The girl was waiting for her in an old storage building near the edge of the city — the kind of place where dreams went to suffocate and blood dried faster than apologies.
She couldn't have been more than sixteen.
Too skinny.Too quiet.Too soft around the eyes.
She looked nothing like Aara had at that age — but the bones were familiar.
The tension in her jaw.The bruises not hidden well enough.The rage that hadn't found a direction yet.
Aara saw it instantly.
This wasn't a fighter.
Not yet.
"You're late," the girl said, arms crossed.
Aara raised an eyebrow.
"You're bold."
"You came to train me. So train me."
"No. I came to decide if you're worth it."
The girl didn't flinch.
Aara respected that.
The room was bare.
Mats on the floor.Cracked mirror on the wall.A punching bag that looked like it had been through a war — and lost.
No heat.No ring.Just two girls in a box full of echoes.
"Name?" Aara asked.
"Jin."
"How long have you been fighting?"
"I haven't."
"Then why'd you sign up to fight under my name?"
"I didn't. They picked me."
"You could've said no."
"Could you?"
That stopped Aara for a second.
Not because she was offended —but because it was a fair question.
She hadn't said no either, back then.Not to Rae.Not to the system.Not until she was already too deep to climb out clean.
"What do you want out of this?" Aara asked.
"A name."
"Why mine?"
"Because yours scares people."
Aara circled slowly.
Watching her.
Not her stance.Not her muscles.
Her eyes.
"You want to be feared?"
"No," Jin said.
"Then what?"
"I want to stop being prey."
There it was.
The core.
The raw nerve beneath all the performance.
She didn't want to win.
She wanted to survive.
Just like Aara had.
"Put your hands up," Aara said.
Jin obeyed.
Sloppy.
Too much space between her knuckles.
Too much hesitation behind her fists.
Aara walked up to her.
Got close enough that Jin stepped back instinctively.
"Wrong," Aara said."You don't step back. You anchor."
"But if you're bigger—"
"Then you break their knee and anchor harder."
She moved Jin's hands.
Corrected her stance.
Pulled her into place — not gently.
"Every time you flinch," Aara said, "you tell the world they can take something from you."
"I'm not scared."
"You don't have to be. But your body doesn't believe you yet."
They trained.
Quietly.
No music. No cheers.Just breath. Sweat. Contact.
Aara didn't hold back.
She didn't coddle.
She let Jin fail.
Let her miss.
Let her fall — hard.
After the sixth time Jin hit the mat, she groaned.
"You're just beating me up."
"No," Aara said. "I'm teaching you how not to break."
"It feels the same."
"It's not."
Jin lay there for a second.Breathing heavy.
Eyes burning.
"Why did you come back?"
Aara crouched beside her.
Voice low.
Controlled.
"Because if I didn't, they were going to throw you in the pit.And you would've died."
Jin looked up.
"So I'm just a charity case?"
"No," Aara said. "You're a message."
"To who?"
"To every bastard who thinks I got soft."
They trained again the next day.
And the next.
And the next.
Jin was slow. But she learned.
She wasn't like Aara — and that was good.
She didn't fight from instinct.
She fought from hunger.
And eventually?
She stopped flinching.
A week in, Jin asked:
"Did it ever feel good?"
"What?"
"The violence."
Aara didn't answer right away.
Then:
"It felt like power.Until it started to feel like proof I had nothing else left."
Jin was silent for a long time.
Then asked:
"Do I have anything else left?"
Aara looked her in the eyes.
"That's what we're going to find out."
Later that night, Aara sat in her room.
The flyer was still folded in her jacket.
The pit match was two weeks out.
Not hers.
Not anymore.
But the name printed on the card was still:
Ash.
And she was starting to wonder if maybe she hadn't buried the ghost deep enough.
Her phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
She answered.
No hello.
Just a voice she hadn't heard in weeks.
Haru.
"You training her?"
Her throat tightened.
"How did you know?"
"You think I stopped watching?"
She didn't answer.
But her silence said enough.
"You okay?" he asked.
"No."
"You want me to come back?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I need to do this without you."
Another pause.
Then:
"Then teach her to survive," Haru said."And if anyone tries to hurt her—"
"I'll finish what I started."
She hung up first.
But her hands didn't shake.
And when she looked in the mirror?
She saw someone new.
Not Ash.
Not the old Aara.
Something between.
Something she was still naming.
That night, she didn't journal.
She just whispered:
"She's not me.But I'll make her dangerous enough to scare the people who made me."