The first ssage was a screenshot of the match’s final mont, Reyna’s good fist raised and Satori’s bat lowered, both of them breathing hard and grinning at each other like complete idiots.
The second ssage read: Hermanita, that boy just looked at you like you were the only other person in the stadium.
The third: Also your arm is broken and I’m sending my private dic.
The fourth through eleventh were variations on a the about how Veronica was going to skin Satori alive for hurting her sister, interspersed with observations about his shoulder-to-waist ratio and whether his combat suit was custom-tailored because it fit very well.
Reyna typed back: My arm is fine. Don’t send anyone. Don’t co to the island. Don’t contact him.
Veronica: Too late on at least one of those things ;)
Reyna stared at the winking emoji with the specific kind of fury that only an older sister could inspire. She started typing a response involving several words that their abuela would have washed her mouth out for using, then deleted it, then typed it again, then deleted it again.
She put the phone down.
The wall continued to be a wall. The fluorescent lights continued to hum. Kira continued to sleep.
Reyna touched the splint on her arm and thought about Satori’s face in the mont before she yielded. He hadn’t looked triumphant. He hadn’t looked relieved. He’d looked like soone seeing sothing he respected, which was infinitely worse because triumph and relief were emotions she knew how to dismiss.
Respect was harder.
The dical bay door opened. Diego stood in the hallway with his hands raised in surrender.
"I co in peace," he said. "Takamura wants everyone in the common room in twenty. Bracket for tomorrow’s individual events just posted."
Reyna swung her legs off the cot. Her body protested this decision loudly and from multiple locations. Her arm throbbed. Her ribs ached where Satori’s bat had caught her during the opening exchange. Her mana reserves sat at approximately twelve percent, which was enough to make a single marionette the size of a house cat and keep it active for about six seconds.
"What bracket?" she said.
"Six events across the day. Combat simulation, obstacle course, one-on-one duels, Aspect demonstration, tactical challenge, and so mystery event they haven’t announced yet." Diego pulled out his phone and showed her the screen. "You and Nakano are in the sa bracket for three of them."
Three.
Three separate events where she would stand across from Satori Nakano and attempt to beat him in front of the caras and the comntators and Veronica and the entire country.
Sothing hot and restless coiled in her stomach. Not anger exactly. Sothing adjacent to anger, occupying the sa neighbourhood but living on a different street. Sothing that made her pulse quicken and her broken arm feel suddenly less important.
"Good," she said.
Diego blinked. "Good?"
"He beat in the tag match because his partner covered gaps while he absorbed hits. Tomorrow it’s one-on-one. No Isabelle. No squad coordination. Just him and that bat and whatever he’s hiding behind those stats that don’t match his file."
"Reyna." Diego’s voice dropped to sothing careful. "You lost today. Technically. I’m not saying you didn’t fight well, but your arm is fractured, your mana reserves are in the toilet, and Emi Aoyama, who heals him between rounds, can apparently regenerate a lung. What are you going to do that’s different tomorrow?"
Reyna stood. The room tilted again. She ignored it.
"Tomorrow," she said, "I’m not going to yield."
She walked past Diego into the corridor. The distant sound of the arena crowd still echoed through the concrete, a persistent rumble that vibrated in her chest. Sowhere up there, Maximus Hype was probably replaying highlights and making terrible puns. Sowhere up there, Satori was surrounded by five girls who looked at him like he’d personally invented sunlight.
She’d seen them in the stands during the tag match. All five of them, arrayed like a war council. Natalia with the purple hair and the frost and the expression of a woman who would commit murder for the right incentive. Skylar with the headphones and the knives and the carefully maintained boredom that concealed genuine lethality. Emi with the bouncing blue hair and the healing aura and the sincerity that made Reyna’s teeth ache. Celeste with the silver hair and the political poise and the subtle, devastating intelligence behind those periwinkle eyes. Akari with the erald gaze and the chains and the smile of soone who found the entire world deeply amusing.
Five won. Five soul-bonded, Rank Ten, covenant-level connections to a single boy with a registered C-Rank Aspect and hidden stats that made professional analysts sweat.
It should have been disgusting. It should have made Reyna furious on principle.
Instead, it made her think about the way Satori’s eyes had looked when he told her to stop holding back. The absolute absence of condescension in his voice. The way he’d said "sa" when she’d told him she’d been waiting for a real fight, and the way that single syllable had landed in her chest like sothing with weight and heat.
Maldita sea.
She was not doing this. She was not standing in a concrete corridor with a broken arm and depleted mana thinking about a boy who had five girlfriends and a pet snail and the audacity to fight S-Rank prospects with a baseball bat.
She was Reyna goddamn Cabana. La Sirena. The Crimson Cot. She’d been on magazine covers since she was sixteen. She had a fan club with seventeen thousand mbers and a sponsorship deal with three separate combat gear manufacturers. She did not pine.
She absolutely did not pine.
The common room was warm and slled like takeout when she got there. Soone had ordered enough food to feed a small army, and most of it had already been demolished by Leo, who ate under stress the way other people drank. Kira had been transported from the dical bay to a recliner, where she sat wrapped in a blanket and looking mildly concussed but comfortable.
Takamura occupied the main chair, his scarred face split by an expression that hovered between amusent and the particular weariness of a man who had watched too many of his students make terrible decisions. He waited until Reyna sat before pulling up the bracket on the common room’s main screen.
There it was.
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