Marcus began by acknowledging what Vy had already done. He said he had reviewed the academy's own expectations for guest instructors, and that a tap, in his academy, was supposed to end a round without debate. He did not minimise what had happened, and he did not promise an outcome he could not deliver. Then he laid out the choice he had been turning over, and Vy understood why he had waited to speak to her alone. There were, he said, two paths, and each carried a different kind of cost.
The first path was formal and documented. Vy could submit a written account, with her timeline and the names of witnesses willing to speak, and the academy would open a review. That review would be shared, in appropriate terms, with the people responsible for guest instructors and for competition eligibility. Thao Nguyen and Quoc Huy would be contacted through proper channels and asked to confirm their accounts. Damian would be invited to respond. The process would be slower, and it would not be private in the way a hallway conversation was private, but it would create a record, and a record was harder to rewrite than a rumour. It would also, Marcus admitted, put pressure on the academy's relationship with sponsors, and it would require Vy to remain involved while the review ran its course.
The second path was quieter. Marcus, Vy, and Damian could meet privately, without a written record beyond a brief note that a conversation had taken place, and try to reach an understanding. Damian might apologise for the way the round had unfolded, agree to clearer boundaries in future seminars, and move on. The academy could avoid a public dispute. Vy could return to training without becoming the centre of a formal case. But, Marcus said, looking directly at her, that quieter path had a condition she needed to understand fully before she chose it. In a private mediation, the accounts of Thao Nguyen and Quoc Huy would not be included. Their stories would not be considered, because they had not agreed to a private meeting, and because a private meeting was not the right place for evidence from people who were not present. The question would narrow to a single morning, a single round, and two different memories of it.
Vy felt the room tilt slightly, not with panic, but with the weight of a decision that could not be undone by choosing carefully later. If she chose the formal path, she would be asking Thao Nguyen and Quoc Huy to trust a process that had not yet earned that trust, and she would be stepping further into the centre of a story she had never wanted to lead. If she chose the private path, she would be protecting herself from a longer fight, but she would also be leaving the wider pattern unspoken, and she would be accepting a version of events in which her morning stood alone. Marcus did not rush her. He said she did not need to answer that day, that she could take time, talk to Linh Dan, talk to Mai Lan, and return when she was ready. He said he would respect either choice, and that her place at Bayview did not depend on the choice she made. Vy thanked him, and she meant it, but as she walked out of the office, past the empty mats and the closed door of the changing room, she knew that respect for her choice and safety for the next student who tapped were not quite the same thing, and she had not yet decided how to hold both at once.
She did not answer him that evening. She went home, opened her notebook to the page with two columns, and stared at the line she had drawn between what happened and how it felt, wondering where a difficult choice like this belonged. On one side was the clarity of a record. On the other was the quiet of a life she could return to more quickly. Between them was the question Thao Nguyen had left with her, about whether the next woman who tapped would be believed the first time, and Vy understood, as the harbour lights came on outside her window, that she could not answer Marcus until she had answered that question for herself.