It arrived in a white envelope.
No return address.No blood on the corner.No demands in fine print.
Just her name —spelled rightfor the first time in years.
Aara.
Not "Ash."Not "the girl with the hoodie."Not "property of Crown League."
Just her.
She didn't open it right away.
It sat on her desk all morning.Unopened. Undisturbed.
It felt too light to be dangerous.
But maybe that's what scared her most.
Haru was the one who finally asked.
"You gonna open it?"
She didn't look up.
"It's probably junk."
"It has your name on it."
"So did every court order Rae sent."
"It's handwritten."
"That just makes it more suspicious."
He sat on the edge of her bed.Not close. Not far.
Just where he always was —within reach, never in the way.
"You burned a billion-won underground empire.You think you're gonna get taken down by paper?"
She looked at him then.
Eyes narrowed.
"I'm not scared."
"I never said you were."
She opened it.
Slow.Like it might bleed.
But it didn't.
Just unfolded in her hands, clean and sharp and terrifying.
A full scholarship.
Academic.
Not athletic.
Not conditional.
Not performative.
Just… offered.
To her.
"This can't be real," she whispered.
Haru took the paper from her fingers, scanned it.
"It's real."
"It's a setup."
"It's a chance."
She stood up so fast her chair scraped the floor.
"I didn't earn this."
"You earned everything."
"Not like this. Not from them. Not from a school that probably watched Rae's little circus and decided I'd be good PR."
She paced.
Not because she was angry.
Because she didn't know what to do with hope.
"What if they just want to use me?"
"Then say no."
"And if I say yes?"
"Then we figure it out."
She stopped pacing.
Turned to face him.
"Why are you always ready for me to leave?"
He blinked.
"What?"
"You always say it like it's nothing.Like me going doesn't tear something out of you."
He stood now.
Voice quiet.
"Because I want you to choose your life, Aara.Even if it means choosing something that doesn't have room for me in it."
The silence that followed was worse than shouting.
Because it meant he meant it.
All of it.
"You're not mine," he said."And I'll never love you like you are."
"But I do love you."
"Which is why I'll never be the reason you stay small."
She stared at him like he'd just confessed to setting her house on fire —and promised to build a mansion in its place.
"You think I'm small?"
"I think you're still shrinking yourself to fit places that hurt."
She sank into the desk chair.
Hands shaking again.
Not from fear.
From possibility.
"What if I get there and I don't know how to be anything but angry?"
"Then get angry at something new."
"What if I fail?"
"Then you fail forward."
"What if I don't know who I am without this war?"
He walked to her.
Knelt down.
Took her hands in his.
"Then fight to find out."
She didn't cry.
Not yet.
But she felt something in her crack.
And for the first time —it didn't feel like breaking.
It felt like a door creaking open.
Later that night, she wrote in her journal:
"The contract they want me to sign doesn't scare me.It's the fact that it's not written in blood.And maybe I don't know how to sign things that aren't soaked in it."
She didn't say yes.
Not that day.
But she didn't throw it away either.
And for Aara?
That was a revolution all on its own.