By the next afternoon the clip had circled the city—two seconds of Yuki's shout stapled to ten seconds of black sedan—captioned a dozen ways:
"Stellar student chasing van—legend."
"When a queen meets a brick wall."
"Heard she said: Come here, fight someone your size."
Anonymous accounts spat back, others rallied, the usual churn of a platform that turned everything into teams. Aiko didn't read comments. She sat in the lab with Mari and braided hair quietly, the way storms are faced in boats too small to bully the sea.
Three days later, the storm put on makeup and went on television.
The studio was powdered air and controlled light, the host calibrated to cheerful neutrality. Li Yanyue wore the same precise cream coat; the scarf was softer, like someone had advised approachable. A graphic swam under the desk:
LI YANYUE — International Champion (2037), Author: Structure Wins
The chit-chat was warm until it wasn't.
"We've got a question from fans," the host said, shuffling cards. "There's a short video trending—looks like someone chasing you outside a campus. People want to know: was that you?"
Yanyue's smile didn't wobble. "I saw that clip," she said lightly. "It's not real. It's an AI mashup. This happens to public figures. Anyone can fake a chase now, paste a car, paste a face."
"So you're saying the woman in the clip wasn't you, and the person chasing—?"
"Looked like a raccoon," Yanyue said, letting the word land like a joke. The audience tittered on cue. "I mean, really—eyes, hair, that bounce? I ran because, if it were real—" she let herself laugh "—I'd think a raccoon was after me. But it's fake. People shouldn't believe everything they see on their phones."
The host smiled the way hosts do when something impolite just happened and the teleprompter says pivot. "Of course, of course—misinformation is a big topic. Speaking of, your upcoming exhibition—"
The show flowed on, applause happening right on schedule. Somewhere in a control room, someone made a note to clip that exchange for socials. Somewhere else, the delivery driver from the alley watched the segment twice, then opened his messages and sent the studio producer the original full-length video with its uncut engine noise and the plate numbers clear as a signed confession.
Back at Stellar, Yuki watched with Kenta and Aiko on her laptop, jaw tilting when raccoon landed. She pressed pause, the frame catching Yanyue mid-smile.
"So we're doing animal metaphors now," Yuki said, tone bright, eyes cold. "Cute."
Kenta folded his arms. "She's trying to meme you away."
Aiko scrubbed a palm down her face, then smoothed the ache at her temple with two fingers like she could iron it quiet. "She's trying to discredit footage she can't control," she said. "If people think it's AI, nobody has to care."
Yuki leaned back. "We don't respond?"
"Not on the internet," Aiko said. "Dr. Nakamura said 'facts only, no adjectives.' We stack receipts. We let adults who know how to file things file them. We train. We do not take her bait."
Kenta made a face. "Even if she called you a raccoon?" He tried to smile to show he was fine. He wasn't. None of them were, not about the way raccoon sounded in that mouth.
Yuki blew out a breath. "She thinks I'm going to cry about it," she said. "I've been called worse by clients' toddlers. I'll live."
"Still," Kenta muttered. "Rude."
"Unoriginal," Yuki corrected.
Mei-Ling slipped into the room like someone who had practiced making her entrances small. She didn't sit right away; she stood by the window and watched the late sun clean the ivy.
"I sent the studio the full video," she said quietly. "And the driver did too. The producer wrote back, 'We'll review.' I don't know if they will. I just—" She swallowed. "I'm not letting it slide over us."
Yuki turned the laptop screen flat and shut it with a soft click. "Good," she said. "We do our homework. Then we ace our test."
Professor Martinez appeared in the doorway with four cups of barley tea and the kind of look that meant she'd listened to more than she'd say. "There's a concept," she said, handing the cups around, "called the cut that disappears. It looks clean in the moment. Weeks later, the hair remembers and puckers. Bad technique is like that. So is bad behavior."
Aiko snorted softly. "We let time do some of the work."
"And we do the rest," Mei-Ling said quietly.
The academy issued a single sentence that afternoon—Dr. Nakamura's words, sanded of heat:
Statement: We are aware of an incident involving a former competitor and a current student off campus. Documentation has been provided to the proper authorities. We will prioritize student safety and refrain from further comment pending the process.
A week later they did nothing about it and it got swept under the rug.
It didn't trend. Good. Some things weren't supposed to.
At practice, Professor Martinez ran tendon sequences like she was armoring them for battle without ever saying the word. "Hands," she murmured. "Eyes. Breath. When noise gets loud, do the next small right thing."
They did.
Sunday, during the long call, Javier propped his phone against a water bottle and braided a mannequin in his Madrid studio, hands exact, voice low.
"She called it AI?" he asked.
"On live TV," Yuki said from the floor off-screen, where she was stretching her hip flexors like they had personally offended her. "Said I looked like a raccoon."
Javier blinked once and then, to Aiko's surprise, smiled—sharp and not unkind. "Raccoons are clever," he said. "They wash their food. They have hands."
"Thank you," Yuki said, deadpan. "Finally, a man with science."
Aiko felt something unclench. "We keep it simple," she said, meeting the lens. "We don't clap back. We let footage exist. We let the exhibition be a mirror."
"I'll be at your side," Javier said. "Front door, back door, and in between."
He tied off the braid, lifted it to the camera. "Clean?"
"So clean," Aiko said, meaning the hair, meaning the plan.
Two days later, the studio aired a small, quiet addendum at the end of a different episode—no apology, just a correction graphic and a voiceover:
"Regarding a recent viewer question, we have received additional footage of the incident in question. We encourage viewers to consider multiple sources when evaluating viral clips."
It came and went like a breeze under a door. The internet barely noticed. That was fine. The point had never been the internet.
What mattered was that Aiko's scalp had healed clean, and her hair lay smooth where Yanyue's fingers had tried to claim it. What mattered was that Yuki kept training with the same fierce grin, whether people called her a raccoon or anything else. What mattered was that when Yanyue walked into the exhibition hall, she'd find opponents who wouldn't bend.
On the evening before the exhibition, the five of them—Aiko, Yuki, Kenta, Mei-Ling, and Rina—stood in the empty practice room, lights low, mannequins lined like quiet witnesses. Aiko opened Aunt Keiko's cherry-blossom comb case and passed it to Yuki without words.
"You sure?" Yuki asked.
"Borrow it," Aiko said. "Not because you need it. Because I want that story in your pocket."
Yuki tucked the comb into the small zip pocket inside her kit where she kept things that mattered. "Raccoon with a blossom," she said, and laughed, and didn't look away from the work.
They set timers. They breathed in sync. They began.
Outside, the city cycled through its evening—screens, trains, late deliveries—indifferent to champions and raccoons, to AI clips and quiet corrections. Distance did what distance does. Time kept its beat. The hair remembered what hands told it and not what mouths called it.
And when the night finally stilled, Aiko slept without flinching at the door. In Madrid, Javier tied off one last section and texted a photo of a clean parting line so precise it looked like a promise.
Tomorrow we make our own edit, he wrote.
Aiko stared at the picture, then at her own palm, where the camellia oil had left its faint, familiar sheen.
Tomorrow, she answered, and put the phone face down on the cherry-blossom comb, and let the quiet close like a lid on something that had finally stopped moving.