You duck under her kick and counter with a palm strike. She catches your wrist midair, twists, and flips you hard onto the mat. The breath knocks out of your lungs in a rush and then she’s already offering a hand to pull you back up.

You groan. “You ever think about doing something a little less painful with your time?”She tilts her head, and for once, doesn’t have a cold retort ready. Instead, she says, low and simple as she circles you again.

“I wanted to be a ballerina when I was younger.”

You blink, breath catching not from the impact this time, but from the words. You recover your stance as you process them.

“A ballerina?” you repeat, barely dodging her next jab. She’s testing you. Distracting you with honesty. You block her next strike. She moves with that same precision like every motion is pre-choreographed. Deadly. Graceful.

“Yes… they retire young.”

There’s weight behind it. More than the throw she just tried to plant you with. You hesitate for a second too long, and her leg sweeps yours out from under you. You’re on the floor again, breathing hard, but now not just from exertion. You stare up at her, and she’s not smiling. She’s never smiling. But there’s something softer in the way her eyes drop away, just for a moment.

She crouches down beside you, offering that same hand again- scarred knuckles, calloused palm.

You take it.

And just like that, you realize she never stopped dancing. She just changed the choreography.

The mat beneath you smells like sweat and old fights. The air between you buzzes with tension. Not romantic. But intimate in the way only two people who trust each other not to hold back can be. She stands, brushing hair from her eyes, katana forgotten in the corner.

“Again?”

You nod. And this time, you’re not just sparring. You’re learning the rhythm of Saya Kuroki the silent language of a girl who wanted to pirouette her way out of a bloody legacy… and ended up trading tutus for tattoos.