. Outside the glass, two first-years slowed, sensing weather, then hurried past.
Aiko gently closed the case she'd been packing, the click small but definite. She brought her eyes up and kept them there.
"Javier isn't a trophy," she said, voice level. "He isn't an opening to your next PR runway. He's my partner. Not a word for publicity—an actual partner. We built the terms together. We'll keep them together. If you want to compete, we'll see you on the stage. If you want to measure, we'll see you at the exhibition. If you want to collect people like combs, you'll be disappointed."
For the first time, a line of tension feathered Yanyue's mouth. "Confidence," she said. "Dangerous in the untested."
"Wrong word," Aiko said. "It's clarity."
Silence again. The fluorescent hum in the ceiling grew loud, then receded.
Footsteps clicked in the hall—Mei-Ling, breath high from a jog, hair escaping its tie.
"Cousin," she said, stopping in the doorway, eyes widening as she read the room. "Security said you were looking for me. Why are you inside the lab?"
Yanyue didn't look away from Aiko. "I had questions."
"Then you ask me," Mei-Ling said, stepping in, voice low and tight. "Not my friends. Not my class. Not her."
Yanyue finally turned, and the distance between cousins seemed to lengthen despite their closeness.
"I'm protecting him," Yanyue said simply.
"No," Mei-Ling said, and the word landed like a hand on a table. "You're protecting your pattern."
A flush—quick, controlled—rose under Yanyue's skin. "I'm giving him the route that works."
"The route that worked for you," Mei-Ling said. "He isn't you."
Kenta shifted his weight; Yuki's fingers curled around the edge of a stainless counter. Rina stood taller, as if remembering she was exactly the height she was meant to be.
Aiko breathed in through her nose, out through her mouth. She thought of consent narration—language that made space clear.
"Ms. Li," she said, gentler now, not because she'd softened, but because precision sometimes required softness. "You can ask Javier anything you want about training with you. That's your right. What you can't do is make my decisions for me. Or for him. So I'm going to be very clear once, and then we're going to move on."
She took one step forward. It made the height gap worse and her voice stronger.
"I'm not breaking up with Javier," Aiko said. "Not for your schedule. Not for your plans. Not for your assumptions about what love can't survive. If you want him on your team, make him an offer that respects his life. If you want to test me, do it in the only place I agree to be tested—on the work. Otherwise, this conversation is over."
A long moment. Yanyue's stare sharpened as if to cut, then dulled as if cutting would be beneath her. She pivoted back to Mei-Ling.
"You've grown bold," she said. "Interesting."
"I've grown tired," Mei-Ling said, chin lifting. "There's a difference."
From the corridor, footsteps again—Professor Martinez, drawn by a receptionist's call.
"Ms. Li," Professor Martinez said pleasantly, which in her mouth was very close to a warning. "We're honored whenever champions visit our campus. Guest sessions are welcome with notice. Private conversations with students happen in reception, not in labs."
Yanyue inclined her head, managing not to look like she'd been caught doing anything except being superior. "My apologies," she said. It sounded like a weather report. "I was leaving."
She turned back to Aiko for the last time, more measuring than menacing now. "We'll see if your clarity lasts," she said. "Three weeks. Exhibition. Don't be late."
"We won't," Aiko said.
Yanyue's mouth gave the smallest twitch—approval, disdain, or muscle memory, it was hard to tell. She stepped out past Professor Martinez, not quite brushing her shoulder. Mei-Ling hesitated, then followed, because family shadows have their own gravity and someone had to be the hinge between rooms.
The door sighed shut. The lab exhaled.
Yuki moved first, releasing the counter with a hiss. "Okay," she said, voice a little shaky with the humor she used to mop up adrenaline. "That was fun. Let's never do it again."
Kenta forced a laugh and failed, then tried again and succeeded. Satoshi finally took his hand off the phone. Rina leaned against a cart, eyes bright, cheeks flushed like she'd just run stairs.
Professor Martinez gave Aiko a look that said many things at once—pride, concern, a ledger of what needed documenting. "Write it down," she said mildly. "E-mail to me and to reception. Facts only. No adjectives."
"Yes, Professor."
"And then," Martinez added, "go outside for ten minutes. Breathe air that isn't recycled. Yuki, stand guard over her tea. Kenta, do not turn this into an Instagram story."
"I would never," Kenta said, hand to heart, already putting his phone away with exaggerated guilt.
When the professor left, the room resumed being lab and not stage. Aiko sat on a stool, elbows on her knees, head hanging for a long exhale. Yuki slid a steaming paper cup into her hands.
"She came in tall," Yuki said softly, settling beside her, "and you didn't shrink."
"I can't afford to," Aiko said. "Not if I want to do the work I say I want."
Kenta crouched in front of them, forearms draped over his thighs. "She played status games. You answered with boundaries. That's how you beat a press without making it a scene."
Aiko huffed a laugh despite herself. "Soccer metaphors now?"
"Use what you have."
Mei-Ling slipped back in, breathless but less tight, shoulders dropping when she saw Aiko's face. "Security walked her to the gate," she reported. "She was... herself. I'm sorry she came like that. It's not— She's not always—"
"It's not on you," Aiko said, reaching for her hand. "You're you. She's her."
Mei-Ling nodded hard. "She's coming to the exhibition with a plan. Good. So are we."
"Then we do what we said," Aiko answered, the words reminding her as much as anyone. "We train. We serve. We show up."
Yuki straightened. "Okay—micro-plan for the next hour. Satoshi, reset basins. Rina, label the tool kits for the evening class. Kenta, print consent-narration prompts for the mock client block. Aiko—ten minutes outside. Then tendon sequence. Then we practice 'no' in three tones: polite, firm, and iron."
Kenta saluted. "Tone drills. My specialty."
Aiko stood, finished her tea in two careful swallows, and stepped into the corridor. The light there was different—late gold edging toward evening, dust motes not caring about competitions or brands. She walked to the end of the hall where the glass opened onto the courtyard and pressed her wrist against the warm pane. The wrap gave under her skin, exactly as much as she needed.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A message.
Boarding second flight. Connection smooth. How's your sky? —J
She looked up. Same sky, different angle. She typed:
Clear. Small squall passed through the lab. Held center. See you at the exhibition. —A
The cursor blinked. Then:
Proud of you. Build. I'll build too. Call at your dawn. —J
She slid the phone away, breathed once more, and went back in.
When she returned to the lab, the room had reset to ordinary work: towels folded, combs aligned, spray bottles refilled. Yuki handed her a fresh elastic; Kenta held up a timer; Rina offered a mannequin with hair that would show every flaw if she hurried.
Aiko took her place.
"Intent?" Yuki asked, slipping into judge mode.
"To make choices that don't need defending later," Aiko said, picking up her comb.
"Proceed," Yuki said.
Aiko began sectioning. The first part line was straight and quiet. Her hands, under tendon memory, moved like exactly what they were: practiced, patient, ready.
Outside, shadows lengthened across the courtyard. Somewhere over Europe, a plane crossed a line on a map that wasn't their master, just the day's logistics. Inside, the work went on—the kind that didn't trend, didn't clap, didn't kiss in public, but stacked up into something that could stand when the bright lights finally turned and asked it to.